Marxism International

It’s official, Hurricane Katrina has raised holy hell with the Gulf States, especially Mississippi and Louisiana.    MSNBC is now reporting more than 80 deaths in the Biloxi area alone, and much of New Orleans is under water.   States of emergency have been declared from practically one end of the Gulf to the other.

Looks like Mother Nature has brought a little bit of Iraq back to the USA. 

Gangs of mostly black youth, arms and shopping baskets full of looted goods, skirting from one demolished store front to another, oblivious to the cameras and even to onlooking National Guardsmen, remind me of the early days of the siege of Fallujah.  

Disintegrating societies it is said bring out the very best of some and have the opposite effect on others.   The very worst is characteristically displayed by Governor Haley Barbour, certainly one of most vile representatives of the human species ever to darken the Christ-cursed state of Missisisippi.  He is on television right now, his revolting physique grown even larger and more vulturous as he urges the police to be “absolutely ruthless” with the “scum” who are taking what they have been taught to believe are the talismen of wealth and happiness. 

Will they ever get such a chance again, I wonder, in Freedom’s Land and Bravery’s Home, which enslaved one race and all but exterminated another?   Where there are, really, no tenable jobs to be had by the mass of looters or their peers or their fathers and mothers or their sons and daughters, where there is no health care, where textbooks lie in mildewed heaps in schools abandoned by a society that no longer has the need or desire to educate its own children?

There are some, I suppose, who just love a big, strong politician (has this guy Barbour ever held a real job that did not involve submerging his grotesquely ugly snout in the public trough?) who is fearless in showing how tough he can be with impoverished women and children.   With such a hellish talent, why isn’t he in Iraq?

Maybe he could do something about the “looting” by Halliburton and Brown and Root.   So far, the largely white and certainly affluent class of gawking tv anchors have failed to make the connection.

On the other hand, there are the millions of people who will, outside of our televisions, quietly and genuinely help their neighbors and their friends and people they have never seen before and never will again, united as they are in this one brief tragedy that proves again the truth of our culture.

We are ruled by those neither wise nor good.

Barely fifteen years after the eclipse of Communism in eastern Europe, its successors have little to celebrate.   Its economies in tatters, its political class divided into a galaxy of warring sects, unsure of its new identity or indeed whether it has any identity at all other than that of beggering colony of the West, the entities known collectively as “post-Communist Europe” are in deep disarray.

Poland, whose dwindling number of non-descript neo-liberal wannabes are managing a last-gasp “celebration” of the 25th anniversary of the founding of the pro-capitalist Solidarity “labor union” this week, is the poster-boy for post-Communism’s deepening woes.   Unemployment stands at 18%, it’s health care and education systems, once among the most innovative in the countries of “actually existing socialism”, lie in ruins.   Its economy is openly run by gangsters and opportunists, many of whom occupied trusted positions when the country was ruled by the Communists (Workers Party).  Above all, there is a deep cynicism even among Poland’s capitalist and catholic press, two icons of anti-communism that should have been expected to be among Solidarity’s most enthusiastic party-goers.   

So, why celebrate at all?   For one thing, this is not a people’s celebration; rather, it is an attempt by the new class of neo-liberal market “reformers” throughout eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to put a brave face on what has been a human catastrophe.   I am speaking of the ruthless annihilation of social property which has been the salient feature of the “new Europe” and the transformation of the people’s assets into the private pissoir of a class of rapacious criminals unprecedented in the history of western civilization.   

Thus, Vaclev Havel of the Czech Republic, Michael Saakashvili of Georgia, Victor Yuschehenko of the Ukraine, all will be on hand for the festivities.   Lech Walesa, Poland’s galling ex-President and “first-rate second-rate man” (Zbigniew Brzezinski’s churlish verdict) who engineered Solidarity’s founding with cash from the Vatican and the CIA, will be there, too, as will representatives from American, French, German and British capital.

