Revolutionary Lifestyles

February 22, 2005 9:42 AM

Wedded by the revolution...
"Dare to struggle, dare to win ... as married gays. After raiding a few Army camps, two communist guerrillas hid in a forest gorge and fell in love. Deeply. That was three years ago. On Friday, under a romantic drizzle in a muddy clearing in Compostela Valley province in Mindanao, Ka Andres and Ka Jose exchanged vows in a heavily guarded ceremony before local villagers, friends from the city and their comrades in arms.
They are considered the first homosexual couple in the New People's Army (NPA) who were wed by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)."
Some reactions. A wedding picture.
posted by talos (30 comments total)

Note the following (from the linked article) - and notice how traditional revolutionary puritanism is giving way to a more rational view of sexuality:

On gay relations

"[We] conducted painstaking discussions to make comrades understand gay relations and gay rights," Andres said.

"Gay cadres adhere to the strong Party discipline. They enhance the prestige of gays in the movement. This has gained positive results through the years. Comrades (male and female) and even the masses have learned to respect and recognize gays and their contribution to the revolution," he said.

As early as 1995, the CPP's Southern Mindanao Regional Party Committee started to discuss gay rights in the movement.

In 1998, a provision on gay relations and same-sex marriage was added to the CPP's guiding policy on relations contained in a document titled "On the Proletarian Relationship of Sexes (OPRS)."

Under the OPRS, the communist movement is committed to guide and ensure there is no exploitation in any relationship-heterosexual or homosexual.

posted by talos at 9:46 AM on February 22, 2005

So if I want civil rights, I suppose I'll have to join a guerrilla faction. Wonderful country, these beautiful United States.
posted by AlexReynolds at 9:51 AM on February 22, 2005

talos: The secondary links you posted don't seem to be working. Could you re-post them?
posted by axon at 9:51 AM on February 22, 2005

For the picture, were you trying to link to this one? 'Cause your last two links are this: http://www.metafilter.com/_blank
posted by NoMich at 9:52 AM on February 22, 2005

Could you repost the reactions & photos links?
posted by artifarce at 9:52 AM on February 22, 2005

Typical, and that whole communist chic thing is so pre-millennial.
posted by axon at 9:53 AM on February 22, 2005

I'm not sure what happenned: Photo, article.

Sorry!
posted by talos at 9:57 AM on February 22, 2005

After raiding a few Army camps, two communist guerrillas hid in a forest gorge and fell in love.

hid in a forest gorge.
posted by three blind mice at 9:57 AM on February 22, 2005

So if I want civil rights, I suppose I'll have to join a guerrilla faction.

Nah, I think full civil rights for gay people are inevitable. How that'll happen, I'm not sure, I admit, but it'll have to do with less and less people caring so much what a few fanatics say.
posted by jonmc at 10:04 AM on February 22, 2005

What jonmc said. It's still the last sanctioned bastion of flaming bigots. It's inevitable, imo, as well. If it weren't so sad to see people continually marginalized, I would take perverse pleasure in watching the anti-gay idiots dig their own graves over the years.
posted by docpops at 10:23 AM on February 22, 2005

So if somebody yelled "Commie Fags!" they would just say "Thankyou, we are registered at the Manilla Bon Marche."

I think that's sweet.
posted by tkchrist at 10:33 AM on February 22, 2005

So if I want civil rights, I suppose I'll have to join a guerrilla faction. Wonderful country, these beautiful United States.

This happened in the philipines
posted by delmoi at 10:37 AM on February 22, 2005

Hm. As sister Jones might have said: They can ask me to dance, but I'm still not joining their revolution!

The early Bolsheviks also preached sexual liberation, but it was pretty short-lived. There's something about guerilla fighting that spoils the romance for me.
posted by gesamtkunstwerk at 10:38 AM on February 22, 2005

links in the main post should work now
posted by jessamyn at 10:45 AM on February 22, 2005

There's something about guerilla fighting that spoils the romance for me.

Well, I guess that ruins my surprise vacation plans for us...
posted by stonerose at 10:49 AM on February 22, 2005

Thanks, jessamyn, sorry for your trouble - I *promise* I'll check *all* the links next time!
posted by talos at 10:59 AM on February 22, 2005

see, this is what happens when cartoon characters come out of the closet
posted by ElvisJesus at 11:03 AM on February 22, 2005

So if I want civil rights, I suppose I'll have to join a guerrilla faction.

