Communism and homosexuality

LGBT rights in communism has evolved radically throughout history. In the 20th century, Marxist states and parties varied on LGBT rights, with some being among the first political parties to support LGBT rights, while others maintained anti-LGBT views. In the 21st century, communist parties are generally pro-LGBT rights and the only Communist state left in the Americas, Cuba, has supported pro-LGBT policy since the 1970s.

Communist leaders and intellectuals took many different positions on LGBT-rights issues. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels said very little on the subject in their published works. Marx in particular commented rarely on sexuality in general. Norman Markowitz, writing for politicalaffairs.net, writes that: "Here, to be frank, one finds from Marx a refusal to entertain the subject, and from Engels open hostility to the individuals involved." This is because, in private, Engels criticized male homosexuality and related it to ancient Greek pederasty, saying that "[the ancient Greeks] fell into the abominable practice of sodomy [original German Knabenliebe, meaning "boylove" or pederasty] and degraded alike their gods and themselves with the myth of Ganymede"; Engels also said that the pro-pederast movement "cannot fail to triumph. Guerre aux cons, paix aus trous-de-cul [war on the cunts, peace to the arse-holes] will now be the slogan". Engels also referred to Dr. Karl Boruttau as a Schwanzschwulen (faggotty prick) in private.

The German Communist Party, during the Weimar Republic, joined with the Social Democrats in support of efforts to legalize private homosexual relations between consenting adults. Yet, the situation for LGBT rights in the first Communist government in Russia was somewhat mixed.

In the early Soviet Union the Communist Party abolished all oppressive Czarist laws in 1917 related to sexuality. In 1917 the Soviet government also decriminalised homosexuality, and the subsequent Soviet criminal code in the 1920s did not criminalize non-commercial same-sex sexuality between consenting adults in private. It also provided for no-fault divorce and legalized abortion. However, outside the Russian SSR and Ukrainian SSR, homosexuality remained a criminal offense in certain Soviet republics in the 1920s (particularly the Muslim dominated Soviet Republics in Central Asia) and Soviet policy was often inconsistent in terms of pursuing homosexual rights and wider legal/social equality for homosexual people. Official Soviet policy on homosexuality in the 1920s also fluctuated: between legal and social tolerance of homosexuals and homosexuality to state attempts to classify homosexuality as a mental disorder.

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