DURING the first week of August Amsterdam made good its claim to be the gay capital of Europe by hosting the Olympic-style international Gay Games (previously held in 1982 and 1986 in San Francisco, 1990 in Vancouver and 1994 in New York). "Given that lesbians and gay men are so visibly emancipated nowadays," asked the Dutch media, "is there any need for a liberation movement?" Peter Drucker reports. THE GAY Games are not the only landmark event in recent months. In Mexico City a congress for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights was held earlier this year with the support of newly elected PRD mayor Cuauhtemoc Cardenas and of Patria Jimenez, Latin America's first openly lesbian member of parliament. In France 300,000 people showed up in Paris in 1997 for Europride and 150,000 this year for Gay Pride, above all to demand registered civil unions for lesbian and gay partners. In Brussels "Pink Saturday" has been growing every year, above all because of big turnouts from Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern region. Lesbian/gay/bisexual movements are increasingly internationally coordinated, particularly through ILGA (the International Lesbian and Gay Association) ar d ILGA Europe. But ILGA's orientation is mainly lobbying the UN, European Union and national parliaments. Activists who see extraparliamentary mobilisation as crucial, including for parliamentary reforms, are less well organised internationally. The August '98 Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual Strategy Seminar at the International Institute for Research and Education in Amsterdam was one of the first opportunities ever for activists from the left to meet for a whole weekend to discuss theory and strategy. The twenty participants -eight women, twelve men - came from Belgium, Bolivia, Denmark, England, oppression lie France, Mexico, the Netherlands, Portu- far deeper than gal and Sri Lanka. The atmosphere was one of excitement and personal warmth.
Differences of opinion were expressed without difficulty and people found out that disagreements were smaller than they had expected. While most of the participants were members of far left organisations, unaffiliated participants joined on an equal footing in the discussions.
Women may have been a minority but they gave half the reports, participated fully in the discussion and ensured that the lesbian dimension was not lost from sight.
The strong tradition of feminist discussion in many of the participants' organisations provided an important backdrop for exploring questions of lesbian and gay liberation both in theory and in practice.
Unfortunately the nonEuropeans were less visible, both numerically and perhaps because the separate session on Third World themes came last.
There was criticism that the discussions focussed too much on the northwestern core of The roots Europe.
Community or of sexual integration?
There are nonetheless profound historical differences in many can practical and theoretisee cal orientation, even among the gay/lesbian/bisexual movements in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Britain.
France has a tradition of 'republican integration', which makes any form of minority politics suspect.
French theorist Jean Nicolas harshly criticised the 'myth of gay identity' in the 1970s; his perspective shows interesting similarities with the post-structuralist-influenced 'queer theory' of the 1990s.
The Dutch tradition of independent Protestant, Catholic and social-democratic subcultures led to a different climate for gay organising, although considerable gains by the lesbian/gay/bisexual movement have more recently led to questioning of gay institutions in the Netherlands. Britain, like most English-speaking countries, has lagged behind most other Western European countries in terms of lesbian/gay/bisexual rights. So doubts about the need for a movement in Britain get less of an echo. These varying traditions have left their mark on the lesbian/gay/bisexual left. The consensus among at the seminar was all the more striking.
They agreed that the roots of sexual oppression lie far deeper than many lesbians and gay men themselves see, in the structure of the heterosexual family where children are still raised to take their place in a gender-divided, capitalist labour force. This means that, while lesbian/gay/bisexual communities are not an end in themselves, the preconditions for oppression and thus the need for a separate subculture will continue to exist for the foreseeable future.
Even where conscious discrimination and prejudices are less widespread, as in the Netherlands and Scandinavia, this does not mean that lesbians, gay men and bisexuals can integrate themselves as equals into the broader society. Far-reaching social transformations are necessary in order to overcome the polarisation between heterosexuality and homosexuality.
There were lively discussions on other issues as well. Are we really