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s  dour President and ex-KGB officer will not attend.  Western-style “reformers” are loathed with an even greater ferocity in his country than they are in the rest of “liberated” eastern Europe.   He recently called the break up of the Soviet Union the “greatest calamity” of the 20th Century.   Most Russians agree.    For Putin, there is little to like in the new scheme of things.   Among the least likeable are NATO warplanes parked along Russia’s border.

But, it is the people of post-Communism who, on the whole,  have the biggest axe to grind.   Indubitably impovershed, their living standards reduced in many cases to that of the post-colonial developing world, suffering everything from declining life expectancy to astronomical crime rates to acute social dislocations, they have rapidly lost faith in the new “democratic” Europe.   Vistors to eastern Europe, especially those who have close family there, return with stories of a new nostalgia taking root, especially in the villages and rural areas.   Today, there is an increasing fondness for the memories of harsh rulers who, it is thought, at least paid lip service to the old Communist ideals of “ending exploitation of Man by Man.”   Gomulka in Poland, Albania’s Hoxha, even Romania’s Ceausescu,  are enjoying a nostalgic resurgence among those who previously chafed under their rule.   “He was at least honest,” a Russian emigre from Boston told me, speaking of Stalin, “and he cared about his people.”

One should wonder perhaps how Solidarity’s 50th birthday will be celebrated.

Or, even, if it will be “celebrated” at all.

One of the great things about being a one-party dictatorship is that you can quickly take action to decisively head off precipitate crises.    Say what you will about the Chinese Communists; they have shown a deftness and agility in confronting problems that would have sunk a capitalist economy long ago.

It is one of the things that separate China from its large and unwieldly neighbor, India.   For the latter, there is that vexing problem, made dangerously acute during a national crisis, of achieving unity in diversity.    There, everyone, especially competing interests among the rich (not to mention foreign investors) have a veto power on virtually anything the state proposes, even if it is vitally necessary for the good of the country as a whole.   

China, by contrast, is a unitary hard state (China’s civilization is in fact inseparable from its state) and can pursue a single goal with determination, mobilizing maximal national resources in its achievement.

There have been dramatic illustrations of this skillful mobilization of people and institutions in the recent past (perhaps none quite so striking as the response of Beijing at the onset of the Asian currency crisis of 1998).   Since revaluation (China replaced the currency peg of the renminbi with a “floating system” on July 21st), the government has deftly managed its currency flows while tightening rules for foreign ownership in a style reminescent of Stalin’s.   In matters ranging from employment to health care to transportation to energy, the “Chinese model” demonstrates that the much-maligned “command economy”, competently employed, is absolutely indispensable in achieving and maintaining a dynamic national economy.

This is an issue that applies to so-called “intellectual property rights” (IPR), currently revered in the West by the same people who used to extol dissident trade unions under Actually Existing Socialism.   Not because such organizations were terribly concerned with the welfare of industrial workers (they weren’t), but rather due to the fact that publicizing their “struggles” here in the West was a convenient means of exciting popular indignation and hostility toward Communism.   Once the offending regimes were removed, the West and its local agents set about destroying both labor unions and workers’ standards of living with gusto, both in eastern Europe and at home.

The current brouhaha over copyright protection should be seen in this light.   In fact, practically all developing societies have played fast and loose with the rules when it came down to the free-range practice of appropriating the creations of others for private profit.    Charles Dickens never received a dime of royalties for his works published in America.   

When it comes to raising living standards or reducing poverty or increasing the national wealth for hundreds of millions of people who have yet to taste the fruits of much of the last century let alone the current one, the (relatively) unbiased observer can understand Beijings reticence to rush madly into every disputed copyright violation.

So China steals, or copies.   Everything from razor blades to farm tractors.   So what?   As Oded Shenkar points out; “fake goods are a natural economic motivator”   Free borrowing is absolutely essential to the Chinese economy.   The Chinese are still emerging from a semi-feudal economy and a pre-Stalinist system of industrialization.   Though huge advances have been made in the decades since 1949, the country still has a huge problem sustaining a stream of innovations.   Furthermore, it lacks a system of law that can credibly meet western demands for IPR protection.   And the likelihood of China adopting a western-style legal system — if ever — is practically nil.

