This is a old post saved from reddit.

USSR AND LGBT

Contrary to popular belief,the USSR did not have any anti-LGBTQ laws.

Article 121 was designed as an anti-pederasty law. If you look at the law text,it mentions or at least implies pedophilia.

To quote The Sangha kommune:

Article 121, despite its curious reading, appears to have been designed to protect Soviet society from the menace of child abuse and paedophilia, although it is recorded that Soviet academia was interested in the practice of homosexuality from a medical perspective, and attempting to ascertain its root cause (with a number of early Soviet researchers following the Czarist assumption of aberration). This did not mean that homosexuals were persecuted – far from it – the general underlying trend in the USSR was to end all oppression, and facilitate the integration of the individual into the collective.

https://thesanghakommune.org/2016/12/28/the-ussr-and-homosexuality-article-21/

Stalin himself wasn’t homophobic either, Georgy Chicherin,a known Homosexual Bolshevik,was a close Comrade of Stalin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgy_Chicherin

At one point, Chicherin announced that he wanted improved relations with foreign countries to encourage investment,this policy was enthusiastically supported by Joseph Stalin,and he said this:

“it can hardly be doubted that Comrade Chicherin is better informed about the mood in foreign investment circles that any of us” - J.V Stalin

Reiman, Michal: Birth of Stalinism, pp. 39-40 John Holroyd-Doveton Maxim Litvinov p 99

There’s no evidence that Stalin was homophobic in any Russian language text

https://thesanghakommune.org/2017/07/07/on-why-stalin-was-not-a-homophobe/

There’s no objective, verifiable evidence of a persecution of homosexuals in the USSR

To quote Sangha Kommune again:

Research By Adrian Chan-Wyles PhD

The fact that the Soviet Union was considered enlightened and tolerant demonstrates that these laws were not applied as a deliberate attack upon homosexuals – although in the 1930’s, certain homosexual activity became associated with specific counter-revolutionary activity. In this regard, homosexuals who strove to bring-down the USSR were treated as ‘criminals’ – just as their heterosexual colleagues. Soviet records demonstrate that Joseph Stalin… was responding to various police reports about contemporary counter-revolutionary activities (usually within major cities). ACW 5.1.2016

Modern (capitalist) Russia has now imported much of the anti-Soviet Cold War disinformation fabricated by the US (and her allies) between 1945 – 1991. As a result, many modern Russian authors side with the reactionary forces of capitalism and adopt this pseudo-history as their own (apparently not realising its ‘racist’ anti-Slavic nature). The above article is anti-Soviet and is designed to give the impression that the USSR carried-out a continued pogrom against homosexuals – even though its author continuously states that there is no evidence to support his claims. Indeed, the only evidence the author can muster is ‘Western’ Cold War authors whose work – as pieces of official fiction – contain no Russian language sources. However, I have quoted this piece where I have been able to verify the facts within Russian language sources. It remains informative on two counts, 1) as a narrative history of homosexuality in Russia from early times to present, and 2) as a study of modern (Russian) anti-Soviet literature. I have found no objective, verifiable evidence of a deliberate persecution of homosexuals in the USSR. ACW 29.10.2018

https://thesanghakommune.org/2017/01/05/the-ussr-and-homosexuality-part-iii-rsfsr-article-154a/

Hope this helps.

I haven’t got any sources to hand but since nobodies commented I’ll give a quick run down of my understanding. (Anyone with a better understanding by all means correct anything I’ve misunderstood)

TAKE THIS WITH A HUGE PINCH OF SALT

Lenin decriminalised it, stalin recriminalised it due to a misunderstanding that it was linked to pedophilia (that old reactionary chesnut) but take that with a pinch of salt as that’s just what I’ve heard.

I’ve also heard that the Russian orthodox Church which gained power slowly over the years was a contributing factor in the continued bad takes on lgbtqi+ rights.

However it’s important to remember that the GDR had insanely progressive lgbtqi+ and women’s rights so that would contrast that narrative which makes me think the idea that the Soviet Union was homophobic is misrepresented.

In terms of china under Mao they had quite Conservative views which were absolutely exported to them as a result of colonialism and tracked throughout the revolution until after Mao and the gang of 4. However this changed due to the reforms brought in post Tianamen Square protests.

