These statistics clearly demonstrate the impact that Clause 25 is going to have on thousands of gay men in Britain. Nor is it simply the prospect of harsher penalties, inevitably involving prison sentences, which has so alarmed the lesbian and gay community. It is the insidious and outrageous equation of consensual homosexual offences with crimes such as rape that gives an added ideological edge to the proposed legislation. The idea that victimless "crime" such as "indecency between men" in which both parties are perfectly willing, should be placed in the same legal category as such a serious violation of a woman's bodily integrity and self-determination as rape, underlines to the point of absurdity the distorted value system of capitalist society and further contributes to the continuing conceptual and actual criminalization of the lesbian and gay community.
The response of the lesbian and gay movement to these proposals was immediate and diverse. It has ranged from polite lobbying of the government by the Stonewall Group, symbolic direct action from the group Outrage, attempts to rally labour movement opposition to the measures by the Labour Campaign for Lesbian
International Viewpoint #202 • March 18, 1991 and Gay Rights and a demonstration of some 8,000 people organized by the newly established umbrella grouping the Lesbian and Gay Rights Coalition on February 16. This multifaceted approach reflects the diversity and fragmentation of the British lesbian and gay movement, but it has not been without its successes.
The withdrawal of three, relatively minor, homosexual offences from the Bill by the government is a small victory and now several key amendments have been tabled by the Labour Party, in line with its comprehensive official policy in support of full equality for lesbians and gay men. The first, which has been endorsed by the Labour leadership, is simply to remove the three consensual acts from the Bill. A slightly stronger amendment backed by left Labour MPs such as Ken Livingstone and Tony Benn would effectively remove the threat of prison sentences for all consenting sexual offences - heterosexual and homosexual - committed by persons from the age of 16 upwards. However, it is unclear whether the Labour Party will exert discipline on their MPs to vote either for or against the amendments.
No place for equal rights
A government measure which has received altogether less attention, despite the fact that its ideological consequences are more far reaching than Clause 25, is Paragraph 16 of the draft Guidelines on Fostering. These were issued for consultation by the Department of Health just before Christmas, and declare that" ...the chosen way of life of some adults may mean that they would not be able to provide a suitable environment for the care and nurture of a child... 'Equal rights' and 'gay rights' policies have no place in fostering services."
These Guidelines are not legally binding. Local authorities must have regard to them in drawing up and carrying out their fostering policies, but do not have to follow them. However, as in so many similar instances, particularly in the area of lesbian and gay equality, it is likely that local authorities will take such government advice unless there is a substantial and public campaign on the issue. As with Section 28 of the Local Government Act, if councils are not actively pressured they will needlessly self-censor. The effect of the paragraph, if it is implemented by local authorities, will be to exclude lesbians and gay men from consideration as foster parents, simply because of their sexuality, rather than being judged on the same rigourous criteria as other potential fosterers.
This will have a far from negligible impact as a considerable number of lesbians and gay men do foster and growing numbers are applying. The very many children in local authority institutions, looking for foster homes, gives this measure a twofold detrimental effect.
There will also be a much wider, ideological, impact, which will be strengthened but will not depend on the actual implementation of the paragraph by local councils. This proposal serves to reinforce once again the status of lesbians and gay men as second class citizens, unfit to raise or care for children. care for children. It will exacerbate and deepen existing inequalities and prejudice and in particular, it will add to the climate of fear and intimidation already surrounding lesbian mothers. Is the next step to remove children from existing households where the parents or carers are lesbian and gay? Thread runs through attacks
Paragraph 16 picks up a thread which has been running through all of the Tory attacks on the lesbian and gay community in recent years — a clear focus on the issue of lesbians and gay men and children, and on lesbian mothers in particular — and takes it several steps further.
