Talk:Socialism and LGBT rights

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um..? is this article for real? or am I hallucinating? (unsigned comment by [user:152.163.100.73]) 03:51, September 30, 2005

Contents 1 Recent changes 2 Points of View (re:Mihnea Tudoreanu's recent edits) 3 Thanks 4 Overhaul of article 5 removed content

[edit] Recent changes

I've made various changes to the article. The introduction seemed to be advancing the hypothesis that anarchists have supported sexual freedom (fair enough) where Marxists haven't, but the actual role of Marxists has been far more variable. For instance, I've mentioned Edward Carpenter, stressed that nothing of Marx's views on homosexuality has survived, but there's no reason to suppose that he shared Engels' bigotry. It also seemed to suggest that the legality of homosexuality in revolutionary Russia was an oversight. While it clearly had its opponents (e.g. Stalin), the Soviet authorities were clearly well aware that it was legal and at least tolerated it. I've also included a few examples of Marxist groups supporting LGBT liberation, and removed the mention of Oscar Wilde in the introduction, as he isn't widely thought of as an anarchist, and this is covered in detail later in the articles.

Two things which I'd like to know more about are Lenin and Trotsky's attitudes to sexual freedom (the article says they saw it as bourgeois deviationism, which may be true, but I've never heard of this), and the suggestion that the Freedom Socialist Party was initially homophobic (again, this may well be true, it just sounds unlikely given their current positions). Warofdreams talk 02:16, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

I've contributed quite a bit to this article in the past. I think the topic is both interesting and important, and recognise that the page needs a lot of work, so I want to encourage others to jump in — thanks Warofdreams for your recent edits. :) However a couple of years as a wikipedian has taught me how difficult it is for pages on culture/religion/politics to be collaboratively edited in good faith. People often seem to feel that they have to defend "their team", and the pages become a battleground of opposing ideologies. Personally I hate this adversarial (or is that dialectical? :P) approach, and try avoid disputes altogether, which usually means staying away from sociopolitical pages like this one! That said, I'd like to comment on some of the changes made in the last edit.

• The new opening sentence "..socialists are ususally associated with support for sexual minorities..." is, i think, wrong. It certainly isn't the view shared by such people living under repressive "socialist" regimes. Perhaps: "Socialist politics in the western world has, in recent times, come to be associated with a liberal view regarding sexual minorities and gender diversity".

• Yes, that sounds good to me.

• The following sentenced was removed: "The persecution of homosexual and effeminate males by socialist states has included castration, imprisonment, labor camps, and execution." This statement seems to be demonstrably true, and important enough to have a place in the introduction.

• Um yes - actually, I just meant to move that statement and accidentally deleted it. Apologies.

• The mention of Oscar Wilde was removed; however, his essay "the soul of man under socialism" has been very influential, and as the most famous 'homsexual' of his time I think he warrants a mention in the intro. I don't have a particular barrow to push about him being an anarchist, but he did say so himself: "I think I am rather more than a Socialist. I am something of an Anarchist, I believe...", and he definitely had the libertarian impulse that characterised anarchists from the rest of the left: "If the socialism is authoritarian; if there are governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if in a word, we are to have industrial tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first." "All modes of Government are failures", he maintained, and described social democracy as "the bludgeoning of people by the people for the people". He also supported the anarchist Haymarket martyrs. The point that needs to be made in the introduction is that the 'libertarian' left at the turn of the century advocated sexual freedoms while the 'authoritarian' left opposed them, and Wilde was very much in the former camp.

• I think that this is the key problem with the article. In lumping all Marxists into an authoritarian left which opposed sexual freedoms, it ignores the Marxists - in the past probably a minority, but now demonstrably a majority - who have advocated them. In terms of Wilde, it just seemed a little odd to mention him in the introduction - who AFAIK never campaigned for any sort of LGBT rights - so prominently, when there was an excellent section further down the article covering him.

• The next sentence was altered from "anarchists" to "socialists" advocating sexual freedoms, which seems like revisionist history to me! Again, the point here is that there was a striking movement within broader socialism at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century that advocated of sexual freedoms; this movement was overwhelmingly anarchist, stemming from these anarchists' committment to individual freedoms in general. It was a libertarian impulse that the 'mainstream' left opposed. I hope you understand that I'm not trying to champion anarchism over marxism, just to accurately record history.

