The Queer/Gay Assimilationist Split: The Suits vs. the Sluts

Monthly Review, May, 2001 by Benjamin H. Shepard

Debate over the D'Amato endorsement and the Millennium March dominated the November National Gay and Lesbian Task Force meetings held in November 1998 in Pittsburgh. The Ad Hoc Committee for an Open Process held a number of open meetings during the conference. "You've betrayed women, people of color and poor people by endorsing D'Amato," Robert Haaland of the San Francisco Tenants' Union told Human Rights Campaign representatives during one session. Suzanne Pharr argued that a progressive movement has to address multiple concerns. She said, "To have single-issue politics means that we think that we're only queer, and we're not. We want to live fully in this society. Liberation is not about liberation of just a piece of oneself....Do you want to create a better world or do you want to create a better world for queers?" [12]

The HRC maintains the D'Amato endorsement and the Millennium March were part of a pragmatic strategy designed to see their agenda enacted into law. Yet the group has very few results to show for this strategy. The End Discrimination Act did not make it through the Senate, while the homophobic Defense of Marriage Act was signed into law by their hero Clinton. Hate Crimes laws, high on the HRC agenda, are problematic because they emphasize a law and order mentality over social justice and equal protection under the law. The HRC never came close to securing anything resembling justice for people who are gay and in the armed forces, while accepting the premise of an imperial military. Despite heavy lobbying, the group failed to beat back the pernicious Knight ballot initiative in California. As a result, activists are left wondering what the HRC has done with their millions and millions of dollars?

So the Split Continues

Today, queer/AIDS activists are taking the lessons of their early years and applying them to the inequalities of access to AIDS drugs across the world. Years after its supposed demise, ACT UP pickets hounded presidential candidate Vice President Al Gore over his vile campaign (prompted by the drug companies that poured cash into his coffers) against poor countries that manufacture generic versions of expensive life-saving drugs or import medicine at the best world price. Clinton and Gore backed off. AIDS activists played key roles in protests against the World Trade Organization and World Bank, both of which had become clear obstacles to get ting drugs into bodies of people with AIDS all over the world. At the same time the "I've got mine" assimilationists write their columns in the glossies eager for a gay right-wing voice. Yet until sodomy laws are repealed, no gay person, no matter how assimilated they feel, will be completely free from the threat of prosecution. Just two years ago, a gay couple in Texas were arrested for having sex at home. [13]

Leslie Cagan concluded,

I think that we, the queer activists, one of our particular roles, is to constantly be reminding the progressive social change movements that the issues of sexuality are not secondary. They do not wait until after the revolution. They have to be an integrated part of our political thinking and action. So it's not a question now of saying, we're done with the gay issues, and we're going to talk about class and race, it's about the much more full understanding of how these things all shape each other. Do we really want to be part of the mainstream? What we've hoped and what we've tried to contribute to this Millennium March is to have all these activists around the country look back at these issues and refocus on some of these kinds of issues in our movement and not just sort of go along to get along.