Peace and Freedom Party has stood in strong support of LGBTQ+ Rights from the very beginning!

August 15, 2025
Kathy Labriola
Editors note: In February 1970, at the second Peace and Freedom Party Convention and Celebration, over 400 activists met at Long Beach State University. They added a Gay Liberation plank to the PFP platform. It was the first Gay Liberation plank in any platform of any ballot qualified party. The Party has been continuous in its support for LGBTQ+ rights and platform language has often been updated. A new revision will be on this website soon.

Peace and Freedom Party has stood in strong support of LGBTQ+ rights from the very beginning! I moved to California from New Jersey in 1974, and I first heard of the Peace and Freedom Party through meeting P&F founding members and devoted indefatigable organizers and activists Hilda Cowan and Emma Mar (Presente!) in 1977. I met them at a feminist meeting, and they were both wearing buttons that said, “In the Peace and Freedom Party,  Women Run for Office, Not for Coffee.”
When I asked Hilda and Emma about the Party, the ever-organized Emma pulled out voter registration forms from her huge black patent leather purse (which elegantly matched her gleaming black patent leather pumps), and she gently urged me to abandon “the do-nothing capitalist Democratic Party and re-register Peace and Freedom Party,” which I immediately did without hesitation. She reached back into that purse and pulled out a copy of the Peace and Freedom Party's platform, which to my amazement and delight included a page supporting what was then called “Gay Liberation.” This plank in the Party platform unapologetically and unequivocally called for full and equal rights for all “gay” people. We were all called “gay” back then, because apparently lesbians, bisexuals, and trans people had not yet been invented, or at least we were not recognized as distinct from other “gay” people.
As a card-carrying bisexual since 1969, I was accustomed to the sectarian left parties being virulently homophobic, due to a very backwards belief that “homosexuality” (as the straights called it) was “counter-revolutionary” and was a “decadent bourgeois invention that was part of the sickness of capitalism.”  Many of these vanguard parties went so far as to expel any queer folks that had the courage to come out of the closet or who were “outed” after being seen by their comrades coming out of a gay bar, or if some gossip “implicating” them as gay reached party leaders.  So it was fantastic to discover that Peace and Freedom supported gay rights and even advertised the fact in their official platform! It was not until at least 25 or 30 years later that other Left parties finally got over themselves and started to begrudgingly support queer rights. As always, Peace and Freedom Party was WAY ahead of the curve!
A few years ago I was asked to talk about the struggle for queer liberation at one of Peace and Freedom's monthly Saturday “Suds and Socialism” events at the Starry Plough Pub in Berkeley. I am reiterating below some of the topics I covered:

LGBT people are an oppressed class similar to all other oppressed groups in four important ways:

1. We experience discrimination in jobs, housing, access to health insurance and inadequate medical care, credit, tax laws, etc.

2. We are ghettoized and experience social ostracism being seen as a “despised other.”

3. We live with the constant threat of violence and hate crimes.

4. We can be scapegoated by the state, the church, and capitalist bosses whenever convenient, either for taking good jobs, corrupting the morals of youth, molesting children, destroying the family, spreading diseases, or disobeying “God's laws.”

However, we are very different from other oppressed minorities in four important ways:

1. We are “visible at will,” as we can hide our membership in this oppressed group by staying in the closet and living a lie, trying to pass as straight. Women, people of color, and most other minority groups do not have the option of pretending to be of another race or gender (although some have been able to pass).

2. It has been a pervasive belief that LGBT people “choose” to be gay, and that we could “choose” to be straight if we wanted to. In this regard queer people are seen as similar to religious minorities such as Muslims who could “choose” to convert to another religion. The reality is that sexual orientation cannot be changed, but because many people still believe this can be done, they believe that LGBT people deserve whatever discrimination we experience because we are choosing this lifestyle.

3. Another prevalent belief accuses LGBT people of molesting children, which has not been ascribed to any other minority group. Many rigorous studies have demonstrated that at least 95% of all child molesting is done by heterosexual males, but the belief still persists that gay people are dangerous to children.

4. People believe that LGBT people recruit others into their sexual orientation, as if someone could be persuaded to become gay if they were not. This belief is a similar stereotype to evangelical Christians who proselytize to save souls for Jesus, and do in fact recruit people into their religion.

