Review article
The role of Harry Hay in forming the homosexual class struggle
Josip Mužić
orcid.org/0000-0002-4493-7503
; Katolički bogoslovni fakultet Sveučilišta u Splitu
Abstract
In the first half of the twentieth century American homosexuals were scattered and out of the law because sodomy was a criminal offence. There were some attempts of organizing but nothing se rious came from it. In the early fifties the situation changed and Harry Hay played a key role. He conceived a homosexual political organization in 1948 inspired by Kinsey’s book “Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male”. Namely, at that time a fateful conclusion was reached that homosexuals were “the class of people with social and political dimensions of cultural minority”. By the end of 1950 the first organization consisting of five members was founded in Los Angeles. They were initially called “Society of Fools” which was soon changed into
“Mattachine Society”. As the homosexual movement grew stronger, so did its demands. Hay was the first who set about organizing homosexuals as a social minority, and was successful in it, mainly thanks to his communist experience. It is equally important, if not even more important, that he laid the foundations of homosexual policy that proved capable of winning the majority for themselves. Marx and Engels were against political organization of homosexuals and homosexuality as such. Communist states condemned and actively persecuted homosexuality. But, by weakening and falling of the Berlin Wall, the situation radically changed. Eastern and Western “leftists” adopted the struggle for a new homosexual class and started leaving the fight for the workers’ rights. Today, the metamorphosis of the “left” is over, and now efforts are hurriedly being made toward the reversal of the entire society. The subject of the fight has no longer been the rights of homosexuals, at least not in the West, but the change of the overall social paradigm.
Keywords
Harry Hay; homosexuality; homosexual movement; Marxism; genderism
Hrčak ID:
213423
URI
Publication date:
19.12.2018.
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