Labour Campaign for Lesbian and Gay Rights leader SARAH ROELOFS made this speech at its recent Annual General Meeting. THE QUESTION immediately poses anther one -should 'we' lesbians and gay men and in this instance lesbians and gay men active in the labour movement - say anything at all about the family?
How is the issue of the family relevant to the fight for lesbian and gay rights?
Some may argue that the issue of family policy is outside the remit of a lesbian and gay rights organisation. Others may argue that the best thing - if not the only thing - we can say about the family is - just 'smash it'.
This year - for the first time since 1989 LCLGR is prioritising a campaign to win a debate on lesbian and gay rights at Labour Party Conference. Instead of focusing our model resolution on a supposedly simple, single issue such as the age of consent or employment rights, LCLGR has focused on the issue of the family.
Political issues related to the family that are currently prominent incluae - ш notorous Back to Basics, through Community Care, the Child Support Act, proposed housing legisiation, immigration controls, control of who has access to donor insemination, the victimisation of lesbian Headteacher Jane Brown, law'n'order, to the big E - education - education about the family, education about sex and sexuality, education about HIV/AIDS.
Wall to wall
But there is not just promotion of the family -small t', small "f'. No - this is quite definitely capital "T', capital 'F' -The Family. The positive preferment with wall to wall propaganda of one single family form as superior to all others, as the only normal, functional family form - as quite simply the best. And this family I call the Persil Family.
Persil family is very definitely whiter than white -invariably blonde and blue eyed. It is middle class from middle England. It is able-bodied. And it is certainly heterosexual.
It is father and mother, in that order with mother financially dependent on father but taking primary responsibility for the requisite 2.4 children. Persil Family live in a nice semi, furnished from John Lewis's or Habitat, with a quite remarkable absence of any body fluids or physical or mental impairments or any conditions requiring caring.
It is supremely unbothered by poverty or unemployment though it may be experiencing some slight difficulties with the mortgage. It is racist. It is sexist. It is ablist. It is heterosexist.
Persil Family is not real. It is a model, an image, an advertisement, a soap opera - but it is promoted as real and ideally attainable for us all.
It is explicitly exclusive. It excludes not only lesbians and gay men, but black people and disabled people -not to mention disabled and black lesbians and gay men. All alternative competitors - notably lesbians and lesbian mothers, single parents, extended families, black families, disabled parents - having been shown to be directly responsible for every ill and evil society could ever imagine -are, in a word, dysfunctional.
All the debates about The Family - read Persil Family -exclude lesbiarand gay men and their families.
How it is envisaged that Community Care will support lesbian or gay disabled people? How does the Child Support Act support the children of lesbian or gay parents?
How will the proposed housing legislation tackle the needs of young homeless lesbian and gay men?
How do immigration controls support lesbian and gay couples from different countries - not to mention black lesbian and gay couples? Do lesbians have equal access to donor inseminations?
LCLGR believes it is crucial that we engage in the political debates about The Family. If we do not we perpetuate our excluNolt There are, in my view, two central reasons for lesbians and gay men to prioritise the family politics debate.
The first reason is to assert and defend our civil rights. Persil Family is society's preferred family form to the extent that it is a zero option. The degree of propaganda is so compelling mat it tep cuter v nanta - ene other family forms feel unnatural.
This being the case it is hardly surprising that many of us construct our families or wish to as variants on the Persil theme.
Alternatively our families may utterly nonconformist and innovatory. However constructed we should have the right, in law, to have our families viewed as equally valid as Persil ones.
This means we are demanding a wide range of equality measures eg. partner recognition in pension schemes; tenancy and mortgage rights; legal rights such as an equal age of consent and equal custody rights; health rights such as health care that includes equal reproductive rights; education rights and the right to get married.
It is especially important to defend those lesbians and gay men who are themselves attempting to implement equality policies in their workplaces.
Further to this is our vision of socialism. It concerns not just what we think is wrong with things as they are and how those things should be changed and improved, but how we imagine a better world. But in 1994 there is virtual silence.
My perceptions of the reasons for this supreme lack of political interest in such an important area is that it is related to three inter-related factors - the impact of 15 years of Tory misrule, the impact of the defeat of Stalinism as perceived as a definitive defeat of socialism and the loss of an active high profile feminist movement.
15 years of one of the most right wing Tory periods of goverment has resulted in significant political demoralisation and a growth of rampant individualism of the 'i'm alright sod the rest of you' variety. Depoliticisation of the lesbian and gay movement has been quite marked.
The defeat of Stalinism has been perceived as wiping socialism off the agenda. Capitalism has won and all that is possible is to fight for a warmer, cosier, more caring capitalism. The net result is a dramatic curtailment of political ambition.
Deprived The loss of a strong feminist movement has deprived lesbians and gay men of a political context that radically questioned the status quo on personal, sexual and family issues.
Lesbian feminism and feminism can certainly be criticised from many perspectives -not least the in built racist bias of some of the key arguments not to mention the parallel virtual exclusion of disabled women.
But fundamentally what Includes Jesus Albarracin: Markel ideology, Jane Kelly, Post-modernism & feminism, Michael Löwy: The responsibility of Intellectuals 136 pages.
LIBERATION POLITICS feminism provided was the explicit promotion of women's interests and a deep questioning of the sexual political status quo. Obviously the debate about the family has a more direct and immediate meaning for women than men. But is this what gay men want? Is it truly the case that gay men are wholly uninterested in and unaffected by these issues? And do 'girls just want to have fun' - or is this a reaction to a fun deprived Tory landscape? As socialist lesbian and gay rights campaigners are we satisfied with this situation? If we are not how do we best assert a lesbian and gay perspective on family policy both within the Labour Party and within the lesbian and gay movement? International Marxist Review 14 Phil Hearse: Soclallsm andcomplex society Oider your copy for jusi 93 including postage from Socjalist Ouflook, PO Box 1109 London N4 2UU.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 63, 1 June 1994, Page 14