if, otoh, you would put me in that category, then I do think it's a case of talking past one another.
At 12:35 PM 8/7/2006, you wrote:
>At around 7/8/06 10:17 am, BklynMagus wrote:
> >
> > Whether or not such a social force exists, queers can never remain silent
> > when people are persecuted and oppressed for their sexual behaviors
> > (I would say all interested in progressive change, but as history has
> > shown sexual rights are disruptive for both the right and the left).
> >
>
>The last parenthetical statement is of particular interest to me.
>Recently, I was discussing with a civil rights activist, the recent
>bruhaha over a gay commentator's gripe against immigration reform
>(http://platosbeard.org/archives/71). In short, the complaint was that
>same-sex marriage should trump immigration as a left/liberal/Democrat
>issue. The person I was talking with, surprisingly, found this opinion
>unsurprising and offered his opinion that a significant segment of gay
>activism (and attitude) was "single-issue" driven.
>
>While watching Fahrenheit 911 the better half and I were unimpressed
>with (while entirely sympathetic to) the saga of the military mother
>Lisa Lipcomb [sp?] in the context of an activist with a moral position.
>Our opinion turned out to be quite different from that of others! While
>we considered her change of heart (or activism) a natural outcome of a
>contingent event (the loss of a son), and therefore not a moral stance,
>others found this personal reaction to be the very thing that placed her
>on high moral ground (I am not here addressing the entirely different
>point, which I agree with, that her personal loss lends her the gravitas
>and immunity to state what is true/right).
>
>To put it a bit brutally: its natural and understandable to be anti-war
>if you lose a loved one to it. It is natural to be pro-gay-rights if you
>are gay. And so on (and perhaps one has to be a non-human animal to ever
>feel empathy towards them). But such natural attitudes do not guarantee
>a progressive outlook. Rather, a progressive attitude a priori
>determines the consistency of such issue positions. (Zinn quoting Buffie
>Sainte Marie: I see visions not because I am an Indian, but because they
>are visions to be seen).
>
>But what of the Western Left? Either I do not understand their
>theorizing, or the left orthodoxy IMHO has been a bit clever on this
>front. Class (working class) analysis (struggle) has been cast not as a
>single-issue (identity) but as the mother of all issues. We are told (as
>I understand it): everything is and should be explained as [arising
>from] class issues. Morality, with its odour of religion, is an
>impediment to the "science" of this new Left, and seen by their view,
>rightly, as a patronizing hand-out.
>
>But without some such identity or issue based definition, what is a
>progressive attitude or cause or way of thought? I am of course implying
>in my words above that it is (a) not based on the identity of an
>individual or a group and (b) it is based on some universal notions of
>morality (that can be deductively ascertained without resort to
>biology). This I think can be defined in a non-circular fashion and can
>be loosely labelled by the term "humanism" (the Old Left).
>
>BklynMagnus writes, while calling on those interested in progressive
>change: "queers can never remain silent when people are persecuted and
>oppressed for their sexual behaviour". Indeed, queers being those very
>same people, would be cowards not to do so (though such cowardice would
>be understandable given the violence that they are met with). As someone
>interested in progressive change himself, I assume he would also write,
>outside this context, "queers can never remain silent when people are
>persecuted and oppressed" ... period. That would make (or keep) them
>progressives.
>
>Thoughts?
>
> --ravi
>
>--
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