Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 00:10:37 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: M-G: Re Rolf-Justin debate



I think I pretty much agree with Vladimir about gay's rights. Certainly I
agree with his conclusions. I have a rather better opinion of liberal
rights than he and think they have a place within socialism, but I agree
that the sort of strictures that he places on their ideological use
within capitalism and bourgeois society are real. There is no doubt that
the mainstream hay community just wants inclusion in bourgeois society on
equal terms. That doesn't mean it shouldn't have it, or that that isn't
worth fighting for. It does maen taht socialists who struggle for these
rights, gay or straight, have to pay attention to ways to infuse the
struggle with socialist content.

I don't think I agree with the call to abolish the family. I'd like to
extend and expand it, to make it less nuclear and self-subsistent. I'd
like to think of ways that the inequalities produced by raising children
in families with differential resources, some of them inherent and not
merely pecuniary, might be equalized. I'd like to see both men and
women in whatever combination who enter into family relations be more
easy and less jealous in their personal relations. But if someone were to
try to take away my children, I'd kill them. If the abolition of the
family means that people relate through dating services provided by the
satte and children are raised a la Plato in orphanages, I think that's a
nightmare. Of course, if abolitionof the family is shorthand for abolition
of traditional gender roles, women's oppression and homophobia, I'm all
for it, but I wouldn't call it that.

--Justin 






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