Happy Death Day, Che.

I have a piece up at Campus Progress about why Che Guevara isn't such a great icon.

At best, Guevara’s politics advocated for a mindless devotion of the working man (with an emphasis on “man”) to socialism, but left out other causes many progressives have worked long and hard for: equality for gender and sexual orientation. In fact, gays were persecuted following the Cuban revolution. (Poet and novelist Reynaldo Arenas, who included descriptions of his openly gay lifestyle in his writings, was killed as the result of the government’s prosecution of gays.)

Guevara was raised with a Catholic outlook on life, in which the “good” girls saved themselves for marriage. Wealthy Argentine boys tended to sexually exploit the family mucama, or servant girl, and Guevara was no exception. [Jon Lee] Anderson tells of a cousin who once “watched in astonishment from his place at the dining table through the open doors leading to the kitchen as Ernesto had quick sex with the muchama on the kitchen table, directly behind their aunt’s unsuspecting back.”

Read the whole thing.