Joint Statement of the Communist Party of Canada and the Young Communist League
The Communist Party of Canada and the Young Communist League
proudly salute LGBTQ workers and activists, Egale and other community
advocates throughout Canada and in Quebec, safer queer-positive
schools, and corporate-free space on Pride Day!
We say: No Pride in the international criminalizing of sexual
orientation, sexual expression and gender identity! No Pride in War or
Corporate Plunder!
Pride events this summer are celebrating welcome progress towards
greater equality and social justice. Communists are active players in
Canada's various LGBTQ and queer identified communities. Together we
stand proudly in solidarity with all LGBTQ allies and activists
marking Pride 2009.
Globally celebrations are marking the anniversary of the
"Stonewall Riots" in Manhattan. A show of working class resistance,
the first scuffles were reported to be initiated by local homeless and
unemployed queer youth - patrons of the Stonewall Inn. 40 years on we
are bombarded with both encouraging and alarming headlines:
* Many more queer-positive environments are available to us in the public realm.
* Initial but promising signs on the left to re-integrate the fight
for justice and the fight against homophobia.
* Increasing numbers of trade unions now have active Pride and LGBTQ caucuses.
* High schools are launching gay-straight alliances, safe school
spaces and "Pride proms".
* Sex-reassignment surgery is at least partially covered under some
provincial health insurance plans.
These legal, political and cultural victories are the hard-won
results of decades of efforts by the LGBTQ community and allies.
However,
* California has overturned the same-sex marriage ruling, despite
equality gains in other states and in Canada.
* The Harper Tories still hope to reverse queer rights if they win a
majority government.
* The Right continue to scapegoat the LGBTQ community and racialised
groups, to divide working class resistance against finance capital,
corporate bailouts and global environmental plunder.
* The politics of Pride events are skewed by corporate sponsorship,
and with a handful of notable exceptions, military opportunism
And there's more. Despite Canada's welcoming image,
* queer youth in Toronto and Montreal seeking asylum from persecution
in other countries are being extradited.
* HIV-positive men still face barriers to travel across the Canada-US border
* LGBTQ secondary students, (over two-thirds in a recent survey)
report feeling unsafe at school, (compared to 1 in 5 straight
students).
* Prosecutors are unwilling to prosecute vicious gay-bashings in
Vancouver as hate crimes.
Globally,
* violent public expressions of homophobia are on the rise.
* the struggle to end the decriminalization of sexual orientation and
sexual expression faces stubborn resistance.
* working class queer people suffer especially vicious discrimination,
and as women and racialized communities bear the severe brunt of
neoliberal economic and social policies.
* ILGA, the association of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersexed
peoples reports that 90 United Nations member states still criminalize
consensual same-sex acts among adults.
* In seven countries, legal punishment for homosexuality still
includes the death penalty.
* In many countries, such laws drive women, men and youth underground
to hide from fear of exposure and censure.
But important progress for LGBTQ equality is being achieved in
countries such as Cuba, South Africa and Nicaragua. The myth that
queer rights can only be won in wealthy capitalist countries is
shattered by these advances, and by the reality that homophobic and
racist concepts are exported from North America and Europe.
Despite the cultural and legal shift in favour of equality and
diversity, homophobia and transphobia remain tenaciously powerful
within the Canadian state. Behind his mask and 50s sweaters, Stephen
Harper's anti-equality positions are clear. The Tory leader:
* voted against same-sex marriage.
* has left his options open on abortion if he wins a majority.
* snubbed the 2007 international AIDS conference in Toronto.
* has appointed anti-choice, anti-gay judges to provincial courts.
* includes "Focus on the Family" zealots among top Tory advisors.
* pushes through regressive tax changes to promote the patriarchal family model.
* has gutted Status of Women Canada and bars the use of government
funding to promote equality.
* criminalized youth by raising the age of consent to 16 and limited
young people's access to condoms and abortions.
* allows Canada Customs to seize literature ordered by bookstores
which serve the LGBT community.
At a time when the so-called "war on terror" is used to remove
civil liberties for racialized communities, we need to remind each
other that "an injury to one is an injury to all." Just like racism,
sexism, and national chauvinism, homophobia and transphobia are
weapons to divide working people. Despite this effort, most Canadians
support equality and human rights. These must now be expanded to
include full legal and political protections for sexual orientation
and expression, and gender identity.
This demand is a vital part of the wider movement to drive the
Harper Tories out of power. Today the ruling class is using the
economic meltdown to carry out a vicious assault on working class and
unemployed queers and the entire labour movement. A cover as well to
reverse hard-won social equality gains. A broad democratic and social
resistance is going to be needed to block and reverse this corporate
agenda. Together, we must build a powerful coalition around a genuine
people's alternative to this crisis - a common front of Aboriginal
peoples, youth and students, women, seniors, immigrant and racialized
communities, environmentalists, labour, peace activists, the LGBTQ
community, farmers, and many other allies.
Ultimately, this struggle in our communities and workplaces, and
at the ballot box, will defeat the right and open the door to a
people's coalition government. The goal of the Communist Party is to
win fuller social freedom and genuine people's power in a socialist
Canada, where our economy will be owned by all and democratically
controlled. It will then become possible to eradicate the intersecting
forms of exploitation and oppression which we face today, while
defending our sovereignty and protecting our common environment.
2 comments:
This was our statement we were handing out at PR!DE. Great piece of literature, however, verbal diarrhea.
Be charitable : it is ours...:)
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