The following are opening remarks at the memorial service for Comrade Bob McCubbin, held on March 21, 2026, at the People’s Forum in New York City. Bob McCubbin was a pioneering theorist of LGBTQIA+ liberation, author of the groundbreaking 1976 work “The Gay Question: A Marxist Appraisal,” and a tireless organizer who built branches of revolutionary organization with nothing but knowledge, passion, and commitment.
From the Stonewall era through his final days organizing at San Diego Pride 2025, Bob never wavered in his belief that queer liberation was inseparable from the fight against capitalism and imperialism.
Like Bob McCubbin, Melinda Butterfield is a founding member of the Struggle for Socialism Party and Struggle-La Lucha magazine. She is also a member of Women in Struggle/Mujeres en Lucha.
We gather tonight to remember and celebrate the life and legacy of Bob McCubbin — a gay man, a communist, a thinker, and a fighter. He was known and loved in queer communities and people’s movements, from Buffalo, where he grew up, to the Bay Area, and from here in New York to San Diego, where he passed away last year.
The first time I became aware of Bob was in the summer of 1989. I was just out of high school, working at a university in a modestly sized city in Wisconsin. I spent my free time hanging around bookstores and record stores when that was still a thing. There was a small feminist bookstore in town. I went there regularly to look for local activist zines and to read the latest “Dykes to Watch Out For” comic strips.
One day, I was looking through the stacks when a pamphlet with a bright yellow cover caught my eye. There was a picture of people protesting on the front. The title was “The Gay Question: A Marxist Appraisal,” and the author was Bob McCubbin. This immediately grabbed my interest as a young communist because even then — more than a decade after its original publication — there was very little serious Marxist theorizing about queerness. It cost me the grand sum of $3, if I recall.
Several months later, I came to a conference in New York and was excited to see that same pamphlet for sale. I met Bob there for the first time. I knew Bob for 35 years. Because he lived in California and I was in New York for most of that time, I only got to see him and work directly with him occasionally. But every encounter was memorable and enriching for me.
A few years ago, when I was preparing to come out publicly as a trans woman, Bob was the first comrade I spoke to about it. It felt like the right thing to do. I was nervous — not because I expected a bad reaction, of course, but maybe because of the weight of history. Bob listened thoughtfully as I explained that my name was now Melinda, my pronouns were she/her, and my plan for coming out to the other members of the Struggle for Socialism Party.
He was kind and supportive, just as I expected. Despite his frail health, he didn’t hesitate to offer me any support I might need. That conversation was an important milestone for me.
Our late comrade, the transgender warrior Leslie Feinberg, is well known and highly regarded in the trans and queer movement worldwide. Bob was both a mentor and a peer to Leslie — was an example for Leslie, helped pave the way for Leslie’s contributions. They shared a hatred of racism, imperialism, and Zionism, and a commitment to make these principles central to LGBTQIA+ liberation.
In Bob’s most recent book, “The Social Evolution of Humanity,” he devoted a chapter to Leslie’s contribution to a Marxist-materialist understanding of transgender people and trans liberation. What he didn’t mention — in his characteristic modesty — was how his own work helped make Leslie’s possible, just as the works of Frederick Engels and Dorothy Ballan did for him.
Bob embodied Sam Marcy’s saying: mild in manner, bold in matter — kind, thoughtful, an empathetic listener, and a communist of unbending principle. Che Guevara talked about the new socialist human. Che was one example, and so was Bob.
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