Brody's Scribbles... Gay Liberation Front: Manifesto. Have We Made Progress Since 1971? (Part 2)

By Tim Trent (Dartmouth, England) MAR 4 | Yesterday I looked at the introduction to the 1971 Manifesto. I suppose this must be the gay agenda so beloved of US crypto fascist christianists. Today I'm looking at the first part of the second section, entitled HOW We Are Oppressed. As will become a common theme I am reproducing it verbatim.

FAMILY

The oppression of gay people starts in the most basic unit of society, the family. consisting of the man in charge, a slave as his wife, and their children on whom they force themselves as the ideal models. The very form of the family works against homosexuality.

At some point nearly all gay people have found it difficult to cope with having the restricting images of man or woman pushed on them by their parents. It may have been from very early on, when the pressures to play with the 'right' toys, and thus prove boyishness or girlishness, drove against the child's inclinations. But for all of us this is certainly a problem by the time of adolescence, when we are expected to prove ourselves socially to our parents as members of the right sex (to bring home a boy/girl friend) and to start being a 'real' (oppressive) young man or a 'real' (oppressed) young woman. The tensions can be very destructive.

The fact that gay people notice they are different from other men and women in the family situation, causes them to feel ashamed, guilty and failures. How many of us have really dared by honest with our parents? How many of us have been thrown out of home? How many of us have been pressured into marriage, sent to psychiatrists, frightened into sexual inertia, ostracised, banned, emotionally destroyed - all by our parents?

People have looked at the first paragraph and thrown up their hands in horror at the basic definition, the 'slave' part. They forget that a woman used to be property, to be sold with a dowry to a man. They forget that her property used to become her husband's. They forget that she used to require his permission to do anything significant, and that he was, generally, entitled to beat her, as long as he didn't leave obvious marks. They fail to note the significance in the marriage ceremony of the bride being given away to the groom.

So, because that is beyond their comprehension, they throw the remainder out as well.

Yet the family does force its views, wittingly or unwittingly, upon its offspring. It is a given that, in a heterosexual marriage, heterosexual ideals will be taught as the norm within the family. Children are astute people. They understand that being different matters. And yet they also seem images in the media of people, good people, who are different. Back in 1971 the media had troubled souls in it, such as Liberace, a man who felt the needs to deny his homosexuality all his life, and who even won a law suit against media declaring him to be gay.

TV personalities such as Wilfred Bramble and Peter Wyngarde were arrested for cottaging, and parents made comments to show how much they disapproved. The media was 'quietly' full of salacious tittle tattle. In this environment, how could a child not grow up in fear of being different.

As we move to the third paragraph we get into the area where the family, the important bastion of raising children, turns into a vicious hotbed of hatred, unless the parents are truly enlightened. My own parents would have sent me to be cured by experimental psychiatry, and done it out of love for me. Parents do that today, as well. The USA is a hotbed of anti homosexual fundamentalist fervour, but they are not alone. Even such liberated nations as Israel, where LGBT men and women may serve openly in their armed forces have pockets of pseudo-science.

We have progressed to a great extent, though. Parents I meet understand homosexuality more and more. They understand how limiting it is for a child to feel unloved. They know that children, even children whose homosexuality they support with love and comfort, can still be driven to kill themselves. This lad, Brandon Bitner, may or may not have been gay, but he had love from his family, love in spades. There was enough social stigma against homosexuality where he lived that he still chose to walk six miles to throw himself under a truck:

Fourteen year old Brandon Bitner left his Mount Pleasant Mills, Pa. home during the early morning hours on Friday, November 5, 2010. Brandon walked alone, in the cold darkness, over 6 miles to a busy intersection on US Routes 11 & 15 near Liverpool, Pa. When he arrived at his destination, Brandon stepped out in front of a Weis Markets tractor trailer truck and committed suicide.

His death, and those of others, those deaths have created a stirring in the USA against bigotry and hatred. Yet family love alone is not enough. And that love can so often turn sour. The temporary demise of XY Magazine led to serious fears of teenagers being outed to their families and thrown out of their once loving homes.

Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth make up an estimated 3% to 5% of the general U.S. population. Yet they make up more than 20%—and possibly up to 40%—of the homeless youth population.

I'm starting to wonder how far we've come since 1971. In the next article I'll be looking at School.