"Queer emancipation involves much more than equal rights."

[financeguy]

This dramatic shift in the homosexual zeitgeist started in the 1990s and coincided with a move into the political mainstream. Greater acceptance by the straight establishment precipitated greater compromise by the gay elite. They moved away from defining our needs on our terms, and instead began falling in meekly with the prevailing heterosexual consensus.

We have now reached a situation where the dominant gay agenda is equal rights and law reform, rather than queer emancipation and the transformation of society. That political retreat represents a massive loss of imagination, confidence, and vision.

There is, unfortunately, plenty of evidence of the desire of many lesbian and gay people to mindlessly appropriate every legal right that heterosexuals have, no matter how crass and morally dubious.

All over the world a majority of gay pressure groups demand the right of homosexuals to serve in the armed forces, but never question the authoritarian nature of the military nor its bloody history of human rights abuses. While homophobic discrimination within the armed services is undoubtedly wrong and worthy of challenge, so too is militarism and imperialism. In the US, the gay rights group, the Campaign for Military Service, preaches a gung-ho, God-fearing patriotism, which exonerates American excesses in Vietnam, Panama, Grenada, Iraq and Kosovo

.

On the age of consent, much of the gay community has similarly taken leave of its ethical senses. After a campaign lasting 33 years, the age of consent in England and Wales was finally equalised at 16 in 2000. Great! But what about young lesbians, gays, bisexuals and straights under 16? Don't they have sexual human rights too? Equality has not helped them. Sure, this victimisation by the law applies equally to everyone who is under age, irrespective of sexual orientation. But is that what we want? Equal injustice?

Most teenagers now have their first sexual experience at 14. The law treats them as criminals. Two consenting 14 year olds in Britain can face a maximum sentence ranging from 10 years to life imprisonment! To end this absurd, grotesque criminalisation of the under-16s, the age of consent should be reduced to 14 for everyone - gay and straight - and consensual sex involving people under 14 should not be prosecuted providing there is no more than three years difference in the partners ages.

Gay equality within the status quo is a flawed version of freedom. It betrays both queers and straights alike. Society - not us - needs to change. This social transformation is the key to meaningful queer liberation. Equality, yes. But on the basis of a new and different kind of society where there are wider, more expansive human rights for people of all sexualities.

Peter Tatchell: Equality Is Not Enough

 

[yolland]

The freedom to take a place at the table is also a freedom. Not every campaign to redress an injustice need be anchored in a holistic grand design for revolutionizing the entire society. And socetial attitudes towards gender and sexuality HAVE changed tremendously across the board over the last several decades, and will continue to change.

Also, the collective self-regard of the Baby Boomers never ceases to amaze me. Or maybe I'm just in a cranky mood tonight.

 

[Irvine511]

who is this person and why do i care what he says and who does he think he speaks for?

 

[nathan1977]

Someone needs to, like, calm the freak down.

 

[financeguy]

who is this person and why do i care what he says and who does he think he speaks for?

 

[financeguy]

?