Perhaps the most shocking example of this refusal to entertain and enact a larger political and moral vision is that after hundreds of thousands of gay men’s deaths from AIDS, an event that completely devastated gay rights and gay culture, not one national gay-rights or AIDS group broached the question of universal health care, or some other modification in the broken American heath-care system. If they had done so, they would have garnered support from a wide range of groups and constituencies with similar concerns.

No wild child left behind 
Will a return to the political and moral vision of gay liberation be the best way to enact such changes? Well, yes — and no. The simplistic vision of the gay-liberation movement — to radically reorder the entire world on the principles of justice, fairness, and individual and collective freedom — could not work in 1970, and will not work now. In the best tradition of utopianism, gay liberation was boundless and maddeningly ambiguous, incredibly naïve, and wildly impractical. And it had serious philosophical flaws. It refused to take seriously the importance of religion in people’s lives, a major problem given the current global, culture warfare between the Judeo-Christian tradition and Islam. It also turned a blind eye to deeply entrenched gender traditions — try telling a devout, traditional Afghan woman that her burqa oppresses her. It was woefully ignorant about money and the workings of capitalism, relying instead on romanticized notions of preindustrial economics. And it was appallingly naïve in its view of human nature, feeling that people — and groups — would simply do the right thing because it was the right thing. So while the movement understood the concept of coalition politics, all too often it didn’t understand how to make those arguments convincingly. And all too frequently, it betrayed an almost-comic insensitivity to the real cultural and political differences among organizations.  Taking cues from feminism, for instance, the GLF was adamantly against “macho” as a style of masculinity and celebrated a playful, sissy affect. We simply had no understanding of how black men — long subjugated as “boys” by white culture — would want to lionize their newfound, aggressively masculine political personas. (Pushing the point hard, black leaders such as Eldridge Clever would attack openly gay black men such as James Baldwin as “faggots” and betrayers of black pride.) And while men in the GLF rejoiced in our newfound sexual freedom, we disregarded the experience of many feminists: that sex was too often used by men as a weapon, and “sexual liberation” was yet another patriarchal straight-male ploy to further exploit women.

Despite these problems, the Gay Liberation Front never believed in strict identity politics or a zero-sum game. Rather than seeing human and civil rights as identity-specific, it understood that if everyone worked together, there would be no losers. The GLF also believed that truly productive political work could only occur when the full needs of all people — economic, health, safety, housing, spiritual, and sexual — were addressed and met. And most important, it believed that cohesive social change could only come through cooperation, and that no one is free until all are free. This vision of justice, as espoused by the prophet Isaiah, is found in the Hebrew Bible, in the Enlightenment, and (if you are not an originalist) in the Constitution of the United States.

Luckily, there are signs that changes are under way. When lesbian commentator Jasmin Cannick recently argued on her blog that the rights of native-born gay men and lesbians were more important than those of illegal immigrants, she was soundly criticized by other gay activists. Over the past year, lesbian activist and civil-rights lawyer Chai Feldbaum has argued, persuasively, that instead of hiding behind the slogan “gay people are just like everyone else,” homosexuals should acknowledge these differences. The best argument for same-sex marriage, she says, is that “gay sex is good.” Even Matt Foreman, the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, spoke in the human-rights idiom of gay liberation when he told Bay Windows in January, “There is still a question of our fundamental humanity and equality. Either we’re fully equal and fully human or we are not. There is no other way to frame it.”

Foreman’s radical recasting of gay politics, coming from a national gay-rights spokesperson, is welcome — even if it is more than three decades late. But if gay politics is going to survive and prosper as it faces increasingly intense pressure over the next few years, it will have to continue committing itself to just such a new vision of openness, self-respect, and fairness — for all.

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The Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements: //www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/newtonq.html