By Gary Kinsman

AN INSPIRING AND broad-ranging queer historian, Allan Bérubé died at the age of 61 on December 11, 2007. He left us with major contributions of exciting historical work, but also important unfinished work that needs to be continued.

Bérubé’s allegiance was not to the academy but to the movement and community. Bérubé’s histories, as he put it, were about the lives of ordinary lesbians and gay men. He was not formally trained as a historian. Instead his remarkable skills grew out of his decade long involvement in the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay History Project and the broader grassroots queer history movement based on developing ways to return our history to our communities.

Some of his earliest work with the History Project was on women who cross-dressed and passed as men. Bérubé’s historical work, while centering on gay and queer experiences, always examined the ways in which sexuality, class, race and gender relations are made in and through each other. Sexuality, for him, was thought and practiced in relation to class, race and gender.

Marching To A Different Drummer

As anarchist communists, it is only logical and consistent with our principles in the struggle for a free humanity that we support the personal, cultural, and institutional fight against patriarchy, hetero-sexism, the gender bi-nary system and all other struggles for queer liberation both in themselves and in their intersectionalities with capitalism, the state, white supremacy, and all other forms of human oppression.

by Thomas Giovanni, NEFAC - Boston Local Union

Anarchist communism is- and has always been- against all oppression and exploitation of people over people including any system where a person or group of people has privilege or power over any other person or group politically, economically, socially or otherwise.

It is for a cooperative and free social order aimed at the equal freedom of all humanity achieved through: directly-democratic decision-making, a social/cultural value system actively opposing domination, privilege, oppression and exploitation and a classless economy where all contribute according to their ability and receive according to their needs.

Founded in 1970, the French Homosexual Front of Revolutionary Action brings together more than 4,000 militants in France who have decided to show themselves. Everywhere and by all means. "Class struggle goes through the body."

"Having no reason for being other than desire, homosexuality is the living negation of false values, sacrosanct institutions and all roles. It is the absolute negation of the world such as it is."

"Lesbians and faggots, let's raze the walls. Let us leave the dumps and the ghettoes!"

May 9, 2008

St. Johns: Results just released from the first phase of Egale Canada’s National Survey on homophobia and transphobia in Canadian Schools reveal that over two-thirds of those students who identified as lesbian, gay, bi, trans and Two-Spirit, queer and questioning (LGBTQ) feel unsafe at school. Almost half have had rumours spread about them at school and close to a third have had rumours spread about them on the internet or through text messages.

"Based on those who self-identified as LGBTQ and who were enrolled in school in the last year, 41 per cent had been sexually harassed compared to 19 per cent of those who identified as straight," said Dr. Catherine Taylor of the University of Winnipeg and the survey’s principal investigator. "This figure is shocking. Homophobia and transphobia is linked to poor performance in school, drop-out rates and teen suicides."

The survey was launched in December of last year and so far has heard from over 1,200 participants from cities, small towns, rural areas, reserves, armed forces bases in every province and territory of the country. It is the first survey of its kind in Canada.

By Michael Bronski, Z Net

Although I've only been teaching gay and lesbian studies for eight years, my involvement in writing about it (and participating in it) stretch back almost four decades. I have learned innumerable things during that time—and engaging with younger queer people has changed my mind about a number of issues. One of the most important changes has come from my realization that teaching "history" is a lot harder than teaching about social issues. Students have no trouble comprehending and grappling with complicated legal issues and political theory. They have no problem figuring out a causal historical timeline, but they often have no real sense of what this recent history felt like, or the extraordinarily high level of emotional content that fueled it or the emotions that emerged from it.

Gay City News, April 10, 2008
Police raids mark pre-Olympic repression as leading AIDS activist is jailed

by DOUG IRELAND
The wave of repression and intimidation of human rights activists and
dissidents in China in advance of the Beijing Olympics has also
targeted homosexuals, according to China's best-known gay and AIDS
activist.

In an email, Dr. Wan Yanhai reported that the month of March saw
numerous police raids on gay gathering spots in Beijing and Shanghai,
and he said that the evidence of a new pre-Olympic crackdown on gays
is so widespread it is clear it is being orchestrated "at the
national level."

Wan is not just anybody. A former official of China's Ministry of
Public Health, he was fired in 1994 for his participation in AIDS
information and prevention campaigns and for his support of full
equal rights for homosexuals.

After being purged from the ministry, Wan founded the AIDS-fighting
Aizhixing Action Project (the Chinese characters for "Aizhixing"
represent love, knowledge, and action, and are a play on the Chinese
word for AIDS). The association also works for freedom of expression
on the Internet and is active on behalf of LGBT rights.

Hu Jia, the former executive director of Aizhixing and a long-time
close collaborator of Wan who is also a noted human rights activist,

Motivation behind bill is a distaste for young people having sex, groups tell Senators

Brent Creelman / Xtra.ca / Friday, February 22, 2008

Raising the age of consent is a veiled attempt to assert conservative moral values on youth, queer and youth-led groups told Senators today.

The Senate's legal affairs committee is studying a Harper government bill that would raise the age of consent from 14 to 16. It will almost certainly pass — no political party has opposed it — but queer and youth-led groups came out Feb 22 to insist on their sexual freedom.

The proposed changes will have a disproportionate impact on gays, said Richard Hudler of the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights in Ontario.

"My first lover was 17 years older than me. And this is common [among gay people]," he said. "It is dangerous — considering the attitude toward sexual orientation in schools — for a young person to attempt to make sexual contact with a peer."

Submission to the Senate Regarding Bill – C-2: An Act to amend the Criminal Code and to Make consequential Amendments to Other Acts, Part 2 – Increasing the Age of Consent (Clauses 13-14; 54; 58; 62)(38)

Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights In Ontario, February 2008

The Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights in Ontario (CLGRO) is an organization composed of groups and individuals who are committed to working towards feminism and bisexual, lesbian, and gay liberation by engaging in public struggle for full human rights, by promoting diversity and access, and by strengthening cooperative networks for lesbian, gay, and bisexual activism.

CLGRO is a coalition of some 20 groups and hundreds of individual members in all parts of the province. Founded early in 1975, CLGRO has concentrated its efforts in the areas of grassroots organizing, public education, and governmental lobbying.

Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights in Ontario

December 21, 2007, Z Net

What's the Matter with Getting Off? A Response to "Getting Off: Pornographyand the End of Masculinity

By Cynthia Peters

by Wayne Hoffman, Windy City Times

Gay historian Allan Berube, award-winning author of Coming Out Under Fire, died on December 11, 2007. He was 61.

His death was due to sudden complications following the discovery of two stomach ulcers, according to his close friend Jonathan Ned Katz, a fellow gay historian.