Gay Liberalism Will Not Save Us
In order to survive Trump's assault on queer & transgender people, we need a radical new form of queer politics.
It has been nearly a decade since national marriage equality was established by Obergefell v. Hodges, and in that time what remains of the queer movement has grown hollow, weak, and rotten. As the corporations who once infested pride parades now gleefully shred their DEI commitments, and the sacrosanct Democratic Party fails to muster even the smallest glimmer of meaningful resistance to the Trump regime, it is becoming clear that the much-vaunted ‘progress’ queers have won over the past few decades is in fact little more than a brittle facade already crumbling before the onslaught of resurgent hard-right cisheterosexism. That queers have been left so ill-prepared for this challenge was not inevitable; rather, our present weakness is a direct result of the strategic vision and reified ideology that has been hegemonic in the queer movement for decades, which I call gay liberalism.
Under gay liberalism, queers have abandoned deeply organizing our communities in favor of a top-heavy ‘advocacy’ model that relies on a small handful of professional activists, celebrities, politicians, and corporations to win largely superficial victories that are already being rolled back. Additionally, gay liberalism’s atomized and depoliticized conception of queerness has suffocated queer radicalism, cut off queer solidarity with other oppressed groups, and produced a growing population of right-wing MAGA gays who take gay liberalism to its logical conclusion. If we are to survive rising neofascism—let alone win true queer liberation—we need a new political vision for the queer movement, one rooted in mass organizing, solidarity, and a materialist understanding of queerness.
What is Gay Liberalism?
Gay liberalism is both a strategic orientation and a particular conception of what queerness is. As a strategy, gay liberalism’s theory of change is deeply elite-centric: rather than focusing on organizing broad masses of everyday queers in order to build grassroots power, gay liberalism is oriented around recruiting and promoting individual ‘advocates’ (such as politicians, CEOs, and celebrities) to take positions in powerful institutions and enact changes from the top-down. Because gay liberalism is elite-centric, it has abandoned building out a broad movement in favor of winning over corporations and worshipping the Democratic Party, emphasizing ‘representation’ over structural changes.
A core reason why gay liberalism rejects mass organizing is its fundamentally depoliticized view of queerness. Gay liberalism sees queerness as a natural, ahistorical biological fact that has been politicized but is not itself inherently political. This depoliticized conception of queerness is also an inherently atomized conception of queerness, as it renders queerness an ‘identity’ that individuals possess based on their inherent biological features. Because queerness is rendered as a fundamentally individual, apolitical identity, being queer within gay liberalism implies no specific political commitments beyond a narrowly defined conception of self-interest. Emptied of political content, rendered purely individual, and removed from any non-elite political organizing, queerness comes to primarily entail consuming certain types of media and living a certain kind of commodified lifestyle more than being a part of any real community or movement.
The Limits of Gay Liberalism
In the scant two months since Donald Trump was sworn into office for his second Presidency, the meager gains won by decades of gay liberalism have already begun to crumble. Multinational corporations that once sought to appeal to queer consumers through diverse branding and internal DEI initiatives have begun abandoning their ‘commitments’ in droves, with some even embracing openly queerphobic policies. Politically, gay liberalism’s unshakable loyalty to the Democratic Party has yielded similarly feeble results, as Democrats ‘resist’ Trump’s rising authoritarianism with colorful shirts instead of meaningful action, all while gradually shifting further to the right on ‘wokeness’ and even throwing transgender people under the bus to try and win votes. Decades of prioritizing elite advocacy over mass organizing have resulted in a hollowed-out, top-heavy structure that is completely unprepared to meet the moment, leaving most queers isolated and unorganized in the face of the new onslaught.
Ideologically, gay liberalism’s reified view of queerness as an apolitical biological identity has contributed to the queer community’s depoliticization and embrace of a narrowly selfish conception of self-interest. By emptying queerness of its inherently political character, gay liberalism has produced a shallow culture centered around commodification and media consumption rather than collective action, while the biologicalization of queerness has severed queers’ connections to other oppressed groups by rendering queerness a natural trait effectively unrelated to race, class, ability, etc. This naturalized, atomized conception of queerness as an inherently individual identity has oriented queer culture towards individualized self-promotion and narrowly defined self-interest, rather than collective solidarity, with disastrous political results. While gay liberals react with shock and confusion to the growing population of conservative MAGA gays, these reactionaries represent not a break with gay liberalism but the logical endpoint of its individualized, depoliticized, and naturalized definition of queerness.
