'ALTHOUGH THE THEME of sexual behaviour may not be economic and political struggles....the search for an objective means of assessing this side of social life is not irrelevant.... The party is strong enough to influence the shape of state law, press influence both public opinion and members. Thus the already sibility...' member of the shadow cabinet in Labour Weekly on the need for the Labour Party to take up the struggle for lesbian and gay liberation? No. These WOre WILLCH by Eduard Bernstein in the German Die Neue Zeit in 1895. socialist wavel Bernstein was writing in defence of Oscar Wilde, who was about to get two years' 'gross indecency' in Britain. and his views reoresent a far more advanced understanding politics and the oppression of homosexuality than will be found in most of the modern left.
Hirschfeld of paramount significance for the its speakers and its has certain responwas lonely on the left contrary.
advancing struggle over been SO most Lesbal gay activists day history struggle century.
an movement 19th century.
The massive social upheavals resulting from inPlay behind its mould of century the mafor who was created opposite, homosexperson, repre tablic, Prior period only terms to sexual which Was 11Ul an altribute of specific was devised by a Hunnamed planations' which all shared sumption:
ing it was solitary or third sex men's men's The term he coined for them — Uranians (drawn Plato) and his work remained the justitication for the struggle well into the 20th century: for if homosexuality was inborn, then whatever view its desirability, it was clearly unjust to punish it It was adopted by the important figure in the historv of the early movement, Magnus Hirschfeld, who founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee in 1897 - the first campaigning homosexual rights organisation Wine movement (such as Benedict Friedlander's Community OT i the Special) developed more advanced theories. but The most remarkable was again put forward by Bernstein In one of his 1895 articles, Bernstein had already begun to apply serious marxist analysis to social and sexual relations and, in a more advanced form than Engels had managed in his Origin of the Family, demonstrated the wholly social historical basis of the construction of sexuality and nute ale relations, therefore the nonsense of using terms such 'natural' and 'unnatural' to describe them.
The tragic loss of this thinking from both the left and the movement as whole has forced it to start again scratch challenging the ignorance and unclarity which now smothers. the relationship between lesbian and gay liberation and socialism ine type OI sex scandals about leading establishment figures to which we are accustomed today were a prominear Icature of the 1890s. The Wilde BARE GAY SHITEHBORED LOUSAN GAY TEACHE