The RU, when dealing with the democratic rights of gay people is even more muddled and unclear than usual:
The RU supports the democratic rights of gay people under capitalism, but we do not feel that the Attica Brigade has to take a stand on this. Although we support these democratic rights, we do not do so in an abstract way. We oppose the arbitrary use of laws against homosexuality and we oppose bourgeois methods of treating homosexuals as “criminals”. We do not uphold any so-called general abstract ’right to be homosexual’. To make a comparison with religion – we support the democratic rights of people to exercise freedom of religion, but we wouldn’t support the right of some Jesus freak sect to prostelytize in working class neighborhoods, but we would support a Black Muslim being brutalized in prison. We support the democratic right of free speech, but we don’t support the racial demogogues.
But it is not that they support the democratic rights of gays “in an abstract way”, they don’t support the democratic rights of gays in any way. It is not even a matter of “all talk, no action”. Nowhere, except in this position paper, have we found a reference by the RU to the democratic rights of gay people. The RU’s Draft Program has nothing to say except that socialism
will wipe out the decadence of capitalism in all spheres. Prostitution, drug addiction, homosexuality and other practices which bourgeois society breeds and the bourgeoisie promotes to degrade and enslave the masses of people, will be abolished. The prostitutes, drug addicts, homosexuals and others who are caught up in these things will be re-educated to become productive members of society, with working class consciousness.”[1]
If the RU is concerned with working class consciousness, they should re-read Lenin:
Working class consciousness cannot be genuine political consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to all cases of tyranny, oppression, violence, and abuse, no matter what class is affected, – unless they are trained, moreover, to respond from Social-Democratic points of view and no other... We must blame ourselves, our lagging behind the mass movement, for still being unable to organize sufficiently wide, striking and rapid exposures of all the shameful outrages.[2]
We ask the RU, do they have nothing to say about the lobotomizing of gays in state hospitals, the continued police harassment and brutalizing of gay people, the denial of gay parents the custody of their children? Do they think these things are “right-on”? From their silence, it would seem so.
He is no Social-Democrat who forgets in practice his obligation to be ahead of all in raising, accentuating and solving every general democratic question... We would be “politicians” and Social-Democrats in name only (as all too often happens in reality), if we failed to realize that our task is to utilize every manifestation of discontent, and to gather and turn to the best account every protest, however small.[3]
In fact, the RU has abandoned its revolutionary duty to arouse the masses by exposing these concrete examples of reactionary bourgeois rule and to explain to the working class how these outrageous actions and the bourgeois “anti-gay” rationale behind them only serves to weaken and divide the working class struggle. Their failure to do so, besides holding back the consciousness and unity of the working class, is a failure to mobilize every possible ally of the working class. Every communist gay can point to numerous instances of honest anti-imperialist gay people who have had their political development retarded, or who have become anti-communist, because of the rampant anti-gay attitudes within the communist forces. Communists must draw a clear line of demarcation between themselves and the bourgeoisie. Mao says, “We should support whatever the enemy opposes and oppose whatever the enemy supports” and quotes Chu Fou, “Whatever you do, you must be sure that you do not sadden your friends and gladden your enemies.”[4] The RU completely fails to do this, both in theory and in practice.
[1] Revolutionary Union, Draft Programme,, pp. 11-12.
[2] Lenin, What is to be Done?, p. 69.
[3] ibid., p. 82.
[4] Mao, “Interview with Three Correspondents,” Selected Works, Vol, II, p. 272.