The morn movement for queer liberatn—or gay liberatn to e the as-yet ls clive termology of the 1960s and ’70s—wouldn’t exist whout the Communist Party USA.
Contents:
WHAT HAPPENED WHEN A GAY COMMUNIST WROTE TO STAL
* gay communist *
Early the history and velopment of munism, the German Communist Party, durg the Weimar Republic, joed wh the Social Democrats support of efforts to legalize private homosexual relatns between nsentg adults. Although Karl Marx himself said ltle about sexualy at all, many saw that his philosophy was meant to ee all people om opprsn, cludg women, blacks, and homosexuals — prumably so they uld all serve the state. That might sound like a big claim to make, but was Communist iology and polil strategy that provid the theoretil and practil archecture of the earlit effort to w gay equaly the Uned Stat—the Mattache Society, a group whose ias unrpned all the stggl and victori the untry that have been won over the past half century.
Mattache, one of the first groups to attempt to polilly anize gay men and lbians, was tablished over the urse of 1948 to 1950, a perd of rurgent nservative power and suburban-spired social nformy U. Lol party lears California didn’t want him to go, but official CPUSA policy at the time and for s after still saw homosexualy as a sign of the social generatn of late-stage palism and as a ser blackmail risk. Invtigators perhaps hoped that fear of beg exposed as a homosexual would prompt Hay to turn on his old ras; stead he shot back, “I’m not the hab of nfidg stool pigeons or their buddi on this mtee.
Thanks to the work of rearchers like Stuart Timmons and Will Rose, thors rpectively of The Trouble wh Harry Hay and Radilly Gay, much of the story of Hay and Mattache has been rcued om dty box and locked filg bets. The ia for a group to specifilly anize gays to fight for their acceptance by society was first broached by Hay 1948 the form of a “Bachelors for Wallace” uc wh the Progrsive Party mpaign of Henry Wallace. The notn of gays as an opprsed mory culture was a takeoff om the Marxist analysis of the opprsn of Ain Amerins and other groups as “natnal mori, ” a ncept wh a long pedigree Marxism-Lenism but which was particularly strsed after the Sixth Congrs of the Communist Internatnal 1928.