Socialism and Homosex

[IndianaGreen]

Socialism and Homosex

By: DOUG IRELAND
07/24/2008

(I)n a series of interviews with YPSL and Socialist Party activists from the 1950s, Phelps discovered that the Party came very close to adopting a homosexual emancipation plank in its platform at its 1952 convention. The chairman of YPSL at that time was Vern Davidson, a UCLA senior who had had several same-sex affairs, including with other Party members, and who, he told Phelps, "was instructed by the YPSL to attempt to put a homosexual rights plank before the platform committee."

Norman Thomas, often called "the grand old man of American socialism," who had been the Socialist Party's candidate for president six times and who was widely admired as a man of principle in progressive circles way beyond the Socialist Party, was sympathetic when Davidson raised the idea of a homosexual emancipation plank at the platform committee. As Davidson recalls, "He said, 'Well, Vern, if the YPSL thinks that's something that we should consider, I certainly think we should consider it, and I have nothing against it, but I wish you could draw up something and come back with it.'"

Davidson told Phelps he tried and tried to draft an appropriate platform plank but "I just couldn't write anything that seemed to fit into the platform. So I let it slide by. I had no guidance. We didn't talk about 'discrimination based on sexual orientation' in those days. That phrase would never have come to me. And everything was going fast, we were fighting over the (Korean) war and everything, and it didn't get done. And I take responsibility. But I believe to this day, had I been able to do my job, Thomas would have joined me, and we would have had it back then, in '52."

The fact that there was political discussion of what we now call gay rights and an effort within the Socialist Party organized enough to bring the question to the national decision-makers of the party in the same time frame that Harry Hay and his pro-Communist circle were giving birth to the Mattachine Society is a chapter of gay history that until now has never been written.

http://gaycitynews.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19870403&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=568864&rfi=6

Reflections on Socialism

Author: Sam Webb, National Chair

First published 06/03/2005 11:36 by the Communist Party, USA

The main site of the democratic struggle today – which is the main site of the class struggle as well – is the battle to defeat the reactionary sections of transnational capital gathered around the Bush administration. Every democratic right (the right to peace, the right to a living wage job, civil rights and affirmative action, the right to organize, reproductive rights, constitutional protections, gay and lesbian rights, social entitlements, etc.) and every democratic organization, beginning with the trade unions, are threatened by this administration and its supporters.

Thus the main task at this moment is to decisively curb the political power and influence of the extreme right and in doing so move to a more advanced stage of struggle.

At that stage, where the main obstacle to social progress is corporate power as a whole, new democratic tasks will emerge, such as radically cutting the military budget and conversion to a peace economy, full funding of the public sector, a shorter workweek, electoral and political reforms, curbs on capital movements, deep-going measures to end poverty and inequality, tax system overhaul, aid to small and medium-sized business, restraints on the coercive instruments and structures of the state, and a foreign policy that accents disarmament, peace, and neighborly relations.

And, finally, in the socialist stage, the struggle for democracy will continue to loom large and acquires an even deeper content.

In sum, there is no road to socialism that bypasses the democratic struggle. Anyone who attempts to do so will soon feel the chilling winds of political isolation.

Lenin once wrote,

“It would be a radical mistake to think that the struggle for democracy was capable of diverting the proletariat from the socialist revolution or of hiding, overshadowing it, etc. On the contrary, in the same way as there can be no victorious socialism that does not practice full democracy, so the proletariat cannot prepare for its victory over the bourgeoisie without an all-around consistent and revolutionary struggle for democracy.”

The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination