Brody's Scribbles... Gay Liberation Front: Manifesto. Have We Made Progress Since 1971? (Part 1)

By Tim Trent (Dartmouth, England) MAR 3 | In 1972 I was twenty. I was a student at The University of Birmingham. And, at the very end of the Easter Vacation, overlapping the start of term, the Gay Liberation Front held its annual conference in the Guild Of Undergraduates Union. I'd gone back early to help with some of the logistics. Not as a gay man, I was far too frightened and closeted for that, but because I was part of the mighty Guild clique, Stage Staff, who ran all the technical side of events. I was needed there in my clique capacity.

I wrote about that event on my website, which is how my attention was drawn to the Gay Liberation Front Manifesto. My analytics suite tracks search terms, and a reader arrived searching for gay liberation front 1972 agenda. And, trying the search myself, I found Gay Liberation Front: Manifesto. I read the document with interest. And I planned a small series of articles on how far we've come since 1971 when it was first published, and how far we have to go.

I'm quoting verbatim from the manifesto. The Fordham site where it is published says of copyright:

Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright. Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No permission is granted for commercial use.

I think that's fair. I tried emailing Paul Halsall for explicit permission, but the email bounced back. So, to cover the legal aspects, if you are the copyright owner and you object to the verbatim quotes, please contact me and we'll discuss where to go from here.

The first element I want to look at is the introduction.

Throughout recorded history, oppressed groups have organised to claim their rights and obtain their needs. Homosexuals, who have been oppressed by physical violence and by ideological and psychological attacks at every level of social interaction, are at last becoming angry.

To you, our gay sisters and brothers, we say that you are oppressed; we intend to show you examples of the hatred and fear with which straight society relegates us to the position and treatment of sub-humans, and to explain their basis. We will show you how we can use our righteous anger to uproot the present oppressive system with its decaying and constricting ideology, and how we, together with other oppressed groups, can start to form a new order, and a liberated lifestyle, from the alternatives which we offer.

The anger expressed in the opening paragraph is still there. In civilised nations we expect basic Human Rights. In the European Community we have human rights legislation enshrined in national laws that means that we may not discriminate against others. In the UK the High Court has just disqualified a militant Christian couple from fostering children because they refused to be anything other than biased against homosexuals and homosexuality.

Rulings like that are to be expected in the civilised world.

The USA, the bastion of freedom, the land where the truths of all men being born equal are held to be self evident, does not form part of that civilised world.

We have come a long way since 1971. But we seem to run up against religion and fanatics whenever we ask for our rights in the USA. I'm doing my best to ignore Iran, Saudi Arabia, Uganda and other places where Human Rights are held cheap and people are killed for being as they were created.