Well except for the whole document titled "On the Proletarian Relationship of Sexes (OPRS) bit and maybe the guiding the relationships bit too.
posted by fshgrl at 11:18 AM on February 22, 2005

fshgrl, please don't spoil AlexReynold's "Worker's Paradise" fantasy. Love! Valor! Revolution!
posted by pardonyou? at 11:24 AM on February 22, 2005

The early Bolsheviks also preached sexual liberation, but it was pretty short-lived. There's something about guerilla fighting that spoils the romance for me.

I think the Weather Underground/SDS was into the orgy thing for awhile, too. There's a history thesis to be written here, on nontraditional sexual values among revolutionary groups, but I'm too lazy to write it.
posted by salad spork at 11:49 AM on February 22, 2005

There's a history thesis to be written here, on nontraditional sexual values among revolutionary groups, but I'm too lazy to write it.

..and life's too short to read it.
posted by tkchrist at 1:14 PM on February 22, 2005

So if I want civil rights, I suppose I'll have to join a guerrilla faction.

That's the best euphemism for "move to Massachusetts" EVER!
posted by Mayor Curley at 2:23 PM on February 22, 2005

Huzzah! I think.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 3:21 PM on February 22, 2005

There's a history thesis to be written here, on nontraditional sexual values among revolutionary groups, but I'm too lazy to write it.

A friend of mind wrote his thesis on a subject very close to this. Something along the lines of gays and lesbians in the radical left in the '60s. I believe that he concentrated on American movement, not the people holed up in a jungle along the equator somewhere.
posted by NoMich at 4:18 PM on February 22, 2005

how sweet they are--and it just goes to show--we're here, we're queer, we're everywherewe're overthrowing this year!
posted by amberglow at 4:28 PM on February 22, 2005

So if I want civil rights, I suppose I'll have to join a guerrilla faction. Wonderful country, these beautiful United States.

This happened in the philipines

delmoi, that's the whole point (of the sarcasm)
posted by dash_slot- at 4:48 PM on February 22, 2005

Salamat po, you gay communists you.
posted by snsranch at 5:12 PM on February 22, 2005

Fascinating, talos.

Too bad these guys didn't marry before the election; the neocons would have paid them anything to stump for Kerry. They could have made a fortune.

At any rate, something interesting from the Revolutionary Worker newspaper, the weekly newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA: On the Position on Homosexuality
in the New Draft Programme ... The revolutionary proletariat is staunchly opposed to the attacks on homosexuality by reactionary forces such as religious fundamentalists, and to all physical assaults on, discrimination against, and government repression of homosexuals, which is so widespread and vicious in the U.S. today. In the new society, discrimination against homosexuals will be outlawed and struggled against in every sphere of society, including personal and family relations.

Though they can't quite bring themselves to explicitly state that gay marriage should/"will" be a legal institution, they come close:

As recently as 1986 the U.S. Supreme Court, in Bowers vs. Hardwick, upheld the right of states with "sodomy" laws on their books to enforce those laws even where homosexual sex is consensual.(14) In the few states where laws were passed to allow gay marriage, vitriolic and reactionary counter-offensives were mounted to overturn this. And in September 1996, President Clinton signed the reactionary "Defense of Marriage Act" defining marriage as the "legal union of one man and one woman as husband and wife," putting into federal law that no state shall be required to recognize same-sex marriages from other states and making this definition of marriage binding on all federal agencies and programs (for example, the IRS, Social Security and Medicare, etc.).

Bourgeois secular as well as religious authorities practice all kinds of sexual activity among themselves, but these hypocrites often--and often brutally--seek to restrict and regulate sexual practices among the masses as part of enforcing and preserving the patriarchal family, traditional religious values and the enforcement of gender roles and the exercise of male right. And unfortunately this ultimately bourgeois-inspired (and encouraged) discrimination and violence aimed at homosexuals is sometimes carried out by individuals among the ranks of the people themselves.

posted by taz at 12:33 AM on February 23, 2005

Well, bless their little commie hearts!
posted by dejah420 at 12:26 PM on February 23, 2005

This is an example of something I learned studying Chinese history - it's not easy to dismiss something like Communism (i.e. Marxist-Leninism) as simply oppressive. Complex things can happen - like allowing for less traditional gender roles, improving oportunities or freedom in lifestyle, something that has made a huge difference for many Russian and Chinese women this century, even as civil liberties have be restrained. This isn't to try to excuse the evil that both of these regimes also perpetrated - but the world isn't simply black and white, good and evil. And "to whom" matters a great deal when you are talking about the effect of something like a communist regime.

That said, I know nothing about the current situation in the Phillipines. Is this group a part of the official government, or a rebel group?
posted by jb at 9:24 PM on February 23, 2005