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Socialism without fucking is dull and lifeless.
-THE HEROINE, WR: THE MYSTERIES OF THE ORGANISM, A 1971 FILM DIRECTED BY DUSAN MAKAVEJEV.
THE HISTORY OF THE RELATIONSHIP between "the homosexual question," to use an old-fashioned phrase, and the left is yet to be written. And when it is, the story will be a difficult and complicated one to tell. One reason for that is that there are many different "lefts" and "homosexual questions" and the strands of these different threads are connected to one another and intertwined in very diverse ways. As a topic "the homosexual question" includes everything from sexual freedom to emancipation and civil rights. But even the terms for homosexuality - that is, same-sex desire and those who identify with it - and its political themes reflect the constantly shifting historical meanings of same-sex desire: the third sex, homophile, gay, gay and lesbian, queer, and most recently, glbtq. Every set of terms implies radically different assumptions about desire and sexual identity, as well as gender roles and identities; about the role of biology, culture and psychological development; and about the political significance of same-sex desire.
Then there are many ways that left and progressive positions in relation to homosexuality have evolved. One is the positions taken by organized socialist and left-wing groups (for example, the Socialist Workers Party, Democratic Socialists of America), another are those left political perspectives that emerged within homosexual communities (Gay Left magazine, Gay Community News). But there are also other left perspectives that have impinged on homosexual issues, such as that of the libertarian and anarchist left (Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman) or the Freudian Left (Wilhelm Reich, Herbert Marcuse). But this list comes nowhere near to exhausting the possibilities. I will sketch a crude map of some of these overlapping and often discontinuous historical currents.
The Socialist Traditions
THE FIGHT FOR ACCEPTANCE of homosexuality and political recognition of homosexuals' right to sexual freedom has a long lineage on the left and can be traced back to political movements and activists on the left in Germany, Great Britain and the United States.
The trial of Oscar Wilde for sodomy sparked many homosexuals and progressives to undertake intellectual and political defenses of homosexuality. In the years following Oscar Wilde's trial,...