Queer Nationalism

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Queer Nationalism is a current within the lesbian and gay movement . It is based on the idea that homosexuals are not just a group with same-sex sexual behavior , but that they form a people due to their special culture , customs and traditions .

Queer nation

The origins of the formation of gay identities can essentially be traced back to the German lawyer Karl Heinrich Ulrichs , who as early as 1867 called for the introduction of the Urnian marriage and suggested the creation of a Urningen Federation .

The idea of ​​being different is taken for granted by many gays and lesbians , due to the experiences of social exclusion and the natural tendency of minorities to seek protection and support among their own kind. The abolition of the criminal prosecution of homosexuals has led to the emergence of a lively subculture in many countries , whereas social and legal equality could not be achieved to the same extent. This led to an increasing feeling of frustration and the desire to distance themselves as far as possible from the heterosexual majority, which was perceived as hostile. This feeling found its expression in 1990 in the emergence of the Queer Nation , a radical organization with the battle slogan "I hate Straights" ( something like I hate heterosexuals ).

A nation-state for homosexuals was proposed by William S. Burroughs , among others , who later changed his mind in favor of an organized community based on the model of the Chinese minority.

The first concrete plan to found a political unit with a queer majority society, albeit below the national level, was the attempt to democratically win the majority in the very sparsely populated " Alpine County " in the high mountains of California through massive influx of queers and thus the majority To take over administration and political formation. The project came into being a few months after the Stonewall uprising in December 1969, therefore developed under the name " Stonewall Nation " and found several thousand supporters, but came to a standstill in 1971, partly due to internal differences.

A first attempt to raise a state territorial claim was made by a group of Australian activists on June 14, 2004, who occupied a tiny coral island called Cato and declared the Gay & Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands . The new state quickly turned out to be one micronation among many, for neither the Emperor Dale Parker Anderson nor anyone else was willing to settle permanently on Cato. The disagreements within the leadership ranks split up into several groups.

The argumentative line of the gay and lesbian nationalists is that the UN in its Universal Declaration of Human Rights

  • in Article 15 guarantee the right to a free choice of ethnicity and
  • in article 16 guarantee the right to marry regardless of ethnicity.

Formal recognition by the UN as a people would in all probability lead to recognition of same-sex marriage and the elimination of any discrimination in the signatory states.

The emerging gay and lesbian national movement shows parallels to the emancipation of the Jews and is consciously based on Theodor Herzl's ideas . An example of this is Garrett Graham's draft of a queer state that sees Herzl's “ Jewish state ” as a paradigm for the liberation of oppressed minorities.

The emancipation proposed by the separatist groups through national identity formation has so far received little attention in the official (integrative) queer theory , but nationalism research deals with this topic in detail.

Nationalism Research

Bérubé (1991) and Chee (1991) were the first to consider the queer nation as a new form of nationalism.

A more in-depth study was published in 1996 by Brian Walker in his article Social Movements as Nationalisms, or, On the Very Idea of ​​a Queer Nation , in which he pointed out the existence of essential features of nationalist identity formation. Walker places gay nationalism in the realm of 'new' cultural nationalisms , which he distinguishes from the old ethnic and religious nationalisms as described by Kymlicka, Margalit and Raz. According to Walker's analysis, gay and lesbian culture meets many criteria in order to be perceived as a people . Walker argues as follows:

  • All nationalisms began as social movements of groups that sought to distance themselves from the discriminating majority society.
  • The gay community has its own culture of its own, with a variety of discussion groups, bookstores, bars, small theaters and so on.
  • has its own history , which can at least be traced back to antiquity ,
  • has its own literature ,
  • seeks access to essential elements of state control in order to secure their own survival (among other things against attacks by differently motivated groups), whereby they organize themselves to a high degree politically, in part they seek to awaken a sense of nationality .

Above all, Walker sees the Internet as an opportunity for the global cultural merger of the gay and lesbian diaspora into a non-territorial, but largely state-like entity.

This thesis is supported by Paul Treanor, who considers a different than the existing nationalist world order to be conceivable, namely the organization of the world in structures other than territorial states. In this context he cites the gay and lesbian community as an example of non-territorial nationalist movements.

criticism

The critics of the concept claim, on the one hand, that sexual orientation is not suitable as a basis for a national identity. Others (e.g. Will Kymlicka) grant homosexuals a status comparable to that of ethnic minorities, but the education of society and the integration of homosexuals is preferable to self-exclusion. The gay nationalists counter this by saying that the integration proposed by the opponents is in truth synonymous with assimilation while giving up one's own identity, because it implies that homosexuals should adapt. The assertion of the lack of nationality is refuted with reference to the arbitrariness of the definition of a people.

See also

literature

  • Bérubé, A. & Escoffier, J. (1991), Queer / Nation , Out / look, Winter, pp. 12-14.
  • Chee, A. (1991) Queer Nationalism , Out / look, Winter, pp. 15-19.
  • Brian Walker, Social Movements as Nationalisms or, On the Very Idea of ​​a Queer Nation in Rethinking Nationalism , University of Calgary Press, 1998.
  • Will Kymlicka: Can Multiculturalism Be Extended to Non-Ethnic Groups? in Finding our way: rethinking ethnocultural relations in Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 90-101.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Carter, Jacob D .: The Alpine County Project Reconsidered (Master's thesis), Boston 2015; Hobson, Emily K .: Lavender and Red, Oakland (California) 2016, ISBN 978-0-520-27906-3 , pp. 34-38; Teal, Donn: The Gay Militants, New York 1971, pp. 314-320
  2. ^ Graham, Garrett: The Gay State. The Quest for an Indedependent Gay Nation-State and What it Means to Conservatives and the Worlds Religions, New York / Bloomington 3rd ed. 2010.
  3. ^ "In modern history, I don't know of a text more capable of lifting up so many oppressed minorities as the Jewish State, by Theodor Herzl." (Graham, 10)