By Raju Prabath Lankaloka
The LGBTIQ+ community across the world hold many celebrations throughout June celebrating Pride month. In recent years the discussion and the struggle against gender oppression and sexual orientation-based discrimination have developed into mass movements in many countries. Even though the presence of the community is significant, its members face many socio-economic and political issues. People all over the world face violence and inequality sometimes including torture and murder based on whom they love, what they look like, or who they are. Sexual orientation and gender identity are our common traits and should never be discriminated against or abused.
Populists cast LGBTIQ+ people as threats to the family, religion, and the state. Their playbook enables scapegoating, discrimination, and often violence against LGBTIQ+ people. The discrimination against diverse Sexual Orientations, Gender Identities and Expressions and Sexual Characteristics is rooted in the establishment of the monogamous family with the introduction of private property. The true motive of the monogamous family is to carry forward lineage (property inheritance).
Though the monogamous nuclear family is a pre-capitalist phenomenon, it was strengthened under Capitalism. Capitalism is based on a system of private ownership. The bourgeois uses their personal wealth to personally invest in order to make profits. They don’t invest for the benefit of everyone else. Obviously, the bourgeois wants to pass on their wealth to the next generation. A monogamous nuclear family guarantee that requirement. Capitalism is always interested in population; the production of human labour-power; as they want cheap labour. But they were not interested in giving up their profits in terms of taxes to develop the future generation of labour-power. With a nuclear family, it is easy to pass the responsibility of looking after the children to their parents, which has a minimum impact on the capitalist’s profits. That’s why capitalism has developed its legal system to maintain the monogamous nuclear family.
Even though every anti-LGBTIQ+ campaign is based on the argument that it’s “against nature”, it is clear that these ideologies are being nurtured by capitalism for decades. Therefore, the desire of the bourgeoisie to maintain a patriarchal society enables the discrimination against the LGBTIQ+ community. By providing social privileges to heterosexuals, the capitalists have created divisions among the class. It is important to understand that within the capitalist system, all workers are being exploited to increase their profits. LGBTIQ+ individuals are being exploited and also being discriminated against based on their Sexual Orientation, Gender Identities Expressions and Sexual Characteristics.
With the development of the struggle against gender oppression and sexual orientation-based discrimination, many victories were achieved in ensuring the rights of the LGBTIQ+ community. Tomorrow, 28th June we commemorate the stonewall riot which fuelled the LGBTIQ+ movement massively across countries. With their demands for liberation and their mass base, these protests have within them an intrinsic revolutionary potential. At the same time, there is also a conscious attempt to reduce these issues to a question of culture and limit the goals of the movement to fighting for small concessions that are compatible with the normal functioning of capitalism. A lot of coverage is given to theories that on the surface appear radical but which in practice channel the struggle of the LGBTIQ+ movement along with idealist and existentialist lines which end up in a blind alley when what is really needed is to change the material conditions.
Therefore, it is vital for the victory of the LGBTIQ+ movement that it adopts a class approach, uniting the struggle against homophobic oppression and for full civil rights with the general struggle for a decent life, free from economic and social oppression. It is equally important that the labour movement take up the LGBTIQ+ struggle, overcoming the divide that has existed historically and unite to achieve a society which embraces true equality.
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