An excerpt from Gay Liberation at A Psychological Crossroads by Mitch Walker, Phd.

Via this link.


"The unfortunate limitations of gay assimilationism, as well as the relentless pressures of
conservative social attitudes generally, can be noted throughout the gay community today in concert
with the tremendous losses we have suffered from AIDS. One may fairly observe a manifest decrease, in
some ways, in homosexual community presence, vitality, and creativity, particularly in those
metropolitan locales most successfully and long-lastingly “liberated” for same-sex-loving folk, as one
manifestation of these inhibitory and corrosive factors not presently being sufficiently adequately dealt
with. On the level of ideology, we can see by the relative sterility and stagnation of assimilationistoriented gay liberation theory and practice, in not being able to more powerfully address subjective
homosexual growth after securely coming out as a crucial manumissional factor in our Movement’s
greatest-possible future success, that a much more serious level of comprehension is needed of adult
homosexual personhood, its origins, composition, possibilities, oppression and freedom, in terms of a
more-complete gay liberation.
In my experience, it is absolutely not the case that reconciling to one’s same-sex-loving
orientation and forging a “healthy gay identity” which is socially successful—although absolutely
pivotal steps in appropriate self-empowerment—resolve all or even the most poisonous influences of not
only growing up alone in a hateful, alien world, homocentrically speaking, but on top of this, of having
to ongoingly function as valuably homosexual vis-à-vis a social universe which is still vastly
inhumanely biased against that. Thus, while the just gains we have made in integrating our sexuality and
rejuvenating our self-definition are rightly to be celebrated and continuously confirmed and extended,
these very achievements, particularly in the persistently-threatening context of powerful opposing
forces, can help mask an equal necessity to then deal with deeper-seated internalized homophobic
effects,so as to reach a better and truer basis to be more-fully personally “liberated,” empowered,
realized, and satisfied as a self-respecting and progressively-oriented lesbian or gay human being in
today’s challenging world."