Why I'm skipping Stonewall 50
The 1969 Stonewall Riots changed my life. As I stood along New York's Sixth Avenue for the first Christopher Street Liberation Day march a year later watching the several thousand gay people go by, I knew my life would never be the same. I had enjoyed homosexual experiences since age nine. Yet, during twelfth-grade social-studies class, I asked a classmate, "What is a homosexual?" Despite years of sex play with other boys (and a few girls), I was beginning to suspect that I might be different. Same-sex exploration came naturally. Identity had nothing to do with it. Homosexual behavior - even though we didn't have a word for it - was just part of being a boy in rural Minnesota in the 1950s. [...]
By the twenty-fifth anniversary of Stonewall in 1994, I regarded the gay movement as already mostly dead, although the commemorations did include some radical venues, such as the large "Spirit of Stonewall" alternate march. By then the gay movement had been taken over by marketing and corporate interests. Repeal of sodomy laws - the movement's most important demand - had long been put on a back burner because it focused - uncomfortably for some - on sex acts instead of identity and liberal "rights" and because it challenged religious superstition and the oppressive Judeo-Christian tradition that underpinned the laws. Instead, the "LGBT movement" was pushing for marriage, hate-crimes laws, and the right of gays to serve openly in the imperialist military. The Supreme Court's 2003 ruling throwing out sodomy laws was the most important victory for the gay and lesbian movement. Since then, the other demands have also been won, none of which advance the cause of sexual liberation. The former liberation movement is now mired in genderism and assimilationism.
By 1994, the hateful, antigay word "queer" was increasingly being used to describe same-sex love. Things have only gotten worse since then, with "queer" widely used, even by the straight media, despite its being a vile, self-hating term that threatens violence. The struggle for sexual liberation has been diluted by a focus on dozens of fanciful and questionable genders and has resulted in a virtual erasure of gay males and lesbians. Sex is not even part of the alphabet-soup vocabulary. Highlighting victimhood is in. Instead of fighting social injustice, the LGBT goal is to assimilate into a heterodominant capitalist system, aping its failed institution of marriage, promoting monogamy (a bit player in the mammalian heritage), and espousing patriotism, militarism, and conventionality. Gay Inc. has swallowed up the original "liberation day" marches and turned them into billboards for the profit motive. Even the main U.S. spy agency, the NSA, commemorates "pride" by lighting up its headquarters in the rainbow flag colors. The LGBT movement has jettisoned the goal of liberating the repressed sexuality of everyone, including heterosexuals, in favor of seeking mere "equality." Equality is a low common denominator that does not challenge heterosupremacy. It is the goal of a movement that has been tamed and lost its spirit of radical struggle. [...]
As a former president of Gay Activists Alliance, I would nevertheless have headed for New York if a GAA reunion were planned, as one was twenty-five years ago. But this time, the will and energy to organize one are lacking, so I'm staying home and will hoe my garden instead.
source: Article 'Why I'm Skipping Stonewall 50' by David Thorstad; www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/21/why-im-skipping-stonewall-50/; CounterPunch.org; 21 June 2019