From revolutionary potential to its demise. Critical positions on homosexuality in three members of the Homosexual Liberation Front (FLH): Juan José Sebreli, Néstor Perlongher and Manuel Puig

Posturas sobre la homosexualidad en tres miembros del Frente de Liberación Homosexual (FLH): Juan José Sebreli, Néstor Perlongher y Manuel Puig

Abstract

In August 1971, the Homosexual Liberation Front (FLH) was founded. The result of the convergence of the Nuestro Mundo and Profesionales groups, it was initially conceived as a space for discussion, but the political situation in Argentina forced the FLH to become an organization for dissemination and advocacy with the incorporation of the Eros group. Far from representing a homogeneous whole, the Front brought together dissimilar positions, such as those of Manuel Puig, Néstor Perlongher and Jan José Sebreli. Although Puig supported the struggle, he claimed that homosexuality did not exist and that the ultimate goal of the revolution was the restoration of total sexuality. The growing violence of the third Peronist government and the coup d'état of March 24, 1976 forced the FLH to dissolve. In retrospect, Sebreli considered the experience a failure, since it did not achieve its objective of raising awareness in the longed-for homosexual community. For Perlongher it was also a failure and, faced with the arrival of the AIDS crisis, shortly afterwards he decreed the disappearance of homosexuality. Nevertheless, 50 years after its foundation, the revolutionary «germ» of the FLH continues to bear fruit in the rights won by sexual dissidence.