GAY RIGHTS AND SOCIALISM

To the Editors of The Crimson:

In their letter of November 18 Diana Sperling and David Price of NAM attempted to identify the interests of the gay movement with those of the socialist movement. It simply won't wash.

Sperling and Price noted the oppression of gay people by fascist states. They were silent, however, on the oppression of gays by socialist states. The brutal treatment accorded homosexuals by the Castro regime in Cuba has become something of an international scandal. (See "Out of the Closet: Voices of Gay Liberation" for an account of the persecution of gays by the Venceremos Brigade.) In Mao's China, gays suffer similar indignities, as documented by Bau Ruo-wang's "Prisoner of Mao."

The rationale of these regimes for the harassment of gay people is obvious: homosexuality distinguishes certain individuals from the masses. It allows them to be different. It is anti-social. Period. There is no recognition of the rights of the gay individual in these socialist nations: there is no recognition of the rights of any individual.

Socialism is not the alternative to fascism. Socialism is hardly even an alternative to fascism. Fascism is socialism, let us recall, of a particularly reprehensible variety often referred to as national socialism (or nazism for short). The color of the uniform may differ, but the intolerance for deviationists does not.

It would seem that the real issue of gay liberation is not, like that of the socialist movement, a supposed right to something (like free medical care of ones neighbor's cow) but a right to be free from something (namely harrassment). It is a matter of liberty rather than supposed entitlement. The number one usurper of liberty is, of course, the state apparatus, whatever its stripe. Lawrence H. White   H-R Sons of Liberty