Who Really Supports You?

This post can be considered a follow up to a previous post I had where I asked the question "Who do you really support?" In relation to that idea I was thinking about the obvious corollary to that question, "Who really supports you?" As I was walking through a building at UNC-CH I noticed a flier tacked on to a wall advertising a rally that was to happen in a few days. The flier advertised a rally against Prop. 8 and in support of the "LGBT Rights Movement". As I was not going anywhere in a hurry I stopped and read the flier. It started out giving the time and place of the rally, why they were doing it etc., but then the emphasis of the flier began to change and it mentioned that the equal rights could only be won by "fighting for a democratic socialist future." At the end it finally stated who had written the flier and organized the rally, "Carolina Socialist Alternative". It then listed a couple of web sites about the organization and its afiliations (socialistalternative.org and socialistworld.net (mundosocialista.net)).

If you go and check out these sites you quickly realize what this is about. These organizations are the modern iteration of the communist party (though if you read their sites they very adamantly deny any association with communism. As they point out: "We believe the dictatorships that existed in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were perversions of what socialism is really about.") . As a matter of fact, despite what the flier advertised these organizations have little to do with the LGBT "rights" movement. You have to dig pretty deep into the sites before you find anything mentioning LGBT rights.

The point is these socialist organizations may say they support LGBT rights and even organize rallies in support of them (at least here in NC), but there are a few things that must be considered. Would the LGBT community really want the support of the socialists? They may agree (right now) on many things but this appears to be a political alliance of convenience more than anything else right now. It would appear that the socialists are taking advantage of the current situation and are voicing their support for the LGBT community so that they can get their support. In the end they (the socialists) may not be interested in preserving the "rights" of the LGBT community any more than they are interested in preserving the "rights" of religion. Situations and political alliances will change depending on the political climate.

While I have used this one example, this idea is not limited to this one situation. Many times a particular movement goes looking for support, and they find it, but sometimes that support may be more than they bargained for. Also they may find that even though they welcome the support initially, that means that they now become associated with that support and it may be detrimental to their movement later on.