sorry, the first link was supposed to go there: http://store.yahoo.com/gayegypt/may2004.html (Gays Attacked at Palestine Rights Protest - Trafalgar Square - London – UK – 15 May 2004)
Posted by: maledei | Nov 23, 2005 8:25:53 AM
the good old SWP: http://www.gayegypt.com/may2004.html. Btw., is it true that female swp, or "respect" members were called upon to wear headscarfs at an anti-war rally, so that they don't offend the muslim participants? Maybe it's just a rumour, but it sounds possible. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/apr2005/resp-a20.shtml
Posted by: maledei | Nov 23, 2005 8:22:15 AM
It is sad to see "Lenin", in his comment below, make such a tendentious defense of the indefensible. "Lenin" says he supported the resolution that condemned his party's leadership -- yet I have not read a single word on "Lenin's" blog criticizing that leadership for its dedision to stifle any commitment to gay rights in the platform -- instead, he defends it, calling it an "aberration." No, it was not an aberration. It was of a piece with the Respect party's opportunism and the manipulation of honest anti-war Respect supporters by the SWP leadership that pulls the party's strings. "Lenin" is, as anyone who has visited his blog knows, for he proclaims it there (but not here) also a member of the SWP, which no doubt explains his reluctance to criticize the way it runs Respect. George Galloway's slavish bootlicking of the liikes of Hussein and Bashir Al Asad (whom "Lenin" conveniently forgets to mention) have have been so well documented so many times by others I have no need to regurgitate that documentation here. Anyone interested can Google it quite easily. If, as "Lenin" claims, the U.K. Gay News report of Lindsey German's words denouncing the rebel resolution is an invention, and she was in fact a supporter of the resolution, why -- since she is a leader of both the SWP as well as of Respect -- was her support of it not mentioned in the SWP's newspaper's article on the conference? Indeed, why did that paper not mention the resolution at all? I have never caught Peter Tatchell doing what "Lenin" calls "Muslim-baiting." He has, however, been quite vigorous in calling attention to persecutions of gay Muslims in Islamic countries. Peter is notorious for being an equal-opportunity critic of homophobia where ever and when ever it raises its head, regardless of religion, party, or faction. Indeed, the photo of him above shows him leading a demonstration against the Church of England homophobes who attacked defenders of gay rights and of the ordination of a gay Episcopal Bishop in the U.S. Tatchell also led protests against against the bigotry of the U.K.'s ex-Chief Rabbi, Lord Jacobovits, who believes that homosexuality is a sin comparable with murder, and wants gay sex made totally illegal and gay men jailed. It's worth remembering that Tatchell and other gay protesters (some of them from Muslim countries) were both verbally and physically set upon not long ago by membrs of the SWP and others when they brought signs to a Palestiniian Solidarity demonstration in favor of Palestinian rights (which Tatchell, by the way, supports) -- the gays' signs called for an end to the persecution of gay people in the territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority. The Trot position is that raising that issue is a "distraction" from the Palestinian cause. But what better place to raise the issue than at a demonstratin for justice for Palestinians -- don't Palestinian gays deserve justice, freedom from persecution, freedom from Palestinian police abuse because of whom and how they love, freedom from so-called "honor killings" by their own homophobic families that go unpunished by the Palestinian police? For the SWPers and their allies to have manhandled the pro-gay demonstrators calling for justice and equality for Palestinian gays is the antithesis of democratic debate. As a libertarian socialist myself, I believe -- and History has taught us -- that there can be no true socialism without democracy, tolerance, and, yes, respect for the right of others to express their views, even when one finds those views noxious. The SWP has yet to learn this lesson. But the SWP still believes in the Leninist dogma of the "vanguard party" -- a dogma that is itself reactionary, because the "vanguard party" is an elitist, anti-democratic concept that presumes a self-appointed chosen few know more than anyone else and have a right to direct the destinies of others, including tactics that involve not revealing one's own true colors in order the better to manipulate those not admitted into the Bronsteinian chapel. The way it runs Respect is a case in point. But that way of thinking is a dead end - for there is not a single instance in human history of any regime broght to power by a "vanguard party" becoming anything other than a despotism. Not one. "Lenin's" e-mail makes me want to holler, "Kronstadt!" I might not agree with every bit of Tatchell's personal politics or every formulation of his, but that's hardly the issue here. "Lenin's" ad hominem attack and some of his other fulminations are debaters' tricks designed to distract attention from the real issue -- the shameful suppression by the Respect/SWP leadership of any specific support of gay equality in the Respect platform. "Lenin's" description of Respect's relationship with MAB is disingenuous -- the party and the MAB worked hand in glove to elect Galloway, and the MAB is a key part of Respect's municipal strategy for next year's local elections. The MAB actively propogates the notion that homosexuality is "unnatural" -- MAB's spokesman, Sohaib Saaeed, made a vigorous assertion of that view in an article last fall in The Guardian, which one may read bvy clicking on http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1257426,00.html The MAB spokesman's article contains this mendacious and tortured sentence about homosexuality: "The question of punishment simply does not arise outside the context of a state ruling by Islamic law, and there is scholarly disagreement over the nature of appropriate punishment." Oh, really? Well, the MAB is an enthusiastic supporter of the Islamic Republic of Iran and hailed the election of its new President Ahmadinejad, who is currently conducting a lethal pogrom against Iranian gays and hauling them off to be hanged on the gallows in public squares all over Iran -- being sure to torture them unspeakably before hand, of course. Any party that would work with supporters of such inhuman bigotry is contemptible -- especially when, so as not to irritate the Islamic fundamentalist homophobes of the MAB and to pander to homophobic adepts of the Muslim religion, it silences support for gay rights. I'm an atheist myself, and oppose all religions with equal fervor -- religion has been the cause of more suffering and death than any other single factor in human history. However, Muslim Sharia law goes the homophobic Catholic Church and the fag-hating Protestant fundie sects one better -- it calls for death for homosexuals. Of course, Sharia is generous -- it allows gay people to choose the manner of their death. One can prefer to be hanged, beheaded, crushed or stoned, or dropped off the highest available building. Perhaps it is this oh-so-humanist offer to gays of a choice in how they are to be killed that leads "Lenin" to suggest that Islam is, as he puts it, "no more homophobic" than the other religions. Has Respect, or Galloway, or the SWP, condemned Iran's anti-gay pogrom? No, of course not. Sadly, there's plenty of homophobia to go around -- in the U.K., in all of its religions and political parties, including the SWP and Respect. But those who seek to excuse alliances with homophobes, and rationalize or temporize about putting a commitment to gay rights into the closet at election time, need to reflect on an old slogan from the '60s that I find still useful: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.
Posted by: Doug Ireland | Nov 23, 2005 7:48:52 AM