Early Gay Sexual Politics

The Auckland group inaugurated a Gay Week, culminating in Queen's Birthday weekend. Auckland gays were present in July when the Wellington GLF was formed. Auckland hosted a small but significant national Gay Liberation conference in September which brought together members of the infant movement from all three centres.

But, from the outset, two problems were to bedevil the movement. Political activism was, and still is, a possibility only to the extent that gays are prepared to "come out", a difficult and often time-consuming process of self-declaration homophile. Thus, gay liberation and gay rights groups have, in all parts of the country, been particularly dependent upon the energies of individual leaders There have been cases where a group has collapsed, or gone into temporary recession, with the departure of some key figure to another town, or overseas. One early priority, in consequence, and it remains an important priority, has been to provide the network of support which will ultimately make "coming out" the uncontroversial rule rather than the exception it presently is.

The other problem has been one of internal fragmentation. The pressures at; work in this regard are as diverse as they are powerful. A politically active homosexual has, in the very nature of the case, to be possessed of a certain resilience as an individual. And individualists do not always make good political bed-fellows. There is something of a generation gap. To generalize widely though not, I hope, too wildly, the older hitherto invisible gay will usually have a great deal more to lose than his younger counterpart. And so conservatism and caution may conflict with more militant attitudes.

Again, politically moderate or liberal views proceed from the premiss that the present social structure offers adequate avenues by way of education and due process; for securing full civil rights for homosexuals. Such views are not readily reconciled with those of the radicals who, sensitive to the debates already well-developed within the women's movement, see some measure of social reconstruction, eliminating the various manifestations of sexism, as mandatory for gay sexual politics. Again, the extent to which the movement has been open to lesbians has, while clear in theory, yet to be fully resolved in practice. And so on.