When attacking Obama, the wingnuts seem to not know which way to turn. In one instance they cast Obama as the champion of socialism, in the next they compare him with Hitler --- without explanation about Hilter being extreme right-wing, not extreme left-wing. (Then there is Hilter's association with the fascist Mussolini, a partnership which was apparently without coherent economic ideology and all about unbridled conquest.)

This is why I tend to discount the recent alarms about racism toward Obama --- not that racism does not still exist in serious forms, it most clearly does. But the wingnuts are carting out every boogieman in their arsenal and sticking an Obama sign on it. The fact that our President is black (gasp!) is one of the dreaded boogiemen in this arsenal. And as you have so aptly spelled out, Patricia, the mindless label of "Socialism" is another.

Ahhh Socialism and homosexuality, the perfect after dinner apertif....but not quite.
Though the Chavez government has had an out Lesbian cabinet minister, the street gangs that keep Chavez in power are homophobic.
FDR was another 'socialist' with a Lesbian cabinet minister, the not so out Frances Perkins.

Now, Patricia, Anarchism, there we see Lesbian issues far better represented, as well as the leadership of that anti-marriage icon of the bisexual world, Emma Goldman in the US and the Lesbian Luisa Saronil in Spain. In France, I keep hoping that Segolene Royal will have some kind of Lesbian Damascus now that she is shed of Francois Hollande.

Speaking as someone who thinks that the demands for justice coming out of both socialist and queer movements (not to mention feminist and anti-racist movements) share potentially important affinities, I was disappointed by this post. Rather than trying to distance ourselves from socialism, queer movements should be working with others disadvantaged by existing economic and political arrangements to create a more just world for everyone. Achieving a more just world needs to entail rethinking and rearranging existing sexual and gender relations, but it also needs to entail a willingness to rethink the economic arrangements (capitalism) that systematically promote inequality and deprive people around the world of the means to meet their basic needs.

Of course, I agree that there is no necessary or inherent connection between gay marriage and socialism. The claims to contrary, coming from the right, are, in one sense, patently absurd as the author argues. Marriage aside, however, there is a long history of jointly articulated queer and socialist projects. The author acknowledges as much when describing the “initial” phase of socialist agitation (and Maura Hennessey’s comment usefully points to Emma Goldman, identified there as an anarchist, but also, just as usefully, as a libertarian socialist).

I also have no desire to dispute the contention that gay marriage (or even basic respect for LGBT people) has not been achieved in many regimes labeled as socialist. Without going into what might qualify a regime as socialist, it is, of course, true that LGBT people and their relationships are not respected in many of the countries on the author’s list (and worse things than a lack of respect transpire as well—although that is equally true of capitalist countries). However, the author’s argument about Hugo Chavez in Venezuela is wrong. Chavez has repeatedly supported measures aimed at protecting sexual minorities, and has taken steps to include gender identity as a protected status--something the democrats in the congress and white house, who are certainly no socialists (with the notable exception of Barney Frank), have had trouble with here in the U.S.

Given the use of the word socialism to delegitimize dissent and appeals toward justice in the U.S., I can understand why the author might want to distance arguments for GLBT rights from arguments for socialism. However, I would argue that responding in this way simply reinforces the logic that supporting a more just way of organizing economic production (aka socialism) is a bad thing, and one that has nothing to do with other appeals to justice on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, etc. In fact, all of these injustices (racism, sexism, homophobia, class exploitation) are interconnected in our day to day lives, and to address any of them fully requires addressing them all.

In short, I agree with the author that Rep. King’s assertion that gay marriage and socialism go hand in hand is ridiculous. However, equally problematic is the idea that we should separate a queer politics from a critique of capitalism. If a more just world is what we’re after, we need to pursue it on all fronts—in our families and our relationships, certainly, but also in the broader political and economic structures that privilege some, disadvantage many, and leave others to die of hunger, preventable disease, and war.

Patricia, I don’t disagree with your thinking that Republicans are nutcases, although the same can be said for Democrat reformists who believe in the lesser evil idiocy. What I do disagree with is when you equate socialists and Stalinists. That’s a big mistake. You can’t automatically assume that people are what they claim to be. The Stalinists weren’t socialists any more than the Democrats are for democracy. Stalinism was the political expression of the shifting needs of the Soviet bureaucracy. Maoism plays the same role in the PRC. Neither are socialists or communists. In both cases the needs of those bureaucracies were at variance with the political needs of trade unions, women, GLBT folks, national minorities and revolutionists. As often as not the Soviet and Maoist bureaucracies have been open enemies of the workers movement and have a long list of terrible betrayals.

It’s not for nothing that Trotsky referred to Stalinism as “the syphilis of the workers’ movement”.

The earliest communists were influenced by the backwardness of the 19th century. Karl Marx and many others appear to have been personally gay friendly, and Engels appears to have been a bigot. They had no gay or lesbian movements or even widespread consciousness to deal with so it’s impossible to judge what they might have thought.

WW1 produced both the Russian Revolution, which decisively abolished anti-gay laws in the new USSR and an organized gay movement centered in Germany. Both Communists and Social Democrats participated in some of Magnus Hirschfeld’s conferences on gay rights, abortion reform and birth control. That relation began to ebb as the Stalinist bureaucrats defeated the Bolsheviks, who’d suffered enormous casualties defending the Revolution and ended entirely in January 1933.

The Stalinists reinstituted anti-gay laws in 1933 with article 121 of the Soviet Constiontuion that provided up to five years of hard labor in the gulag, or death, whichever came first. At the same time the Stalinists began to forbid abortions to increase the USSRs population. Anti-gay laws were used to clamp down on the Bolshevik remnants in the CP-USSR, not because they were gay (we have no idea how many were) but because it gave the NKVD an additional excuse to arrest and murder them. Stalinist propaganda began to identify being gay with fascism and the Bolshevik left opposition with both. Those themes were repeated pro-Moscow parties like the CP-USA and not discarded until recently.

At this point the only serious people fighting for GLBT rights, most of whom are socialists, are simultaneously fighting the main enemies of GLBT equality, the Democrats and the Republicans. They gave us DOMA and DADT and are stalling even the modest reforms like ENDA and the hate crimes bill.