1) Membership in Communist Organizations: In dealing with the gay question, Marxist-Leninists have consistently failed to take up the stand, viewpoint, and method of the proletariat. On no other question do subjectivism, dogmatism, and bourgeois idealism seem to have such a strong hold on the communist movement.
These weaknesses are evident on the question of whether gay people can be communists and members of communist organizations. Gay people usually are not only required to adhere to the ideological and political line of a communist organization and accept organizational discipline, but are also required to give up being gay.
Without investigation, without the application of dialectical and historical materialism, gay people are accused of succumbing to “bourgeois decadence” or some form of unnatural, ahistorical decadence which is inconsistent with the revolutionary goals of the proletariat. Anti-gay biases are promoted in conjunction with glorifying the bourgeois monogamous family as an economic unit which produces the commodity labor-power and serves to channel the inheritance of capitalist wealth. Being based on bourgeois ideology, such anti-gay attitudes within communist organizations should be vigorously combatted.
Gay people have already proven in practice that they can not only be communists, but that they can also be outstanding communist fighters, steadfastly upholding the class interests of the proletariat. In and of themselves, bi-sexuality, homosexuality, or heterosexuality are not relevant criteria for determining membership in communist organizations.
2) Democratic Rights: The democratic rights of gay people should be firmly supported and fought for by Marxist-Leninists. In their political work among the proletariat, communists should be forth-right in combatting anti-gay attitudes and be able to demonstrate how such attitudes serve the class interests of the bourgeoisie and help maintain bourgeois society.
Upholding democratic rights for gay people is not equivalent with promoting gay-ness. The stand of the proletariat, which has the most consistently revolutionary interests in real democracy, is that gay people should be free from oppression and discrimination. The question of which social form of personal relationships should be promoted by communists and encouraged in a socialist society is a separate question from the fundamental requirement of upholding the right of gay people to be gay.
For most of the communist movement, this question is already closed. Most Marxist-Leninists put forward that the family unit of husband, wife, and children is the only fit social form for intimate personal relationships in a socialist society. Yet they are unwilling to deepen their analysis of the monogamous family and demonstrate what basic changes will occur in the family to make it a progressive institution in a socialist society.
For our organization, the question is not automatically closed. We need to do more study and investigation, and make a thorough application of dialectical and historical materialism to the question in order to provide a scientific answer. We encourage the rest of the communist movement to do the same.