• Yes, I think we agree that this should be covered clearly in the article. I'm just interested in drawing out the detail - that not all Marxists opposed sexual freedom, and that of course few Marxists still adhere to the idea of bourgeois deviationism (although if you were to include the Chinese or Cuban governments, this would of course be many more).

• There seems to be a general softening of "most" and "largely" to "many" and "sometimes". I think the latter are weasel words which make the statements which contain them kind of meaningless. If we can't say that some phenomenon is generally the case, then let's remove the statement altogether. Nearly anything can be true "sometimes".

• I've reviewed my edit. The only instances where I can see this softening are in the views of the left-wing movement in the early 20th century, where I feel it is dangerous to say anything of it "as a whole"; in the number of SWP members to have criticised RESPECT for its link-up with homophobic groups - which I believe, sadly, to only be a few, although I think it would be difficult to find a reference for this; and the views of democratic socialists in the early 20th century, where I agree a source is needed either way.

• In the first sentence on Marx, right after stating that we can't know his thoughts about sexual orientation, you imply that he would "logically" support "LGBT liberation". This is a spurious assertion.

• Well, that is the position of most current Marxists. Perhaps it could read "logically, if he had taken an interest in LGBT liberation, he would have taken the same position"?

• The sentences : "While many European Marxists followed suit, some taking leading roles in campaigns for LGBT liberation..." and "the Freedom Socialist Party and the Alliance for Workers Liberty, have taken leading roles in LGBT liberation campaigns" need sourcing (in fact a lot of the article needs sourcing, not just your recent changes :) . But if true, these are important developments in the relationship between the left and queer/LGBT politics and deserve to be spelled out. What campaigns? What roles?

• In the case of the AWL (in which I must declare an interest as a member), this includes spending most of the last 20 years leading the National Union of Students' LGBT (formerly LGB) Liberation Campaign, also being actively involved in the TUC LGBT conferences and campaigns, and supporting the activity of groups such as Al-Fatiha or the prominent UK activist Peter Tatchell (in terms of LGBT liberation). I'm assured that the FSP is also very active, but don't have any details. Perhaps it should also mention the prominent trans activist Leslie Feinberg's membership of the Workers World Party.

• The sentence "From the late 1950s in East Germany, homosexual acts between consenting adults ceased to be prosecuted" was changed to ""East Germany tolerated homosexuality from the late 1950s." These are very different statements! The first is verifyable; the second is general and speculative.

• This seemed to me at the time to be a simple restatement, but reviewing it, I agree with you - it should be changed back.

Taken as a whole, your edits appear to softening and removing statments that could reflect badly on the traditional left. I hope you can agree that at least some of the changes I've noted above are problematic, as is a lot of the rest of the article.

• My aim is to improve that article, and as I mentioned above, I was keen to explore how some Marxist groups have supported LGBT liberation, and have seen this as being within the Marxist tradition. I don't hold any brief for those Marxists who have advanced homophobic policies - in some cases, murderous ones - and I hope that you'll find my comments constructive.

On another note, I previously changed the name of this page but I'm still not happy with it. As a few transgender wikipedians have pointed out, the phrase "sexual orientation" doesn't encompass transpeople, and some of the content in the article directly refers to persecution of effeminate males. A more descriptive title might be "Socialism and sexual/gender diversity" but feels awkward. Any thoughts? ntennis 04:47, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

• The article is quite short on trans issues anyway, but the only thought I have at the moment is "Socialism and LGBT liberation", but it's still not very succinct and that acronym LGBT isn't always readily understandable. Warofdreams talk 17:26, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your reasoned response. I think it's definitely worth noting Leslie Feinberg as a notable labor activist and queer activist — maybe alongside Harry Hay? Also thanks for putting Edward Carpenter in there. I do feel that WIlde warrants a mention in the intro, but won't push the point if you disagree. You objected that he never "campaigned for LGBT rights"; well aside from the fact that he went to jail after delivering his famous impassioned defense of "male love" in court, and Neil McKenna's biography describes him as "militant precursor of the modern gay liberation movement" long before that speech, detailing his membership of the "Order of Chaeronea" which campaigned for the legalization of homosexuality, not to mention his writings (!!!), the sentence is about queers who contributed to socialism, not queer activists who contributed to socialism. His essay on socialism was and is widely read (it's available free online, and in my opinion is visionary, foreseeing the dangers of a kind of communism that later emerged under stalin).

