I’m hoping this doesn’t start a fight, I’m just curious what the political orientation is of this community. I grew up in a liberal (in the American sense) family, and I identify now as a socialist, though a lot of the liberalism I grew up in has stuck with me, like interest in LGBTQ and women’s rights, environmentalism, etc. Wondering where people here land?
https://www.economist.com/china/2023/05/25/why-the-communist-party-fears-gay-rights
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_history_in_Russia#Soviet_Union
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Cuba#Homophobia_and_labor_camps_during_the_1960s
So no, reality doesn’t conform to what you’re saying.
It was less progressive than West Germany/West Berlin, and only began tolerating LGBTQ people (not granting them equal rights) after opening up more to the West near the end of its existence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_German_Democratic_Republic
Sources: LE FUCKIN ECONOMIST – “journal that speaks for British billionaires.” It’s just more anti-China absurd nonsense. AT LEAST TAKE A LOOK AT MY BAIDU LINK WHICH IS LITERALLY WRITTEN BY A PERSON LIVING IN CHINA. It summarizes things nicely, and you could just translate it.
do some more digging than just wiki.
the sources that wiki links for its claims are: " #37Archive from Resource Information Center Washington D.C in 1998. Their claim of punishment for sodomy and homosexual relationships being 5 years of hard labor was States News Service 28 May 1991; The San Francisco Chronicle 18 Oct. 1992. I found the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper article, but it was paywalled, so I will have to see if my local library has it, or if I can get access to it.
Then the book “Hidden from history: reclaiming the gay and lesbian past” from pages 347-364 “Russia’s gay literature and culture :the impact of the October revolution” by Simon Karlinsky – gay scholar of Russian literature at Berkley. He often contends that the “Marxist Leninist ideology is at odds with homosexuality.” Why does he contend that? Good question. He says the ideology goes against homosexuality. Which is weird, because he isn’t arguing about real world socialism, but the ideology, which is synthesized from many socialist authors/works/theories but isn’t inheritly anti-homosexual
The actual wiki states " there were several high-profile arrests of Russian men accused of being pederasts. In 1933, 130 men “were accused of being ‘pederasts’ – adult males who have sex with boys. Since no records of men having sex with boys at that time are available, it is possible this term was used broadly and crudely to label homosexuality”
And I am getting a 404 to the 43rd resource
The book “Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent” by Dan Healy is referenced a lot. He actually is pro lenin, (and trotsky?), but very anti-Stalin, and uses a lot of primary sources/narratives about sexuality in the USSR.
" “In the first criminal code they composed after the revolution (1922), the Bolsheviks decriminalized sodomy. They did so because they were intent on secularizing and medicalizing the language of sexual crime. Old Testament concepts like “sodomy,” “fornication,” and “feminine honor” were purged from the law. In their place came a modernized, gender-neutral language to describe a sexual revolution. Henceforth, the sexual inviolability of all young persons was to be protected by the state, and the maximum self-determination was offered to both adult men and women: freedom to marry and divorce without having to explain why, freedom to engage in harmless consensual sexual relations without the interference of a moralizing higher authority. Homosexual relations were not explicitly welcomed by the Bolsheviks and raised to an equal status with heterosexuality. Yet they were regarded in principle as no great vice. The majority of Bolsheviks perhaps subscribed to the view that homosexuality was a medical condition, probably (if they read the popular sex advice tracts that they sponsored) a hormonal anomaly, and perhaps one day science would be able to control or even eradicate it. In the meantime, the legal persecution of homosexuals found in Britain and Germany was seen as irrational, reactionary, and bourgeois.” — Daniel D Hailey
and from the wiki ITSELF!!
“Soviet legislation does not recognise so-called crimes against morality. Our laws proceed from the principle of protection of society and therefore countenance punishment only in those instances when juveniles and minors are the objects of homosexual interest (emphasis mine, because that is literally what I was fucking saying)”
—Sereisky, Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1930, p. 593
DO YOU NOT READ? Even from le ant-commie wiki. 5 short paragraphs are all for “Stalin era”
and again, this is in THE FUCKING 1930s. THE BASTION OF “LIBERAL DEMOCRACY” IN AMERIKKKA IS LYNCHING BLACK PEOPLE
Also, the thing about Cuba is again, a myth. I am not going into that. But you can’t use WIKI AS A SOURCE. They are a compilation of sources. Can give a good run-down on things. Generally bad for political stuff. And there is a lot more shit I wanna say but I have to go to work very soon.
ALSO YOUR FUCKING NONSENSE ABOUT THE DDR IS STRAIGHT-UP INCORRECT. LIKE ACTUALLY STUPID. LIKE THE MOST STUPID THING I HAVE HEARD ALL DAY. AFTER HEARING THAT, I AM ENDING THIS CONVERSATION.
I am going to touch le grass. not bother replying to Kautsky
Even the wikipedia article on LGBT rights in Germany, despite being very slanted and anti-communist, admit that West Germany had no national progress in gay rights until after the cold war. Saying the West/West Germany was more progressive and tolerant is just straight up false.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Germany
The US didn’t decriminalize homosexuality until 2003, decades after most of the Eastern Bloc. You’re kidding yourself.
Wikipedia links got thrown around like it’s the absolute truth source, people would frown upon Wikipedia link back then and linking them is more of a reference. For sensitive topic like politic, people should praise a big doubt if it’s from Wikipedia.
Furthermore, linking and not even quoting relevant points is just lazy and low effort.