IN THIS CORNER RULES FOR RADICALS

By STAN BROWN

Some people get turned off to the gay movement because they see its formal, "bureaucratic" aspects and think that it's not "humanistic." In fact, I've been a target of a lot of that dissatisfaction in the GEAR Foundation, so let me take this opportunity to bend your ear (well, actually it's your eye, and I guess "bend" isn't a very appropriate word, but let's not quibble over a harmless idiom) about that problem.

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point of view, but they have an equal right not to have their time wasted when they think you've talked long enough. So that means we have to work out rules (again) for discussion: who can talk for how long, and how a majority can override a person's right to keep trying to convince them. And in fact the whole structure of Robert's Rules, or anybody else's for that matter, was built up by lancing one person's rights, or a small group's rights, against those of the majority.

At first glance, many rules of Old Henry Robert said it himthe Foundation don't make self: "Where there is no law, but sense. They can delay actions every man does what is right in that everybody agrees his own eyes, there is the least necessary, just because one of real liberty." (Make allowance person's missing and there isn't for the sexist language:the quote a quorum. Even if everybody's is around a hundred years old present, some people can twist What he was saying, I think, is things with Robert's rules to just this: It's human nature to make a perfectly simple fight (disagree, if you prefer), so decision: look complicated and let's at least do it like human take way too long to make. beings instead of like animals. I'm sure you could come up And we treat each other like with more troubles with any parhuman beings by recognizing ticular set of rules; but the real each other's human rights: in problem lies, I think, with having the context of a meeting, that rules at all, and it's this: As gay means Robert's or something people, we're forced to make a very like Robert's rules. revolution against the traditional male power. structure that can't tolerate our existence. So why But there are some even betshould we adopt one of the tools ter reasons why a book of rules that structure has used against may not be so much a necessary us since the beginning, its body evil as a positive good in our of rules? Shouldn't we rather struggle. In a book called Rules work by consensus, since we're for Radicals, Saul Alinsky says, after the same goal?

Human Nature

Go, Saul Alinsky!

"Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules." What he was getting at is that we must Would that it were that simple. use the Establishment's I know that you're my brother or procedures against it and to our my sister, and you love me and I own advantage, instead of sitlove you, but it's one of Life's ting back and moaning about Cruel Truths that even so we "oppression." That works in a don't always agree about taccouple of ways. tics, or even about goals and priorities. So right away we need a way to disagree while not forgetting our mutual respect, even though I may get angry with you for not being able to understand something so simple and obvious (to me) as my point of view. In other words, while we're on good terms we need to agree, in advance, how we will handle a dispute when we feel like yelling at each other, Obviously, we really don't need

we're in agreement we need them to keep us on speaking terms when we disagree.

HIGH GEAR/AUGUST 1977

First, as we get used to operating by a set of rules, we become more comfortable in dealing with governments and other ponderous organizations. We can, by adopting the governmental mind even temporarily, learn to outflank the forces that oppose human rights, by tying them up in their own prodecures and forcing them under their own rules to grant us our rights.

The other side of that coin is

elaborate procedures when that operating like a business, or even like the Chamber of Commerce, has some advantages when we deal as organization with other organizations. For instance, the internal Revenue Service requires us to have bylaws before they'll think about granting tax exemption; and big foundations with money to support services like the communuty center look a lot more favorably on an operation that's run along pretty traditional lines.

But, you say, why can't we just agree to reach a consensus? Well, I can't speak for you, but I've got my stubborn moments and so do many of my friends. Sometimes we're sure enough that we're right that we can't be argued out of it; and if you won't give in either, somebody has to back down in a face-saving way like "majority rule."

It gets even more complicated when there are more than two or three people involved say, in a meeting. You have a right to try to persuade everybody to your

The problem, of course, is how to use the Establishment as a means without letting it pervert our ends. The last thing we need is to turn into a sort of

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PAGE 17

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"Aunt Tom," so happy for a little It's unfortunate that we can't approval from the power strucalways operate by consensus, ture that we give up our, with nobody ever losing a legitimate demands. We need to dispute. But, human nature watch ourselves to make sure we don't opt back into the system that way.

being what it is, we have to have rules for managing our disagreements like human

beings instead of giving in to whoever shouts loudest. Finally, If we're smart (AND I know we are), we can use the Establishment's rules to squeeze out concessions that it would never grant otherwise.