Beyond strategic and ideological failures, gay liberalism’s linking of queerness to capitalism and imperialism poses an existential threat to queerness worldwide. By pinkwashing empire, gay liberalism not only ideologically intertwines queer rights and imperialist domination in the minds of billions of people around the world but also physically slaughters millions–including many queers–ostensibly in the name of Western ‘gay rights’. Indeed, Israel’s constant invocation of supposed Palestinian homophobia to discredit queer opposition to the American-backed genocide of Gaza is just the latest example of how imperialism weaponizes queerness and uses it to justify horrific violence. Similarly, ‘rainbow capitalism’ conflates queer liberation with corporate profit-maximization and climate destruction, reducing queerness to a commodified advertising demographic that is defined by the logic of capital, not by queers ourselves. To allow queerness to become intertwined with and defined by such fundamentally anti-human processes like imperialism and capital is, as Ta-Nehisi Coates puts it, “existential death” for queerness.
An IDF soldier waves the rainbow Pride flag amidst the ruins of Gaza during the ongoing Israeli genocide of Palestinians. This is existential—and literal—death for queerness.
A Materialist Mass Alternative
In order to survive the reactionary resurgence and disentangle queerness from capital and empire, a radical alternative form of queer politics is required. Unlike gay liberalism’s elite-oriented advocacy politics, this new politics must be a mass politics, rooted in organizing millions of working class queer folks to build bottom-up power capable of not just superficially increasing representation, but actually materially reshaping structures of domination, exploitation, and exclusion. No more celebrities and CEOs claiming the mantle of gay advocacy just to line their pocket books—it’s time for everyday queers across the country to organize ourselves and our communities to defend our rights and fight for our interests on our own terms. This means not only organizing those who are already radicalized, but taking the time and making the necessary effort to recruit the great mass of queers who are depoliticized, demobilized, and otherwise disenchanted with collective action.
If our power no longer comes from wealthy corporations, famous celebrities, and liberal politicians, however, then where does it come from? What leverage do everyday working-class queers have that we can use to win big transformational changes? To answer such questions we need a materialist analysis, i.e. an analysis that is primarily concerned with social relations and structures of power. This analysis should begin by presenting an alternative conception of queerness that, rather than depicting queerness as an individualized, naturalized, depoliticized identity, instead demonstrates queerness’ inherently relational, contingent, and political character. A materialist understanding of queerness begins with the recognition that what is considered ‘queer’ and what is considered ‘straight’ is not an ahistorical, biological fact inherent in each individual, but is rather a social relationship of power produced by specific historical circumstances. The idea that same-sex attraction, for example, constitutes something called a ‘sexual orientation’ that serves as a defining individual identity is a fairly recent historical product, and one that is inherently shaped by relations of power such as class, gender, and race. While desire has certainly existed throughout human history, how those desires are produced, interpreted, categorized, and organized into hierarchies of acceptability and normality are all fundamentally products of specific historical contexts and specific power struggles within those contexts. To be queer, then, is not to possess any inherent individual biological trait, but rather to be positioned within a contingent social relationship between those deemed queer, i.e. abnormal, and those deemed straight, i.e. normal.
The social relation of ‘sexuality’ is not an isolated process, but rather is shaped by (and itself shapes) other social relations such as class, race, gender, ability, etc. While this is most obvious in the case of gender, where the definitions of sexuality and gender openly co-constitute each other, it is also the case with race as, for example, BIPOC—particularly Black—sexuality has historically often been defined by white-supremacists societies as inherently deviant, dangerous, and requiring of white control; while today, much of mainstream queer culture is implicitly coded as white, even as it appropriates elements from Black culture. Sexuality and queerness is also intrinsically bound up in economic relations such as class and capital, as the wealthy and powerful have long sought to impose bourgeois sexual norms on the working class, and in recent decades queerness has become a commodified advertising demographic defined by patterns of media consumption.
While sexuality and other social relations deeply shape each other, they also retain distinct logics that must be distinguished in order to build a strategic analysis of power. Sexuality is a social relation defined primarily by exclusion & domination, as to be queer is to be excluded from the straight world and rendered ostensibly inferior to it. In this relation queers do not have much leverage over straight people, because straight society does not need queers for anything, but rather definitionally excludes us. It is otherwise in the class relation between workers and owners, because rather than being defined by exclusion & domination, the class relationship is one of exploitation. This means that, since owners generate profits by exploiting the labor of workers, owners need workers in order to produce profits, which gives workers inherent leverage over owners. This leverage is the ability to collectively withhold our labor until our demands are met, commonly called a strike. One answer, then, to the question about where grassroots queer power comes from is that it comes from our ability as workers to collectively withhold our labor and win concessions from the owning class. By organizing our co-workers—both queer and straight—into unions ready to use our collective leverage against our bosses, we can win concessions that enshrine anti-discrimination rules into contracts and force the company to commit to pro-queer policies that cannot be abandoned at whim. Beyond individual firms, mass networks of queer workers and allies can use our shared strength to bring entire economies to a screeching halt, thereby forcing not only our bosses but also our political leaders to listen to our demands. Community organizing and electoral politics both have key roles to play in queer worker organizing as well, as by running strategic struggle-oriented campaigns, they can grow queer class consciousness and build out spaces for cross-workplace and cross-community organization, such as political parties and movement centers.
