Brody's Scribbles... Gay Liberation Front: Manifesto. Have We Made Progress Since 1971? (Part 13)

By Tim Trent (Dartmouth, England) MAR 17 | One could argue about my article in part 12 on the Gay Liberation Front 1971 Manifesto that I was being churlish because it was a manifesto designed for the early 1970s. I've had it suggested to me that it had to be radical because, well, it had to be. I argue that it had to be practical. It's not up to me to make an overall judgment. I'm making a commentary. You're the judge, and that's what the comments are for.

Today we're going start to try to look at why they were so sure it would succeed. And we can judge ourselves as society, because we, all of us, folk of all religions or none, folk of all orientations or those who are asexual, folk of all races, of all nations, have had the responsibility, still have the responsibility for delivering simple Human Rights to all sections of our global community.

As usual, I'm quoting verbatim:

WE CAN DO IT

Yet although this struggle will be hard, and our victories not easily won, we are not in fact being idealistic to aim at abolishing the family and the cultural distinctions between men and women. True, these have been with us throughout history, yet humanity is at last in a position where we can progress beyond this.

Only reactionaries and conservatives believe in the idea of 'natural man'. Just what is so different in human beings from the rest of the animal kingdom is their 'unnaturalness'. Civilisation is in fact our evolution away from the limitations of the natural environment and towards its ever more complex control. It is not 'natural' to travel in planes. It is not 'natural' to take medicines and perform operations. Clothing and shoes do not grow on trees. Animals do not cook their food. This evolution is made possible by the development of technology-i.e. all those tools and skills which help us to control the natural environment.

We have now reached a stage at which the human body itself, and even the reproduction of the species, is being 'unnaturally' interfered with (i.e. improved) by technology. Reproduction used to be left completely to the uncontrolled biological processes inherited from our animal ancestors, but modern science, by drastically lowering infant mortality, has made it unnecessary for women to have more than two or three babies, while contraceptives have made possible the conscious control of pregnancy and the freeing of sexuality from reproduction. Today, further advances are on the point of making it possible for women to be completely liberated from their biology by means of the development of artificial wombs. Women need no longer by burdened with the production of children at their main task in life. and need be still less in the future

The present gender-role system of 'masculine' and 'feminine' is based on the way that reproduction was originally organised. Men's freedom from the prolonged physical burden of bearing children gave them a privileged position which was then reinforced by an ideology of male superiority. But technology has now advanced to a stage at which the gender-role system is no longer necessary.

However, social evolution does not automatically take place with the steady advance of technology, The gender-role system and the family unit built around it will not disappear just because they have ceased to be necessary. The sexist culture gives straight men privileges which, like those of any privileged class, will not be surrendered without a struggle, so that all of us who are oppressed by this culture (women and gay people), must band together to fight it. The end of the sexist culture and of the family will benefit all women, and gay people. We must work together with women, since their oppression is our oppression, and by working together we can advance the day of our common liberation.

I discounted the radical aspects in part 12. Apart from this passing mention, just so that you know I've noticed them and I think they spoil the manifesto and make it unimplementable, I'm going to confine myself to the other objectives and see how far we've come. That means I lose the first paragraph completely. The second adds very little substance ether, so that is also discarded. Unfortunately paragraphs four and five go the same way.

The third has more meat to it. Reproduction assistance moved beyond areas even considered by the GLF in 1971, with the birth of Louise Brown in 1978 after the first successful in vitro fertilisation, performed by Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards. Heavy duty ethical committees ruled lesbians out as potential beneficiaries. Surrogacy has been the way to help gay male couples. The road has been paved with difficulties.

While Yonatan Gher, director of Jerusalem Open House and his partner have a gorgeous baby son through the process, it has not always been straightforward to bring one's child home. And India is also moving to stop gay couples from using the process while leaving it open to heterosexual couples.

In some ways this on again off again stuff is a distraction. What it shows is that major progress has been made. It also makes headlines. LGBT folk in civilised parts of the world may adopt and may foster children, but that makes, pleasingly, no headlines nowadays.

We still have the family. It works rather well for LGBT parents, too. Ah, sorry. I said I wasn't going there.