Let’s face it.   The manufacture, distribution and sale of fake products is a huge and lucrative business, both for China and its billions of customers around the world.   Beijing is not likely to willingly adopt punitive measures toward counterfeiters that their fiercest critics in the West abjured when they were in a comparable stage of development.   Especially when such fakery is done on the cheap; there are no royalties, or liability costs, and — best of all– someone else (and a potential adversary at that) foots the bill for the R&D.  

It’s perfect.

So why should China pay more than lip service to the vigorous prosecution of copyright violators and knock-off artists?   It shouldn’t.   Doing so, first of all, would be to court massive unemployment and social unrest.   Secondly, innovation and experimentation with existing standard products would be adversely affected, thus hindering the development of new products within the indigenous economy.   But, most importantly of all, it would set a dangerous precedent in altering a fundamental law of China’s “market socialism” and might even compromise the rights of Chinese IPR holders, as well as those foreign firms who facilitate the legal transfer of technology. 

And legal opinion is split as to whether exporting a fake product even constitutes a sale under Chinese law.

What is coming to be universally acknowledged is that we are entering a period where the enforcement of copyright — at least in forms envisaged by Wall Street — will be a pipe dream.   Corporations will continue to try new and ingenious ways to thwart the copycats.   Innovations in the realm of technology, governance and knowledge compartmentalization can temporarily disable and delay the illicit appropriation of new products, but in the end such attempts will probably prove futile.  

Intellectual property rights, like other rights which arose under the auspices of western capitalist development, will in all likelihood have to undergo substantial modifications in real-world markets before they become tenable on a global scale.   And probably not before China itself is ready to advantaegously adopt them.

I’ve been in and out of town this past week and consequently frivolities like blogging have suffered both from lack of time and my now legendary ADD.   There’s just so much to do when you’re out and about, and so much fun to be had doing it that it is easy to become sidetracked by superfluities

(Note: friends tell me I’m a bit lazy.  I disagree, but I do seem to have this need to be constantly entertained).  

But, in any case,  I’m back.  

There’s been a lot to blog about, too.   As usual, though, the really important news is eclipsed by the superfluities which overpopulate CNN and the usual chattering suspects  who will, I believe, do anything rather than talk about something that’s actually worth a hoot.

I think among the silliest stories are the ones detailing with ant-like devotion the comings and goings of Cindy Sheehan, the grieving mother whose son, Casey, was killed last year in Iraq while serving as a mechanic with the First Cavalry Division.   The poor fellow had just re-upped the previous August knowing full well he’d be Iraq-bound sooner or later.   He reminded me of that other Nobel Prize winner Pat Tilman, the former NFLer who, eager to fight in the Chimp’s War on Terror, joined the army and wound up getting smoked by “friendly fire”. 

I mean, what the hell were these guys thinking? 

With Tilman, I can almost see why he’d identify with our egregiously shitty ruling class.   He was, after all, a well-paid pro-baller who was due to get his own tv show and maybe even become rich via celebrity endorsements.    If Pat Tilman hadn’t rolled a seven, he could’ve been a free (read: rich) man by age 35, unlike 90% of his fellow Americans, in whose ungrateful name his life was suddenly ended.

But, what about the the rest?   It is one thing to risk (and lose) one’s life for what most of us would recognize as the general good.   It is another to do so for the likes of Mr Bush and his associates and especially that malevolent class of evil-doers forever looming behind them.   Few of us in Southeast Asia in the 1970’s believed with any credulity that that what we were doing was remotely connected to making life better for our loved ones or for our country.   Class lines in the US military were pretty visible during Vietnam.   Mostly poor and working class, we were fighting a determined and ingenious enemy (like now), armed with a tenable world view which in turn was linked with a fierce sense of national pride and self-determination.   And for what?   Personally, we just wanted to get back to the Land of the Big BX. 

And our adversaries, as it turned out, had dreams very similar to ours.

