The LGBT Community - Why We Should Embrace Them

 Everyone here in the movement call ourselves by many names such as Paleo-Conservatives, Calssical Liberals, Libertarians, and Anarcho-Capitalists but we all have some major things in common. Primarily, we believe that each person should be valued based on their own unique individual charachteristics, and no single charachteristic alone defines a person such as race, creed, gender, etc. This is why believe in free markets, because a free market is where individuals are free to be individuals and judged as such which gives us so many advantages in prosperity, but I don't write today about free markets or economics.

 While we champion individualism and detest collectivism whether it manifests itself in divisive forms such as racism and homophobia or in the supposedly uniting forms in the forms such as different group movements we feel it still promotes the same collective thinking that ignores the individual and complexity of the individual. The only way to fix this is to get people to embrace individuality, and to understand this we must educate on how collectivism causes the very things these collectivist movements are fighting against.

 So for example, an individualist would have problem with "Hate" crimes laws cause it implies that one murder is worse than another murder cause of intention, a murder in itself is a horrible offense on anyones individualism since it destroys the individual no matter what the motivation. So an individualist will criticize those who lobby government for laws to promote "equality" among groups. This institutionlizes the idea of different groups or collectives in one of the most dominant institutions in existance, Law, when most of the time much of intergroup hostility comes from collectivist thought and other Laws.

My question is... do these critiques and judgements prove counter productive?

 I am proud to think of myself as one of the anarcho-capitalist who is doing as much as possible to reach out the LGBT community to show them how individualism leads to the tolerance and acceptance that any social movement strives for. I have even created the facebook page for The Martini Party, a group for LGBT people and advocates to coalesce around Liberty and Individualism.

 I find that lot of people in the movement choose not to reach out to the LGBT community cause they feel like other social movements they intrinisically want to go to government for every problem, but the reason they do this is quite understandable if you take a moment, let's pose a quick analogy to set the stage:

 Imagine a bunch of kids playing on the playground having a great time, the last thing they would want is mother to come in to supervise and direct playtime. A child comes and wants to play with the other kids, but whatever reason the kids will not let them play so the kid goes to mother to tell the kids to let them play. All the kid wanted was to play with everyone else, but because they didn't mothers restrictive nature was conjured.

 If we don't want the Feminist, Civil Rights, and the LGBT community to embrace government and to instead embrace individualism we need to embrace them in return. If we don't make conscious effort that we want them to come play, then mother will be continued to be asked to fix the problem. Like socialism only would work with the creation of this "new socialist man", individualism and a state-less society can only work if we build a "new individualist man" that is tolerant, creative, and adaptive without no central power. If we create this coalition by embracing these communities in an individualist way by being good friends, co-workers, and overall caring; then we can see our movement advance fowards.

 Another thing that seperates the LGBT community is that they have legitimatley been outcasted from society, especially trangendered people which has led the prostitution and drug use among the community, that wouldn't have to be the case if we just all embraced one another. Women and Racial Minorities have already got over the largest walls in the path tolerance and now only need to shed away the construct of race and gender to move foward, but the LGBT community still has many preliminary walls to get over before they can truly shed the collectivist contructs of sexuality and just be themselves, and embrace their unique and beautiful individualism. Meaning, if we want any community to shed collectivism we need to break the outer cultural collectivism that forces them into these groups and let them be individuals and part of society.


For those who don't understand the altruistic motivations here's some political ones:

- The LGBT community due to the level hostility they get have really built a tightly wound parallel culture, media, and world that dwarfs the kind of grassroots infrastructure our movement has, having that on our side definetley has it's merits.

- This would be a blow to the heart of the Collectivist coalition, and be a big triumph for liberty and individualism, and a step towards world free of coercion and violence.


I have lot more to say on this, but I think I got the main point across, in order to build our ranks we need embrace individuals, and not just passivly but activly to show them love, tolerance, and cooperation that exists in an individualist world.

- Alex Merced