My longtime friend recently complained recently, "Anti-gay gays. I'm so sick of them." Both he and I, and of course many others, are aware that sometimes it is our own people who are our worst enemies, are those very ones who are damaging and destroying our lives in multiple ways.
And right now in the United States we are in the midst of a counterrevolution orchestrated by many anti-gay gays and carried out naively by many anti-gay gays who have been molded into being footservants of this counterrevolution.
In the background, in the halls of power, there have been the Allan Blooms, the Roy Cohns, the many Straussian cult closet cases, and now we have had also Larry Craig, Peter Thiel, and new products of counterrevolutionary conspiracy such as "Gays Against Groomers".
Of course, there are also the arguably millions of closet cases who choose to tell lies, deliver anti-gay abuse, and hide in fear while letting the rest of us take all of the sexual assault levelled at us constantly. This self-serving social cadre obviously has a significant impact on society, perpetuating its lies and attendant abuses.
What should we do when our own are the ones damaging and destroying our lives?
When I think of this question, and I have thought of it for some time now out of necessity, I think of the revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre during Year II (1793-1794) of the French Revolution. Robespierre, evidently homosexual himself despite bizarre yet typical heterosexist interpretations of he man, became ill around February of 1794, during what would be the final winter of his life, and during a time when the French Revolution was at full speed, with the left in full power.
When Robespierre returned to health and to active participation in the revolutionary government, he came to realize that his former personal friends and close fellow compatriots were working against the Revolution and would bring it down if they were not stopped. Robespierre was greatly consternated over this matter, and reluctant to accuse his former friends, including his high school friend Camille Desmoulins. Robespierre delayed and dithered until the danger seemed too great and the evidence too convincing to ignore the problem.
Beginning in March 1794, the accusation of many of Robespierre's former friends and allies began, with Saint-Just, also very evidently gay, expressing in his work Fragments of Republican Institutions the pain and regret and despair of the situation.
This look at Robespierre and his dilemma is relevant to today because the unity of the LGBT community, like the unity of the French Revolutionaries, has been broken. The question around this break is largely a question of whether or not the gay community is revolutionary or counterrevolutionary, though it is not often framed in these terms, since the sabotage of an accurate narrative of what is happening in our LGBT/Queer community has been perpetrated by the counterrevolutionaries themselves and has obfuscated a revolutionary discourse.
For a long time I, as a revolutionary queer, held the position that unity was above all, and that we could not afford to go after our own, work against them, or see them as enemies. I pondered this situation with disappointment and much angst, with uncertainty, and with true pain in my heart. I discussed the situation with many. In some of these discussions my boyfriend at the time would consistently tell me that we were going to have to go after the anti-gay gays; that otherwise, they could and would destroy us by lying and maligning our identities, freedoms, social position, and life possibilities.
Like Robespierre, I anguished over this dilemma, but finally changed my thinking about it, realizing that self-loathing gays were extremely dangerous to queer freedom and well-being, and that yes, we would have to go after them, stop them, and punish them, or we would stand to lose everything, as we indeed now do.
Much of what it means to be out and queer is due to the democratization of queer life, to the gay liberation movement, which had as a both a premise and goal that homosexuality and bisexuality and the then as yet unnamed as such trans identity were equalizing and unifying. The fight for queer liberation was fought with an idea of equality in the ranks but also with an idea of the outcome being one of democratic freedom for LGBTQ persons.
Some of the anti-gay gays are against this democratic form of queerness, working against queer liberation because they do not believe in equality.
Some are against the movement because of self-loathing- because of the tendency for queers to turn outward hostility against us into inward hostility - hostility to ourselves and all of the perverse lies and interpretations such self-loathing must manufacture.
It should not be surprising that such an element should exist, since the entirety of the Judaic religions, for example, as well as other religions such as Sikhism, are founded in psychological problems having to do with sex and sexuality. The cornerstone of the Judaic cults (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) is psychological mental illness having to do with sex and sexuality, which led these cults to problematize femaleness and promote a pinched, unwell, and pathological form of male power.
Yet some anti-gay gays desire such power; some are overtly misogynistic. And of course, many fall under the penumbra of Judaic religion, as adherents to a greater or lesser degree, despite the incompatibility of Judaic religion with queerness. These types then have mixed loyalties, such as for example loyalty to Catholicism, which cause them to act against themselves and against their community.
We all know denial - pretending to oneself that one is not what one actually is. Some anti-gay gays can never accept reality. This non-acceptance can have different reasons. Sometimes it is the unwillingness to accept the massive loss of social power that coming out brings along with it. Sometimes it is the great fear of of abuse, denigration, and ill regard that coming out brings along with it. Usually these two occur together, with the denial being rewarded with a lack of sexual abuse and a retention of power in the establishment, anti-gay social structure.
But, a typology and psychological accounting of who these anti-gay gays are is not the main goal here, though it might be necessary and valuable.
My aim here is to present a basic question of strategy in the war against queers.
What do we do about anti-gay gays and the massive damage they do to us and out movement?
The practice of outing has been one element of a response to this question. To out or not to out?
Attempts to counter what are seen as elitist behaviors within the gay community and its organizations, for example the elitism of white male gays as over, for example, trans persons of color, are another type of response to this question.
Yet another response has been to attempt understanding of those mostly closeted anti-gay gays, and to continue to attempt to include them in the conversation.
Do we need a unified and clear strategy for dealing with anti-gay gays?
One could argue, after all, that their actions are no different than those of straight anti-gay persons.
However, the viciousness and depth of the actions of anti-gay gays can seem greater than that of straight persons who are against us, though a measure of such could be difficult.
We at least need a basic attitude towards anti-gay gays, even before we or as we make strategy.
My political experience has led me on a journey. It is a journey that brought me eventually to the question at the center of this post: the question of what position to take on anti-gay gays.
The position that I was brought to was the political position of Robespierre in the middle of Year II of the French Revolution (about March 1794), and that of one camp of the community, and that is the position of treating anti-gay gays like enemies and not like part of us.
I think that the word 'political' is important here.
At this stage of the movement, of history, of where queers are, I think that the queer community must act against anti-gay gays as a political expediency. I think that we cannot afford to do otherwise - that anti-gay gays are too destructive and too dangerous.
We can discuss who these anti-gay gays are, try to understand them, try to mitigate the social forces that create them, but we are in immediate and long-term political danger - ultimately of being annihilated in multiple ways.
This annihilation is and will be created and supported significantly by anti-gay gays, and they are leading the way to redefining queers out of existence.
As a basic political position for building strategy, we must consider them our enemies.
A gay man, an LGBT person, is not and cannot be a person who stands against themself on the basis of fear and lies while trying to destroy others of us. Gay means something more than just the orientation as perhaps expressed privately. 'Gay' has a primary political dimension, and we have defined ourselves democratically and honestly within the political realm. We cannot ignore that dimension. Anti-gay gays, anti-queer queers, anti-trans queers, are a serious danger to our community, to our well-being, and to our survival.