I don’t know that much about the resistance in those countries currently privileged to be occupied by Western imperialism.   I imagine it is composed mainly of souls both saintly and hellish (much like souls everwhere) who are trying to expel a particularly noxious and malevolent invader, hell-bent on remaking the world in its own image.   I wish them well.  At least well enough for them to evict their tormenter.  Hopefully, they won’t replace one murderous gang of pricks with another.

Their targets are by and large those drawn from the lower echelons of American life, inspired perhaps by patriotism and a sense of adventure, but probably there for the most part because it’s a paycheck.   And benefits like a future education or job training which are becoming increasingly dear to the sons and daughters of the working class.  

What would Cindy Sheehan have said if her son had returned home whole and safe, unlike so many of those indigenous Iraqis who statistically become “collateral damage” or “non-military casualties” or who, simply and cruelly, are killed for sport?   One can imagine beaming mother and proud son, standing against the red, white and blue of their hometown of picket fences and Nascar races and serenely oblivious to the grieving mom and pop just down the street.  Or across the country.   Any country.

Without a People’s Army, the People Have Nothing.   Why you fight is much more important than how you fight.   Why do people like Casey Sheehan fight and die for criminals who rob us daily of what makes life worth living?   Who cannot provide us with tenable jobs, or health care, or decent housing, or more than a rudimentary education, or safe cities, or anything but some ephemeral “protection racket” from a nebulous enemy they themselves were instrumental in creating?   And why are such people called “heroes” by Left and Right alike?    Have we finally become, truly, a nation of sheep?

Now, were I a fly on the wall at the imagined meeting of the President and Cindy Sheehan, that’s the question I’d want to ask. 

I wonder if Amartya Sen is atheist?    I think he is.   Rationality and Freedom (2002) implicitly attacks the idea of God as moral arbiter while looking nostalgically back to a time (roughly speaking, the four decades subsequent to 1917) when nations were created on a frankly secular basis. 

Nor does he have much use for George Bush’s strategy of fighting “terrorism” by damning Islam with faint praise: “The respect shown by praising religion rather than praising divese aspects of other loyalties has had the effect of magnifying religious voices–when religiosity in its political use is itself problematic.” 

I heard Mr Sen utter these words in April at a symposium at Harvard (where he teaches economics).  It was a friendly audience.  Most seemed genuinely sympathetic.   If there were dissidents within  earshot, they kept shut about it.   Even when Mr Sen went on to dismiss the idea of “singular systems of classification” when it came to defining “identities”.  “The illusion that one exists makes the world much more divisive,” he declared, while concluding that “Global harmony lies in recognizing the plurality of our identities“.    

Really?   Just what are “identities”?   How many do most of us have?   And to what extent do they affect our values?   Or, our politics?    Professor Sen tells us of his (imagined?) neighbor; “an American citizen, of Caribbean origin, a Christian, a liberal, a woman, a historian, a long-distance runner, a tennis fan, a heterosexual, and a supporter of gay and lesbian rights.”   In other words, people are not defined ordinarily by any one “identity”; rather, they cherry-pick from a multitude of “allegiances”.

The question is not really as silly as it sounds.   In Iraq, the lackey regime is sinking into the quicksand of “identity” as it struggles to produce for its American master a modern Islamic capitalist state.    More and more, however, “multiple allegiances” and a “plurality of identities” are being subsumed within one central goal; kicking the Americans out.

I thought of Mr Sen just the other day.   Someone I like very much and who blogs on things that  matter is taking a bit of a hiatus.   Rather than a verbose “see you later” she simply posted a photo of a distressed child,  little fist clenched to a sobbing face, looking pensively toward nothing in particular.  One gets the idea she is not long for this world, perhaps.

The picture itself is genuine and affecting.   Though not too terribly different from thousands I have seen over the years.   Like them, it makes a “singular” assumption concerning the values of those whose gaze is likely to linger over it.   What is one supposed to feel?   Empathy, surely, though perhaps also a certain frustration or, rather,  recognition that there is so much misery in the world — and especially in the developing world, which this child is almost certainly obliged to call home — that solutions seem nearly impossible.  

