28/02/2021
Hope Ryan, writing in the weekly newspaper Socialist Worker, the journal of the left wing Socialist Workers’ Party, says that a new pamphlet is available from the group looking at LGBTQ Liberation from their Marxist perspective. The SWP has had a gay rights policy since 1971 and was one of the first leftist groups to face its own homophobia. However, it has been criticized by some gay groups for its readiness to form alliances with organisations that do not support LGBTQ rights, such as previous tactical alliances with the highly controversial Nation of Islam group. Nevertheless, the hard left group can claim with some accuracy that it has supported LGBTQ rights with gusto. For years, Gay Times magazine was printed on the SWP operated printing press in East London, and the SWP booklet AIDS was a groundbreaker, urging resistance and fightback during the 1980’s pandemic. Now the new booklet “Pride, Politics and Protest—A Revolutionary Guide to LGBT+ Liberation” argues that gay and trans oppression is rooted under the capitalist system. Hope writes that it was during the rise of capitalist modes of production in the eighteenth century that the supreme veneration of heterosexuality and forced reproduction came about : “The family unit as we know it emerged to both produce the next generation and socialise it. And this became the mechanism where our se xuality was really controlled”. The new booklet is available from all good alternative bookstores, or from the Socialist Workers Party at swp.org.uk.