It coincides with a High Court ruling that a lesbian couple in Newcastle-onTyne may not adopt a two year old boy who had been placed with them by the city council's social services department. This case has been surrounded by media hysteria from the outset, orchestrated largely by Tory Party Central Office and epitomized by bigoted outpourings from the gutter press. Unfortunately, as with the vast majority of these attacks on lesbian mothers and lesbian and gay parenting in general, the response from the movements to paragraph 16 has been inadequate.
The issue seems (like the Embryology
Act before it to fall uncomfortably between the central concerns of the lesbian and gay movement and the central concerns of the women's movement and though lesbian activists in groups such as
Lesbian Action are working to galvanize and mobilize both, neither has really risen to the challenge.
The lesbian and gay movement in particular has prioritized Clause 25 - its general drift away from radicalism over the last period has turned the numerical domination of gay men more and more into a political domination, reflected by the media and by activists.
The women's movement has not provided any counterweight to this; lesbian issues remain on the fringes. The Labour
Party, meanwhile, has expressed its opposition to this proposal only privately. The massive offensive to buttress the nuclear family launched by the Thatcher government has not ceased with her downfall.
It continues on apace, with lesbians and gay men still at the sharp end. It is essential that resistance to this project is built as widely as possible, to prevent the consolidation of the successes it has scored so far, and to defend the lives of lesbians and gay men. *
BRITAIN / CZECHOSLOVAKIA
The thin end of the wedge TuE Cashodouck dovernment's plans for the THE Czechoslovak governments plans tor ine transformation of property relations are divided into four parts: the "restitution" of state enterprises to their original owners, if they can be found; the "small privatization" -auction of about 100,000 shops and services to Czechoslovak citizens; the break-up of the collective farms; and the "large"
privatization — or sell off of state enterprises to foreign capital, with a limited coupon scheme for the population.
### ADAM NOVAK
N EITHER the large privatiza- tion nor the restitution laws were approved at the time the small privatization started, with 16 auctions in Prague on January 2627, 1991. The restitution particularly threatens to re-allocate many small shops and enterprises earmarked for the small privatization. However, nothing is to be allowed to delay the small privatization, which is an important symbol for the government, a proof that the de-statization is actually starting. For this reason, the instruction from the Czech Ministry of National Property and its Privatization has been to put contentious enterprises into the second round of auctions and proceed now with only those enterprises about which there is no dispute.!
The official goal of the small privatization is to transfer state property to Czech and Slovak hands. Thus, only citizens are allowed to take part in the first round.2 The plan was that enterprises offered for auction would be small enough for citizens to be able to afford them. The small privatization, along with the coupon distribution in the large privatization, was to be the population's share in a deal largely conducted between the bureaucracy and foreign capital. For example, 10% of Slovak petrol pumps will be sold or leased to citizens, 40% sold or leased to foreign companies, and the rest maintained by the present bureaucratic enterprises.3
The privatization of a large number of enterprises generates a large amount of revenue. Where does this money go? In the first place it does not go to the enterprise previously owning the privatized unit. The only possible benefit to this enterprise is to offload unwanted stocks and equipment by assigning them to the lost unit, and collecting their official value in crowns from a helpless new owner.
The money raised is controlled by the
Ministries for National Property and its
Privatization. These bodies use the money raised first of all to pay themselves. Official statements suggest, at some point in the future, the transfer of a part of the funds to act as a state guarantee on loans to private entrepreneurs.
### Privatization funds bureaucracy
At the moment, however, the money is simply paying the day-to-day expenses of a growing section of the bureaucracy. As emigré economist Milan Zeleny argued, the privatization "drains away capital irom the entrepreneurial sphere, where it is needed, to the state coffers where it is completely useless, stops being capital and becomes simply a pile of money, good for paying the wages of bureaucrats and politicians, but very bad for enterprise." It is indeed interesting to note that the Czech privatization ministry has always been vehemently against any lease of enterprises to private entrepreneurs, a measure which would have enabled a much wider participation in private enterprises, and the accumulation of small amounts of private capital, but which would, of course, have raised less money for the state.