From what I’ve heard from comrades China are constantly improving and given that modern China hasn’t had the same amount of time or privilege afforded to them as say a lot of western capitalist countries to develop regarding social issues they’ve progressed much quicker in terms of acceptance.

There’s trans clinics to facilitate care of trans youth, their version of Oprah is a trans women. They are making huge strides that are forgotten or overlooked because of propaganda by the west.

Another thing I’ve heard is that in Chinese culture parents are usually not bothered about other people being lgbtqi+ (any more than western parents) but don’t like the idea of their kids being queer. This is identical to Britain in the 90s and even now so I think it’s unfair to characterise china as somehow more regressive in regards to lgbtqi+ rights. What I think is fair to say is that they still have a way to go in terms of wider acceptance and changing attitudes but that can’t happen overnight and by that metric so do all western countries.

I think a huge part of the propaganda around lgbtqi+ issues is that the west are somehow super progressive and accepting because we have more public representation and pride etc but that ignores the systemic bigotry lgbtqi+ people face in e.g. the UK today.

Rampant transphobia, politicians demonising and blaming lgbtqi+ for monkey pox is a recent one, queer people still being assaulted on public transport, intersex kids being forced into surgery without a choice, the refusal to recognise Non-Binary in medicine. The west is no more progressive, we just shout about it more as a way to present ourselves as progressive and allies to the queer community because it aids in the demonisation of other countries.

Obviously this is a lot of “what I’ve heard” from people on lemmygrad and irl so again don’t take this as gospel but I think for people (not you, mostly western leftists) to characterise either the soviet Union or China as somehow more homophobic than the west is ignorant and misinformed. Hell Churchill had Alan Turning (the man who cracked the enigma code and saved the UK from the nazis) chemically castrated against his will for being gay which led to his suicide and the British police with George Orwells help rounded up gays and communists sooooo 🤷

Edit: oh and also UK and American doctors categorising AIDS as a gay only disease in the 80s (GRIDs = gay related immuno deficiency) which shows the bigotry and arrogance of the medical systems in Western countries. Something both soviet and Chinese doctors have not done as far as i’m aware.

I have no sources on hand about USSR, but from what I recall, after the revolution they struck down a bunch of old Tsar-era laws which happened to include anti-homosexuality laws. So, it was not really done with homosexual rights in mind exactly. And then it was recriminalized, due to a common attitude of homosexuality being associated either with pedophilia and/or with the bourgeoisie. Meanwhile during the Red Scare in the U.S., gays were specifically investigated because they were seen as more likely to be communist (and were also accused of pedophilia)…I’d say my first impression is that it seems like homophobia was just the prevailing attitude of the time and people would associate homosexuality with whatever they were opposing, probably in some cases mistakenly and in some cases opportunistically.

Regarding present-day China:

Here is a video from 2019, Homosexuality in China. The lady in this channel is a member of the Communist Party of China and the guy is her husband who has studied Chinese philosophy. They speak in Spanish but there are English subs. They have another video from 2021: Does China Ban the LGBT movement?

Here are some quotes from them I have pulled and shortened from the transcript of “Homosexuality in China”:

Although Chinese society […] can manifest a fairly high degree of acceptance of homosexuality, many parents are terrified of the idea that their son or daughter is homosexual, and this has a lot to do with the traditional mindset. In other videos we have used to say that in China religion is the family, and not having children when nothing prevents it is one of the worst sins in Confucian ethics.

However, perhaps also due to the lesser influence of the salvation religions, especially Christianity and Islam, same-sex relationships enjoyed a fairly high permissiveness from ancient times to the last dynasty of the empire, although, as we have been saying, that did not imply that it was allowed in same-sex marriages. In China we know that now gay couples from other countries can adopt or have children in different ways, but, although many Chinese respect those decisions, as we have said before they would not accept them for their own children.

[There were] some sex education books that were published in 2011 under the seal of the Peking Normal University and with the approval of the authorities, which read things like: “Homosexuality and heterosexuality are types of sexual orientation and enjoy the same human rights, so homosexuals must not be discriminated against.” And he continues: “All people regardless of their sexual orientation have the right to choose to be parents, In some countries same-sex marriage is legal, as in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa, etc. while in our country, at this time, homosexuals are still not allowed to legalize their marriage.”