• It sounds like I should read up on him. I've read The Soul of Man under Socialism, but that was a fair few years ago. Thanks for the pointers.

I probably overstated the "usually -> sometimes" softening effect in your edits; sorry about that. I'll try to better explain my point. Take the first sentence as an example:

WAS: While contemporary left-wing politics is often associated with support for sexual minorities and transpeople, socialism has generally taken a conservative position on such issues, and socialist governments have usually introduced repressive legislation upon coming to power.

IS: Contemporary socialists, like others on the left, are usually associated with support for sexual minorities and transpeople. In the past, socialists have taken a variety of positions, including some very conservative ones. Other socialists have declined to take a position on such issues. Many self-declared socialist governments have introduced repressive legislation upon coming to power.

So you're removing a "usually" from a comment that could paint socialism in a negative light (socialist states usually introduce repressive legislation) while inserting a "usually" in another that makes socialism look good (socialists usually support sexual minorities). But which of these is really "usually" true?

In the same sentence, "socialism has generally taken a conversative position" is watered down to a "socialists have taken a variety of positions". Well, so have christians, but both christianity and socialism have, historically, largely opposed sexual diversity — and, especially when adopted by large institutions, both have been responsible for atrocities against queers. Of course there are dissident voices within christianity and within socialism (ironically in both cases it's argued that the "authentic creed" supports queers), but I believe that the "big picture" should be recognised, and not turned into a "there are lots of positions" kind of non-statement.

• I think that whatever parallels could have been drawn between religion and socialism in the past, the situation now is rather different. There are plenty of Christians who support LGBT rights, but they are less vocal and fewer in number than those who oppose them. The situation among socialists is the reverse.

• I like your suggestion in your initial comments on rewording the introduction. I disagree that "socialist governments have usually introduced repressive legislation upon coming to power" - many social democratic governments have repealed repressive legislation, and many authoritarian self-declared Communist states have maintained existing repressive legislation - still very bad, but not what the sentence initially said. In addition, as the article goes on to say, revolutionary Russia - seen by Trotskyists as the only genuine socialist state to survive more than a few months - did legalise homosexuality. I wonder what the position of the Paris Commune was?

As for Marx, I strongly disagree that he would have "taken the same position". You're implying that he would recognise the oppression of queers in the first place, whereas, based on his corresponce with Engels about Schweitzer, Ulrichs and the early homosexual rights movement, I think that It's very likely that Marx would have opposed the gay-rights struggle (though probably not as vehemently as the deeply disgusted Engels). Marx stated that “the relation of man to woman is the most natural relation of human being to human being” (in Early Writings), and certainly didn't object to Engel's call to root out all the "pederasts" (read: homosexual men or sodomites) from the movement. Despite Schweitzer's continuing admiration and promotion of Marx's writings, and his tireless dedication to the worker's struggle, Marx considered Schweitzer to be his "personal enemy". At a time when many were ostracising Schweitzer for his homosexuality, Marx suggested in a private letter to Engels, "You must arrange for a few jokes about [Schweizer] to reach Siebel, for him to hawk around to the various papers”; it's clear what kind of jokes he meant. In correspondence with Engels about another text promoting sexual freedoms (Gedanken über Gewissens Freiheit, "Thoughts on Freedom of Conscience"), Marx described the author disparagingly as "the faggotty prick" ("Schwanzschwülen").

• Perhaps the best approach here would be to source a Marxist saying something similar to what I've added to the article, and counterposing some of this detail. I've not heard some of this detail before, and it does suggest that Marx had - at the very best - not given the subject any thought.

With respect, "European Marxists taking leading roles in campaigns for LGBT liberation" seems like a significant overstatment, especially after reading your explanation of the instances you had in mind. AWL, a "small Marxist group" with no mention of queer/LGBT on their wikipedia page, apparently supported the activity of Al-Fatiha and Peter Tatchell and were involved in student groups and conferences. It hardly sounds like a "leading role"!

• I've now added something on this to the AWL article, but I try not to spend too much time on it as there's the danger of being partisan. The NUS LGBT liberation campaign is a fairly big deal; it is very visible in pretty well every militant campaign and regularly organises actions, etc, and the AWL really have played a big role in shaping it. It was a major factor in my joining the group. But I've not got a problem if you think this should go; I'm probably not in the best position to judge its relevance to the article.

