June 28 is the International Day of LGBT Pride, since the Stonewall Revolt, in 1969, in the US. It left an important sign to LGBTs all over the world.
By Diego Cruz.
In 1969, LGBTs were subjected to a process of extreme marginalization. They were persecuted in the streets and even in the few spaces where they gathered (bars exclusive for LGBTs, known as ghettos). They were subjected to police violence, which carried out frequent raids aiming to get fines and imposing a situation of constant repression.
The “Stonewall Inn” in New York was one of the bars that the poorest LGBTs frequented.
It ended up becoming the stage of a major revolt, when after one of those raids the LGBTs reacted and resisted bravely, in direct confrontation with the police that lasted about 4 days.
In this struggle, mainly lesbian women, black travesties and immigrant gays were the lead. This is an interesting fact (that the bourgeoisie currently tries to hide) as it shows that the Stonewall revolt, besides being against police violence, was also against oppression and exploitation that those poor, black, immigrant LGBTs suffered on a daily basis.
Stonewall revolt had such a repercussion that it lighted the entire world. Next year, on June 28, 1970, it took place the first LGBT Parade, with over 10 thousand people in the US.
World Cup: violence against LGBTs enters the field!
The entire world is watching and following the World Cup in Russia, but few know that the country that the seat country of this event has laws that institutionalize repression and violence against LGBTs. LGBTs are harshly persecuted by the State, and recently president Putin made statements asking the tourists not to make homosexual demonstrations in public.
This type of statement and laws highly contribute to killings, violence and violations of LGBTs’ rights. Thus, our struggle is not only in Brazil, but in all countries of the world!
The paradox is that Russia was not always like this. The Russian Revolution of 1917, that expropriated the bourgeoisie, had serious advances. Regarding the struggle of oppressed sectors, they achieved advances that we are far from achieving here in Brazil, today. In 1918, for instance, abortion was legalized. The laws that subjected women to the husband and house were annulled. The State built kindergartens and public laundries as a way to free women from domestic work. All laws against homosexuality were abolished by the new revolutionary government, and consented sex was defined as a private matter. In 1919, hospitals began to make sex-change surgeries.
But the Stalinist counter-revolution initiated a period of setback to those rights. There was a policy of returning women back to the house, and being LGBTs was considered a “petit-bourgeois deviation” from the previous society. The complete restoration of capitalism in Russia only worsened the situation of LGBTs, ending up in the absurd laws that we have today.
The PSTU defends the victories achieved in the first years of the Russian Revolution and believes that the way to transformation is rebellion, like the one LGBTs made in Stonewall.
LGBTs in Brazil
Here, the situation is not less bad. Brazil is one of the countries that kills most LGBTs in the worst. We suffer with LGBTphobic violence, lack of employment, marginality and lack of public policies that respond to our interests, besides being subjected to corrective rapes and being kick out of our homes. We also suffer the lack of leisure spaces in the periphery.
Governments are conniving with this situation, and they use our right as Exchange money during the election. Even with all those attacks and precarious situation, we are in struggle. We are part of the struggle against the government, against the labor and social security reform, and against social cuts. We are in the front line in school occupations, and in 2017 we fought on the streets against the “Gay Cure” project.
Thus, working LGBTs must trust only our own strengths, in unity with the rest of the workers. Only that will change our lives!
Capitalism is sick!
Recently, the WHO stopped considering transsexualism as a mental disease. This is an advanced, achieved after a strong resistance and struggle of transsexuals and travesties. Even like this, the WHO considers transsexualism as “sexual incongruence.” This type of policy only favors violence and marginalization of trans and travesties. In our society, it is the most ‘invisible’ sector that suffers daily with the barbaric violence of capitalism. Trans, lesbian, bisexual and homosexual people are not sick! Sick is the capitalist society that oppresses and exploits workers every day pursuing profits for a bunch of businessmen, bankers and landowners.
To organize a new rebellion!
The LGBT Parade slogan in Sao Paulo, 2018, was “Our vote, our voice: all power to LGBTs!” So they explicitly said that the elections are the solution to the problems LGBTs suffer. Capitalists try, through parades and the “pink market,” to coopt our struggle. It is those same banks and companies, like Itau, Burger King, Doritos, that try to make us believe that they support the LGBTs, because they want us to be part of their market. But none of them hesitates when exploiting all workers, LGBTs included, and implementing the labor reform to end labor rights.
We will only change our lives through a real socialist revolution, organizing the ones below to take down the ones above. Thus, we call all working LGBTs to organize together with all workers and build a major rebellion. We have to organize the ones below to take down the ones above, and so build a socialist society that allows us to end oppression and exploitation, in Brazil and in the world.
