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.