Gay rights - missing | Socialist Action 1983

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pression still respectable in the labour movement.

this year.

Ending the oppression of lesbians and gay men is a basic question of human and democratic rights. As such, a party which claims — as a socialist organisation - to represent all the oppressed has 111damental duty to take up this struggle.

But esbian and gay liberation MOIC than that: it is also a socialist and has to issue in itselt. become an integrated part of the movement towards society of freedom, justice and equality for all.

Ealing/Southall CLP .. In every * omen men face prejudice millions, fear is too great your workmates, neighbours, sons daughters, mothers life of MISCI Y the inTo these open gay men, also the ing of the moveliberties is already familiar Customs' bust on the Gays Word community bookshop. the Continue interception and confiscation of lesbian and gay literature on its way to Edinburgh's Lavender Menace bookshop.

would require book in itself to list the infringements of the human lesbians and gay men that have taken place already in 1984 alone. Yet what have we heard from leaders on these VUl outrages? seems even when a Labour MP like Roger Thomas himself is tripped up by the law, ine great labour movement cannot shake itself up sufficiently denounce this indefensible persecunon Every thinking socialist will know that these attacks are not without purpose. They are designed to drive us back into the closet so that we cannot be seen to challenge a whole system of social order which sees everything outside the traditional heterosexual family as perverted or unnatural.

It is in the interests of the state and of capitalism that place is understood to be in th nome, that man's place is family breadwinner - and that lesbians and gays should not exist at all, because Lesbian and Găy Socialist - new issue out now.

Details from LGYS, 39 Cheppenham Rd., London W9. defend Say. th gay rights

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That is why every socialist must support the fight led by the Labour Campaign for Gay Rights (LCGR) to get the issue debated at conference for the first time