Helping to enforce this policy in Cuba will be the hundreds of thousands of revolutionary “militants” who act as volunteer police spies and are everywhere.

The situation in China is even worse. Bao Ruo‐​wang, who spent many years in Chinese Communist prison camps, for instance, reports that homosexuality in China is punished by long prison terms and often by death. This may be found in Prisoner of Mao, a book whose accuracy is vouched for by John K. Fairbank, of Harvard, well‐​known as long‐​time friend of “People’s China.” (Interestingly, as with the Church‐​State alliance, Nazi Germany and other authoritarian regimes, the penalties against gay acts in China, while the most severe, are simply the final term of a whole program of fanatical warfare waged against the human sexual drive.) If you want to know what degree of respect is accorded gay people in China, read the section of the on the summary shooting out of the brains of a gay barber who had been found with seventeen year old boy. The blood and brains splattered the by‐​standers, and the author had to throw up.

In the Marxist countries of Eastern Europe, homosexuals are treated better, of course. In most of them, as in most of Western Europe, homosexual acts between consenting adults are not illegal. But, completely consistent with the Marxist plan for centralized, State‐​directed control of the total life of society, no gay liberation movement is permitted in any European Communist country, and any gay subculture is on principle discouraged by the police, to whose power there is, naturally, no limit at all. Following their dreary, intellectually thread‐​bare Marxist ideology, the Communist rulers “know” that homosexuality is a social aberration, caused—so what else is new?—by “decaying capitalism.” Their tolerance for a gay lifestyle is determined accordingly.

So, as regards Marxist parties and groups, I think that a gay person should seriously consider, not the promises that are made when they are looking for every bit of support they can get, but the logical implications of their anti‐​individualist philosophy, and their actual conduct once they are securely in power.

Since they partially share the heritage of Classical Liberalism, democratic socialists and left‐​liberals have been much more helpful to the cause of gay liberation. Much of the progress in recent years in repealing laws in this area has been due to them. But too often, even when they are more or less rational on the subject, they are, either for reasons of temperament or politics, much too timid. Just as they tend to support legalization of marijuana, but not—heaven forbid!—of “hard” drugs (or until the results of an indefinite number of tax‐​subsidized “studies” have come through), so many of them are generally in favor of gay rights, but nearly all shy away from the right of homosexual couples to adopt children, or even to have their unions legally recognized. Moreover, their attitudes are often tainted by an offensive, psychiatrically‐​rooted condescension: basically, a these‐​people‐​are‐​sick‐​and‐​need‐​help‐​not‐​punishment approach. What socialists and left‐​liberals lack—it’s almost a defining characteristic—is the fundamental laissez‐​faire slant on things: that, all in all, it’s best to leave peaceful people alone and let them arrange matters to suit themselves. It’ll all work out, no need to worry.—Actually, instead of fretting about them, why don’t you go out and do what you’re interested in … ?

And as for the run‐​of‐​the‐​mill liberal politicians, we have a right to suspect the extent of their genuine tolerance. Consider, for example, one of the more “liberal” of these men, Sargent Shriver (who was McGovern’s Vice Presidential candidate in 1972). In a speech in Chicago to Mayor Daley’s precinct workers, on October 24, 1972, Shriver whiningly complained of the unfair attacks on McGovern in these terms: “And then they say that George McGovern wants to give blanket amnesty to everybody—draft dodgers, deserters, queers, kooks …” (New York Times, November 12, 1972. Sec. 4—notice that, in his frenzy, Shriver does not even take the trouble to make sense: “blanket amnesty to queers?”) I think you and I have a good idea of the real feelings on homosexuals of anyone likely to become the candidate for President of the Democratic Party.

Last of all, it should be obvious that the conservatives cannot be trusted in this area. Even their rhetorical commitment to individual freedom has always been oddly selective: freedom of business enterprise—but not for the narcotics or pornography business; devotion to the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—but not when overseas imperialist adventures require the conscription of American youths; pride in being a citizen of “the freest land on earth”—but a central part of their image of America has always somehow been the House Un‐​American Activities Committee and the sainted FBI. In short, what conservatives lack—it’s almost their defining characteristic—is any sense that politics should be about principle.

A few of the more intellectual of the conservatives are now belatedly coming to the point of view that the “social fabric” would suffer no very grave rupture if homosexual acts by consenting adults, performed in the very strictest privacy of course, were made legal. Thus these writers come up to the usual level of conservative statesmanship: drifting with the tide. Others, though, are still toying with the grand design of an alliance between subsidy‐​hunting Big Business and its hangers on, and the Wallacites. In this strategy, the raw meat to be thrown to the followers of George Wallace to induce them to come along will include repression of the “decadent,” “effete” counter‐​culture, of which the gay liberation movement is seen as a particularly threatening, though vulnerable, part.

For anyone interested in gay rights, it is a waste of time to consider associating oneself with either the conservatives or the Marxists. And I think there is serious reason to doubt the reliability or sincerity of most leftists and liberals on the question. Nonetheless, political action is necessary to attain the basic legal framework of equality of individual rights, from which we can then go on, through voluntary action, to total social acceptance and integration into a free culture. What to do?