But, several of the people to whom I happened to show this pathetic little creature had, frankly, different, and far more troubling,  things to say.   Much of what they said is quite unedifying in its detail but basically it comes down to this: there are too many people in the world, all of them hungry, all of them determined to love.  If this child survives and reaches majority, it will compete in this gloabalized world with me and my children.   And perhaps their children.   For jobs, for housing, for all the resources that make life worthwhile or even bearable but which each day are dwindling in number and accessibility.   It is perhaps better that she does not survive.   Will she?   And millions like her?    I don’t know.   And I am all the better for it. 

So, yes, Mr Sen, we may identify with many things, just like your imagined Cambridge neighbor; But, what do we say when asked about that child in the picture?    Are not such superficial externalities dwarfed by the salient features of capitalist life?   Regardless of one’s “identity”,  or “multiple allegiances”, the unifying epigram has become: 

“I wish to be secure in my treasure”

Enough said.

Despite dire warnings, it appears that Brazilian labor bureaucrat turned President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will muddle through awhile longer.   Everyone by now knows that he was involved up to his ears in various illegal financing schemes for his Workers Party (PT), both before, during and after the 2002 election which brought him to power.  His televised speech yesterday convinced practically no one of the contrary.   There is talk of resignation and impeachment, or, even perhaps, a deal with the opposition Social Democrats (PSDB) whereby Mr Lula would be allowed to limp to the end of his term with the proviso he would not seek re-election.

But, I think Lula will somehow hang on and, maybe, recover enough to run again in 2006.   Why?  First of all, there is simply no credible alternative, from either the Right or the Left.   Mr Jose Serra is briefly riding a bit higher in the polls, but the Sao Paulo mayor (and PSDB kingpin) lacks the charisma of Mr Lula.   Too, he enjoys far fewer friends in the international business community. The far Right opposition is in disarray.   And, besides, Brazil’s bankers, as well as overseas investors, know that stepped-up attempts to administer the bitter medicine of the IMF without the syrupy chaser of “Lulaism” could in the long run prove counter-productive,  even disasterous. 

But, most importantly of all, is the fact that nearly all of Brazil’s 120 million voters stand outside the political system, either through illiteracy (more than 60% of them cannot read or write), or extreme penury (Brazil’s poverty rate rivals that of India).    The elite, those who read magazines or talk to pollsters, or contribute to political campaigns, mask a wretched, seething mass that, unleashed in all its fury, would create a nightmare for capitalism that would dwarf the one it has been suffering in Venezuela or Bolivia or Argentina.

Capital,  for the time being at least, needs left-winger Lula at the helm.

August is the birth month of four of my six children.

It is also when most of us in the human race observe the anniversary of the nuclear holocaust in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and  Nagasaki, the first and only time such new and terrifying weapons were deliberately unleashed upon a largely civilian population.   Its denouement was hardly more edifying.   Possessing a monopoly of such weaponry emboldened Truman to commit mass murder, while opening a Pandora’s box of instant generalized annihilation.

All this to scare Stalin and grab the crumbling empires of Europe and Japan.

It worked, but not in quite the way Truman and his colleagues envisaged.   The Soviet Union redoubled its efforts to match America, missle for missle, and the arms race was on.   But, no matter who was to later claim “victory” in this devilish affair, the course set in motion by the Americans in 1945 has continued apace and in ways that neither side could have reasonably forseen.

Today, of course, weapons of mass destruction have been “democratized” to such an extent that virtually any individual or group of individuals can possess and use them with as much abandon and deadly effect as sovereign states.    Tom Friedman once remarked that eight people, each carrying a nuclear bomb in a briefcase the size of the ordinary laptop, could obliterate Israel in seconds. 

And such a scenario would merely be the inaugaral act in a drama that promises to change forever not only relations between obsolete or failing states, but the very nature of war and peace itself.  

The potential devastating efficiency of  new and portable weapons serves to create an “equillibrium of terror” that achieves a sort of parity between enemies, almost regardless of their respective size and resources.

Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of the non-state actor carry two contradictory implications.   On the one hand, the introduction of new technologies enable even the meanest slave to turn definitively on his tormenter and achieve a reckoning unattainable in other forums.  

On the other, the prospect of impending national annihilation provides an opportunity for even fading regimes to rally popular support.   

Thus, that which immediately threatens the safety and well-being of the state can, over the long haul, insure its survival.    Yet, the effectiveness of the state as guardian and promoter of national capitalist interests is compromised by the increased mobility and firepower of its non-state adversary.

Such a paradox is at the heart of the current revival of the nation-state.   Once thought to be an anachronism, the idea of the strong national government has been invigorated by the war on terror.   Talk of international corporate entities increasingly assuming the functions and legitimacy of parliaments–once all the go in the halls of think-tanks and in the editorial pages of the capitalist press–has been completely eclipsed.    Gone, too, is the notion of the gradual disappearance of the state–the “withering away”which was at the core of the ideologies of Adam Smith and Karl Marx–rendered superfluous by new and revolutionary contexts in which human nature would develop and flourish in a new world free of government.

The growing consensus around the need for a strong central governing body with far-reaching powers to defeat an omnipotent and shadowy enemy has important implications for contemporary politics. 

Now, add to this two things.   The new realities of the “equality of terror”, and the demise of the old dispensation upon which liberalism and its system of capitalist political democracy rests.   If the employment of terror, either by the state or by its non-state adversaries, sufficiently armed and equipped to present a formidable threat to the legitimacy of the state itself, becomes part of the political norm, or, in time, even the norm itself, what happens next?

This denouement holds important implications for a Marxist Left that has travelled far from its Leninist roots.   Should it continue down the parliamentary road the Left has increasingly chosen  in the modern era?   Or, should it rethink ancient strategies that risk becoming irrelevant or even dangerous given the new configuration in world politics?

Later: Lenin & Terror

According to the Financial Times, the fondest dream of Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi has been to privatize Japan’s massive postal service.   It is not hard to see why.  In a nation where $12.96 trillion represents the total personal assets of the citizenry, the postal service’s holding of $3.24 trillion is a sizeable chunk of cash.  The prime minister wants to put that money back into private hands and, presumably back into Japan’s cash-starved economy.   The Japanese parliament said no, so now its members are out of a job, at least until September 11, when new elections are slated to be held.  

Privatization (constantly referred to as “reform” by a risible press) is still the watchword throughout the developed world, and, though only a bare majority of voters favor Mr Koizumi’s scheme, it will likely go through, either with or without him.   For Japan’s capitalist class, there is no alternative; it must satisfy its insatiable thirst for new sources of capital, or perish. 

But, what of ordinary people?   The postal privatization scheme has all the earmarks of Russian casino capitalism; the public stands to lose not only the three-something trillion, but a lot more if a privatized behemoth like the postal service become insolvent.     There is of course widespread cynicism concerning the whole affair.   The Japanese postal service has long been a reservoir of patronage and influence-peddling for the well-placed within the country’s Liberal Democrats, Japan’s ruling party practically since the end of World War II.  

In the end, the artful practice of privatizing and then looting state-run enterprises will share the fate of its counterparts in eastern Europe, the difference being the amount of time required to do so.   During this interregnum, the baleful effects of “reform” may outstrip the sluggish pace of privatization at which the neo-liberals are now forced to march to.   This is the growing difference from the earlier era of neoliberal reform.   And what can be slowed and diverted can be stopped.   And reversed.    Already in eastern Europe and Russia there is talk of renationalization, especially in the energy and telecommunications sector.   It may be that the forty-year trend of faclitating private wealth and public squalor is slowly–and somewhat painfully–drawing to a close.

The first acts of this drama may be played out in Japan after September 11, and the parliamentary elections.   For whatever the result (the Japanese voter, digusted with the shenanigans long associated with Japan Postal, may opt to back Mr Kuizami; the election is simply too close to call right now), privatization will be a long and painful row to hoe.   It can only get worse for the reformers in the years ahead.

