Credit Capitalism for the Growth of Gay Rights: New at Reason

Some historians like to claim socialist ideas helped bring about gay rights in the modern era. But they’re mistaking academic theory for reality.

Jim Downs is a historian at Connecticut College and Harvard. A specialist in the history of race and slavery, he has recently published a new book, Stand by Me: The Forgotten History of Gay Liberation, in which he tries to move recent gay history away from an excessive focus on sex and AIDS.

Downs also has a new article in the digital magazine Aeon, in which he writes, “Throughout the 1970s, LGBT people theorised about the benefits of socialism in books and pamphlets and critiqued capitalism in the growing newspaper and print culture.” He goes on to discuss “LGBT groups” and newspapers that “made socialism a leading subject of political interest in the movement.” Most significantly he argues that “if you want to give credit for gay liberation and marriage equality, credit must also go to socialism.” But he’s absolutely wrong, the Cato Institute’s David Boaz explains. Capitalism freed people, including gay people, to construct their own lives free of state control.

View this article.