How did the LGBT movement achieve so much in such a short time?

In the relatively short span of 55 years, gay people have gone from thousands of years of pariah status, living in the closet, and in constant fear for their lives, to living down the street from you openly, being officers in the Army, getting legally married in public, having children and adopting children, and going to your church or synagogue, and being elected to Congress.

How did this happen? Here are the three key reasons, which political activists and organizers may find useful:

1. Coming out of the closet has been our secret weapon!

Harvey Milk was so right when he told us, “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” He preached that we had to come out, because that was a first and necessary step to eventually securing greater social acceptance and political rights. He said that people only feared and hated us because they did not know that we lived among them and were their friends, neighbors, workmates, and relatives. It is hard for people to persist in believing that we are all drooling psychopaths when they work with us every day at our jobs or when we are trusted political comrades or we are your sister or your cousin. Of course, there's a price to pay for coming out of the closet, but there's a high price to pay for staying in the closet: denying who we are, living in fear, and lying about who we love.

2. Committed and relentless political organizing and activism has paid off!

LGBT people have a huge network of political organizations and have worked tirelessly in every social and political arena to educate the public and gain political power. From starting LGBTQ caucuses in many labor unions and getting equal protections into our union contracts, to joining the PTA in the kids’ schools, to lobbying our elected officials on gay rights, to writing (and passing) gay rights ordinances, to starting bands, to publishing queer newspapers and other propaganda organs, to picketing companies that discriminate against queer workers, to running for office at all levels, “We are everywhere!” as lesbian comedian and activist Robin Tyler always said. Every year and on all fronts, we have “pushed the envelope” to expand LGBTQ rights a little farther.

3. The tragedy of the AIDS epidemic put a human face on the gay community, and our response to this plague was a model for the world.

Hundreds of thousands of gay men died from AIDS during the 1980's and 90's. While the epidemic did fuel some hysteria about gay people being vectors of disease, it was a tragedy of such immense proportions that nearly every straight person in America eventually had a gay brother, uncle, co-worker, or friend who died from AIDS. In addition, the LGBT community's response to AIDS involved incredibly effective organizing, educating, agitating, and care-giving, setting an example and creating a model that was copied around the world.

The LGBT movement faces similar choices to other oppressed classes. Boiled down to its essence, those two options are:

Assimilate and claim equal rights:

“Give us a piece of the pie.” We can try to prove to the straight world that we are “just like you” and deserve the same rights and privileges as you. When we prove we are not a threat to you, then we can ask for social acceptance and an end to all forms of discrimination based on sexual orientation, and become integrated into the system.

Two manifestations of this approach are the decades-long and ultimately successful fight to allow gay people to join the military and for queer couples to legally marry. Many radical queers have been horrified by the focus on pleading for entry into two of the pillars of the capitalist state: the military and the nuclear family.

OR

Unite with other oppressed classes to fight against the capitalist system:

For the first few decades of the gay rights movement, gay organizations were very radical and were seen as extremely subversive to the status quo, because gay relationships were not based on reproduction and the nuclear family. Queer relationships force the straight world to confront the issues of sexual freedom, overturning sexism and traditional gender roles, and a new definition of family and community. Many prominent gay rights organizers were also socialists, including Harry Hay, who is often called “the father of the LGBT movement.” Hay founded the Mattachine Society, the first known gay rights political organization, in 1950. (Hay had been a member of the Communist Party who was hounded out of the party due to being gay, and founded his new organization based on the CP “cell” structure.)

The Gay Liberation Front and other queer organizations of the 1970’s and 80’s were overtly anti-capitalist, and ACT-UP and other AIDS activist organizations of the 1980’s and 90’s were very radical groups dedicated to civil disobedience. However, by the mid-1990’s and throughout the ensuing decades, most gay organizations have become much more moderate, focusing primarily on protecting gay marriage and gay anti-discrimination laws against Republican and right-wing Christian attacks.

The Advent of a new Trump administration in January 2025 has created an alarming escalation of homophobia, especially (but not limited to) the hysterical demonizing and targeting of trans people. As horrible as this is, it may radicalize the LGBTQ movement to align solidly with all oppressed people rather than assimilate and become part of the problem.