Orienting queer organizing around worker power has a number of distinct advantages over the elite-oriented, reified identity-based model of gay liberalism. Firstly, it is oriented towards the masses, as centering worker power rather than elite influence necessarily entails organizing millions of working-class queers to stand together and take collective action to fight for our existence. Instead of leaving political activity to a small handful of famous, wealthy advocates and organizations while the majority of queers remain unorganized and depoliticized, worker-oriented mass queer organizing requires bringing as many queers as possible into the fight for our own liberation, since it is only through overwhelming force of numbers that we can gain enough leverage to force real concessions and win significant structural changes. Secondly, worker-oriented queer organizing emphasizes building solidarity with other oppressed groups by recognizing that sexuality is inherently intertwined with other social relations like race and class. By rejecting gay liberalism’s naturalized, depoliticized, and atomized conception of queerness in favor of a materialist understanding of queerness, worker-oriented queer organizing necessarily requires fighting not only cisheterosexism, but also racism, capitalism, ableism, etc., as it understands that these are interconnected power relations that cannot be disentangled and neatly sorted into separate ‘identities’. Finally, worker-oriented materialist queer organizing does not seek simply to reform or ameliorate the power relations of sexuality, race, capital, etc., but rather to abolish them entirely, for as long as desire is defined by relations of domination, exclusion, exploitation, and genocide, no person or community can be truly free to define their desire in their own terms. Queer liberation, then, is not increasing the number of queer celebrities, CEOs, and politicians in the name of ‘representation’, but an abolition of the power relation of sexuality itself, so that desire can be free to be defined however we would like, instead of according to the interests of profit and power.
Queer Socialism is the Future
This grassroots, worker-oriented, materialist model of queer organizing can be dubbed queer socialism, and it is already possible to see successful examples of it around the globe. In Germany, the democratic socialist party Die Linke has a vibrant queer socialist working group that pioneers a materialist queer politics rooted in self-determination, material security, and working-class queer liberation. Rather than counterposing working-class issues and queer issues, Die Linke Queer emphasizes their interconnectedness with queer-class-conscious campaigns and materials, such as their recent campaign posters hung around Berlin which featured queer leather men fighting fascism, advocating for rent control, and supporting self-determination. Such class-conscious queer organizing produced excellent results, with Die Linke winning the biggest vote-share of any party in Berlin!
Die Linke members hold up queer class-conscious posters during their recent parliamentary campaign in Berlin.
In America, the organization with the greatest potential to grow queer socialism as a movement is the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). With over 71,000 members and chapters in nearly every state, DSA is the largest socialist organization in the country and one of the only run democratically by the membership rather than unelected leaders or paid staff. Instead of having an official ‘party line’ that all members have to adhere to, DSA has a ‘big tent’ where a wide variety of ideologies and strategic outlooks discuss, debate, and organize together, deciding democratically which campaigns to run, candidates to endorse, and actions to take. Electorally, DSA includes both national politicians like congress members Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and local politicians across the country including city councilors, state senators, and mayors. Zohran Mamdani, a New York State Assemblymember closely connected to the New York City DSA chapter, is currently running a mass-oriented class struggle campaign for NYC mayor which has exploded in popularity and support, demonstrating how DSA’s electoral model can create transformative campaigns that move huge numbers of working-class people to action. With regards to labor organizing, DSA has partnered with United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) to launch the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, which has helped thousands of workers at small businesses across the country organize their coworkers to take collective action and even form their own unions. DSA chapters have also become organizing hubs for the radical labor movement from coast to coast, with local DSA Labor Committees coordinating strike support, helping new unions get started, and fighting to make existing unions more democratic and militant. Outside of electoral politics and labor organizing, DSA chapters also pursue a wide variety of tactics including tenant organizing, mutual aid, and direct action. Because of DSA’s large size, ideological big tent, and existing connections with the radical wing of the organized labor movement, it is the organization with the highest current potential to serve as a home for the queer socialist movement in America, and queer workers looking to get organized and fight back against the Trump regime should strongly consider joining and getting involved.
Beyond any one organization, surviving the reactionary resurgence and fighting for queer liberation requires a fundamental shift in how we as queers understand and relate to ourselves, our communities, and our politics. We can’t limit our political action to voting every four years and donating to celebrity-backed fundraisers—we need to begin organizing our communities ourselves and recruiting other working-class queers to play an active role in our own liberation. We need to reject gay liberalism’s apolitical, reified, and individual conception of queerness and embrace queerness’ inherently political, contingent, and relational nature, redefining our community not as a commodified advertising demographic but as a mass movement for the liberation of desire and abolishment of sexism, racism, capitalism, etc. We, in short, have to take the future into our own hands, move ourselves and our communities to action, and refuse to allow anyone else to dominate, exclude, or exploit us any longer.