Pb b -4-W heoy, July '23 1980'-The Michigah dily
Billy Carter
and the Law
BILLY CARTER last week filed as a foreign
agent for the Libyan government. He did it
begrudgingly, he said, after learning that the
Justice Department was finally ready to bring
legal action against him. The reasons? Billy hosted
a delegation from Libya in the U.S., then made two
highly publicized trips as the guest of the radical
North African nation. For eighteen months, the
Justice Department took no legal action against
Billy, who maintained he was not a foreign agent.
Serious questions have now arisen over why the
Justice Department waited so long to begin legal
action against the president's brother.
Billy also revealed last week that he received
over $220,000 in loans from the Libyan government,
though there is no requirement that he pay the
loans back. The money was part of $500,000 he was
supposed to have received. The Justice
Department has a duty to scrutinize what the
money was being used for, and whether the money
was "loaned" by the Libyans in an effort to
influence the White House.
On top of that, the New York Times reported
yesterday that a federal grand jury ignored
allegations that Billy was tied to a bribery plot in
gaining influence for the Libyan government inside
the White House.
The president's brother has been involved in
several questionable actions. And there are many
unanswered questions about the allegation that the
president may have interceded on behalf of his
brother to halt the Justice Department's
investigation of the matter. In any case, the call by
Republican leaders for hearings into the Justice
Department's handling of the case must be heeded.
IR
' FI~~NAWCAL Sl
- THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL
'Yes, sir! Stick your head through that hole and
I'lshow you how to trim $90 billion from the
federal budget!'
Fighting oppression
of gayS and women
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Recently, the Ann Arbor
women's and gay mileau has
engaged inan activity normally
reserved for the right wing: the
crusade against pornography.
The justifications for the an-
ti-"Cruising" demonstrations
and the attempt to shut down the
porn bookstores on North Fourth
Avenue vary. The campaign
against the bookstore claimed
that porn was a "violation" of
"our neighborhood-our bravely
reclaimed land of co-ops"
(Alchemist, June, 1980), but all
claim that pornography induces
violence against women and
gays.
This anti-porn campaign is a
reactionary roadblock to the real
fight against women's and gay
oppression! Movies and books
are not real life. If every por-
nographic book and movie were
burned tonight, the real op-
pression of women and
gays-discrimination on the job
and in education, police per-
secution and so on-would con-
tinue unabated tomorrow. Anti-
porn actions, instead of fighting
the real oppression of women and
gays, feed the growth of their
worst enemies-the Catholic
Church, the Ku Klux Klan and
other reactionaries who have ben
protesting pornography fnr cen-
turies hpfore feminists got in.
volved.
IN THE FIGHT against the
Fourth Avenue bookstore, local
By Irene Rhinesmith
feminists went to the city gover-
nment and the state courts to get
a zoning ordinance enforced
against the store. The-state is no
friend of the oppressed! The anti-
porn forces, by asking the state to
play the role of censor, have
helped it reassert its role of
"guardian of (bourgeois)
morality," in which role it at-
tacks not only dirty books but all
sorts of consensual-but "uncon-
ventional"-sexual behavior.
The_ penalty for "sodomy" in
Michigan is still fJ-teen years im-
prisonment!
The real source of women's and
gay oppression in class society is
the nuclear family and the
measures taken by the capitalist
state to protect it. In the nuclear
family, women are closed off
from social production, isolated
and powerless, trapped by
domestic drudge. This oppression
will not be eradicated by banning
dirty movies but by fighting for
such things as equal pay for equal
work, repeal of all
discriminatory laws and passage
of such minimal democratic
measures as the ERA. Nothing
short of a socialist revolution and
the replacement of the nuclear
family by socialized kitchens,
childcare, etc. can permanently
end the oppression and brutality
perpetrated by capitalism.
The Revolutionary Workers
Group (RWG), an Ann Arbor
cult/sect has emerged as the
hypocritical "left" wing of the
anti-porn movement. The RWG
was at the February "'Cruising' is
protests, passing out a leaflet
with the evasive and disingenous
position that while "Cruising" is
a movie thatshould not have been
made" and which "does not
deserve to be seen," on the other
hand, far be it from the RWG to
have the courage of its convic-
tions and try to stop it-they say,
would only "divert" the "real"
struggle. In two later versions,
the RWG waterted this down
even more. One, a letter they
helped write to The Michigan
Daily (June 4, 1980) signed by the
"Committee to Protest Windows
and Cruising," replaced such
"sectarian"-sounding words as
"socialism" with innocuous
phrases about "broad social,
economic and political change."
Even this was too much for an ar-
ticle in the March issue of
Leaping Lesbian, also signed by
the Committee, where the offen-
ding phrase was toned down to
"positive change." Socialism
as a discount!
The author of this article is
a member of the Spartacus
Youth League.
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WOULDONIOU H(WA L.)SCP FocrP' FROM -P1a MAW,4?