The sex ed textbook they mention caused an online controversy when it began being used (protests from parents), but they say that a government newspaper came out in defense of the textbooks: “And this is when a second significant gesture by the government took place when the Huánqiú Shíbào newspaper (also known as the ‘global times’), an important medium of the Chinese state press, He got involved in the controversy to defend the content of the books.”

And here is some truncated quotes from “Does China Ban LGBT movements?”

Young people care less and less about having children and that the family moves on, but for a VERY important part of the population it is not like that. And if you have not had children, it is as if you have not complied with one of the most fundamental moral standards. At the same time when you talk about these issues or read the comments of the Internet users, you see that many times the issue of the decrease in the birth rate is mixed. Part of the audience thinks: Now is not the best time to talk about other identities or sexual orientations, because we have to find a way to have more children so as not to end into a society no so aged. That is why we insist so much that here too the hitches to the LGTB movements are often based on the traditional notions of family, kinship and descent.

They then talk about the textbook controversy again, and they explain that some LGBT WeChat groups were removed. To explain these things, they describe that there are some vocal anti-LGBT and anti-feminists online who lodge such complaints that lead to these kind of results:

Not long ago, in the video about the closure of radical feminist forums, we told you about certain groups of Internet users who were dedicated to denouncing them and who claimed the “feat” of having removed it from some platforms. And it is very likely that the same was happening with LGBT college groups.

They also describe that there are some anti-LGBT celebrities and there may be anti-LGBT people in the Party as well. They then say that there are also LGBT celebrities, using a transgender celebrity as an example. They also describe that in China there is an overall conservative attitude toward sex in media and that when these two vloggers themselves were younger, public displays of affection between all couples of all sexualities was discouraged in public universities (which they note, was an unpopular policy). They then speculate that the WeChat LGBT groups that got closed, seemingly by the government, may have had some influence from U.S. agents in them, which may be the reason they were closed, as other LGBT WeChat groups continue to exist.

They conclude this video by saying:

In China there are already platforms that actively defend the rights of people with different identities and sexual orientations, and it is most likely that there will be progress towards LGBT organizations WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS. I believe that progress will be made in this regard, but taking great care that this does not imply promoting the political or cultural agendas of other powers.

Generally, they describe a situation where LGBT people are not violently antagonized, but also do not enjoy the rights of marriage and adoption. There are socially conservative attitudes that they attribute mainly to Confucianism. So, they say that although there may be basic tolerance of homosexuality as a concept, the idea of a more serious and committed homosexual relationship (such as marriage) may face more rejection from one’s relatives due to the traditional cultural values, but note that these values aren’t hostile to the concept of LGBT, either.

They describe that LGBT people will often feel physically safe in China (i.e., safe from being attacked) but might face these kinds of social rejections when pursuing marriage and adoption. They also say that most LGBT people in China tend to have a hard time coming out of the closet due to these kind of family social pressures and often end up in situations where a gay guy and a lesbian will marry each other so that they can then legally adopt children and raise those children with their actual partners.

Please take this last bit with a grain of salt as it is just my personal observations. I have lived and travelled in a few Asian countries but I am not from Asia originally. I would say this description of the situation in China is pretty similar to what I have read/encountered in other East Asian countries in general in terms of the cultural attitude toward LGBT rights around the region. That is, people are not usually violently homophobic, but people on the socially conservative side tend to regard LGBT as something foreign, and/or something less serious or valid than heterosexual relationships. This is reflected by a typical legal situation of homosexuality being legal and trans healthcare being available, but gay marriage/adoption remaining illegal. I have also noticed a general socially conservative attitude (relative to the attitude I see in the U.S.) about sex in general, regardless of orientation, considering sex and sexuality to be a private matter. And, as you may expect, there are also supportive and pro-LGBT people around, too. Also, it should be noted that the Western expressions of LGBT identities and culture does not always match the local expressions of LGBT identities and culture which have their own characteristics, but also may be influenced by the Western LGBT movement(s) in some regards, too.

If you are interested, I made a post about LGBT rights in Vietnam a while ago: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/303794/comment/242153

If anyone has more knowledge than me on any of this or sees any mistakes or misconceptions perpetuated in what I have written here, I welcome your corrections.

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