Perhaps someone should tell them.

I saw this piece on the Queer to the Left mailing list, and fell absolutely in love with it .   Ms Nair is a Chicago area teacher, writer and activist who has a unique talent for getting to the heart of a question with relatively few words.    We on the Left could use a lot more like her.   Yasim’s words follow:

http://www.wctimes.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=9037

Recently, Chicago’s North Side paper Inside ran a story about Montrose Harbor’s Magic Hedge that should cause concern among LGBTQs. The Hedge is a man-made bird sanctuary, created on a former nuclear missile site; it’s also a cruising area. The Harbor is on a famously artificial lake shoreline. Last year, police arrested nearly 70 men for “public indecency.” (www.wctimes.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?)AID=7264.    Now, resurrecting complaints about cruisers supposedly disturbing migratory birds, the Chicago Park District will add fences and “No Trespassing” signs, allowing the police to “clear the area of illegal trysts in a simple and effective way.” The headline refers to cruisers as “gay prostitutes.” (www.insideonline.com/site/epage/26127_162.htm )   

“Gay prostitution” incites sexual and moral panics.   The idea that gay men have anonymous sex outside their homes reinforces fears about them   as the originators and carriers of AIDS. As for prostitution: In a sane society, sex work/prostitution would be legal.   Regardless, cruising rarely involves money.    Cruisers often self-identify as men who have sex with men, not as “gay.”   Cruising suspends divisions between classes, races, sexualities, and gender identifications.

Cruising has always been an integral part of queer culture, but it’s under attack by gays fixated on respectability.  Arrested men might plead
guilty to save themselves from exposure. Their differing social, economic and sexual identities make them unlikely to organize as a constituency and more vulnerable as targets of harassment.

And there are the birds. The caption to Inside’s photo of the harbor reads: “Along with migrating birds, peace may return to bird sanctuary.” Peace and birds?   A photo of a gull strangled by a stray condom couldn’t evoke more sympathy. Like the swallows of Capistrano, the birds of the Magic Hedge are proof of nature’s cycle of life.

In contrast, cruising is criminalized because it’s perceived as a non-procreative and unnatural activity.   It’s frequently referred to as “public sex,”reinforcing a distinction between personal and private.  Sex at “home” is more valued than sex “outside.” But as LGBTQs know at our cost, that distinction does not always work in our favor. We are always only one arrest away from being imperiled in our private spaces.   We’d like to believe that sex only occurs in “committed” relationships.

The truth is that sex is infinitely varied in its pleasures and can be quick, silent, and anonymous.  Most of us have fantasized about or engaged in fleeting encounters.  Cruising allows straights and queers to commingle and part, without placing constraints upon each other.  Against the cold tiles of a public restroom or in the leafy enclave of a bush, who cares about sexual identity?

We should acknowledge the pleasures of cruising and sex in “public” venues instead of criminalizing them.   Public sex can bring us our first sexual encounters.   And what would sex look like without voyeurism?

Opponents argue that children should not be exposed to sex in public. But cruising is usually silent and secluded. The thrill lies in sex with someone whose name you never care to know. It’s highly unlikely that a child will see something but if so, why not simply explain the circumstances?  Children are resilient and able to make sense of complicated scenarios. Do we fear them learning that people have sex outside their bedrooms? Do we feel such panic when they see straight couples grope and kiss in public?

Cruising is neither gay nor prostitution.  Criminalizing it will not make it disappear, especially since straights like it too much.   Cruising defines a healthy sexual culture, queer or straight,  and it’s a reason why we choose to live in cities.   Cities are where we exercise anonymity, dispense with some identities and adopt others and, yes, engage in trysts. Lose all that and we might as well be stuck in the desert of suburbia, with its carefully trimmed bushes and its utter lack of sexual magic.

Which brings me back to the Magic Hedge. It’s a lovely and justifiably treasured space, but the talk about preserving its “natural” beauty is growing tiresome.   Given its history, it’s fair to say that the sex is its oldest and most natural feature.