At the Trans-Wellness Summit in Kentucky, a question was posed to former US Colonel Pamela Stevenson, Kentucky State Representative Elect, along the lines of, “the oppression of queer people is a global phenomenon, and while I won’t ask you personally to justify all the actions of the Democratic party, why should we support a party that is actively invested in oppressing our peers around the world?” After spending a not insignificant amount of time boasting about her military record in nearly a dozen countries, Colonel Stevenson accused this attendee of sounding like a Republican, after fumbling through the question without a truly satisfying answer, as could be expected.
This isn’t because Pam Stevenson is a particularly malicious human being, it would be difficult to launch this critique after spending enough time parlaying to win the queer and liberal vote in Kentucky. It is indicative, however, of the fact that she is very aware of her role in bourgeois politics, and has demonstrated the dead-end that queer people face within the bourgeois parties of the U.S. There’s hardly a need to waste time explaining the crimes of the Republican Party, it’s why the Democrats win the queer vote in the first place, out of fear, and meager recognition. As the problem is always awareness for the liberal bourgeoise, people simply aren’t aware enough of the LGBT struggle. It’s never something so primal, so feral, as political economic relations designed to maintain expectations of men and women and make those who fall outside of these expectations feel inferior, taboo, and alienated.
The Democratic Party is not disingenuous in it’s appeal to queer people, there’s a reason queer people are in it. It’s that it is incapable of reconciling the contradiction of being a bourgeois political vehicle, and thus spending countless hours organizing to get queer people elected into office on the hope of minor improvements to the condition of LGBT people in bourgeois society, just as much opens the door for more queer people to bomb our peers around the world. It is this in mind, that leaves only building a communist party, a revolutionary vehicle, that seeks to lead the international proletariat in struggle, to lead the queer masses away from maintaining their oppression out of fear for worse conditions, to freeing them of the condition entirely.