By the way, I noticed you have an interest in sub-saharan africa. I'd be very interested in seeing an african section on this page!

ntennis 04:35, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

• Offhand, I could write about the extreme homophobia of Zanu-PF and SWAPO, and the move of the ANC from a similar position to a pretty positive one in the 1980s. I'll do some research and see if I can expand this - particularly to some trade union movements and some of the African socialists.

• I think we're getting closer to agreement here - thanks for your constructive suggestions. Warofdreams talk 17:47, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

That stuff about africa would be would be great! The other big geographical black hole in the article is India, but I'm not in touch with too many sources there. I'll see if I can find something.

I think your suggested soluton about the "marxist" view on queer oppression is a good one. Do you know of such a quote? As for the socialist groups leading the LGBT struggle, I think it's enough to say that many socialist organisations in the west added gay lib to their political platform from the 1970s and 1980s. How does that sound?

I take your point about the 'socialist' governments; I wasn't really thinking about modern 'social democracy' as socialism, and I actually had communist states in mind. I'll rephrase it accordingly. I guess one of the difficulties is that it's not always clear exactly what we're referring to with the term 'socialism' — it gets bandied about by a pretty disparate bunch of people. It seems a stretch to think of the Labour/Labor parties of Australia, NZ and the UK as socialist, for instance. Can you spell out for me which social democratic governments you are thinking of?

By the way, if you're interested, here's a short article from a socialist website about oscar wilde's politics: http://www.redflag.org.uk/frontline/15/15wilde.html and from an anarchist website: http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/ws98/ws53_wilde.html - they pretty much agree that wilde's politics have been neglected in the modern popular imagination about the guy, but were actually a big part of who he was.

You've inspired me to do a bit more reading on this subject too. There's quite a bit of stuff out there. eg queers and marxism.

Cheers, ntennis 07:31, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Points of View (re:Mihnea Tudoreanu's recent edits)

...*Sigh*... Yes this page has "POV issues". It also has a big problem with a lack of references, and needs a lot more information from different parts of the world. However, the only interest from socialists seem to be defending their faith from anything that might reflect badly on it. This is not helpful when it means deleting demonstrably true information and replacing it with opinion (otherwise known as non-neutral POV), and non-statements like the new opening line:

There has never been a single, universally accepted stance towards sexual orientation within the socialist movement.

Yes, and there has never been a single, universally accepted stance towards anything with the socialist movement. The opening paragraph should be a kind of summary or overview. How about something more meaningful like: "Socialist movements have traditionally viewed social inequality as a function of economics, and the political struggles of sexual minorities and gender diverse peoples have at times clashed and at times coincided with socialist programs. Until the 1970s, socialism overwhelmingly opposed homosexuality and gender diversity, with a few notable exceptions such as the libertarian socialists of the late 19th and early 20th century."

I find it interesting that you wish to say "Until the 1970s, socialism overwhelmingly opposed homosexuality and gender diversity", while at the same time challenging my statement that "Today the overwhelming majority of socialists support gay rights". You claim I have no evidence for the latter (true, I thought it was common knowledge, at least for socialists in the West). But what evidence do you have for the former? As it stands now, the article goes out of its way to make socialists appear homophobic, as with the section about Marx that deduces he was a homophobe from a couple of words he said in an angry letter about a political rival. I think it would be far better to admit that Marx never considered the issue important enough to write anything about it, and his personal views were likely the same as those of the Victorian culture he lived in. -- Nikodemos 14:06, 30 December 2005 (UTC) (formerly Mihnea; I just changed my username)

The following statement was also removed from the intro:

Many self-declared socialist governments have introduced repressive legislation upon coming to power, extending in some cases to the persecution of homosexual and effeminate males by castration, imprisonment, labor camps, and execution.

This is not only true, but important information, and the specific instances are spelled out in the article. I will link the references to each individual claim in the intro (castration, etc) when I have a little time, unless there's some kind of dispute about the information. I think the sentence can be re-worded, eg. replacing "many self-declared socialist governments" with "communist states"?

Seems reasonable, as long as the intro also mentions that other self-proclaimed (democratic) socialists governments have strongly supported gay rights and even legalized gay marriage (e.g. the PSOE in Spain). -- Nikodemos 14:06, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

And the following was added:

Today the overwhelming majority of socialists support gay rights.

Where is the source for this? How many socialists are there worldwide and do an "overwhelming majority" of them really support gay rights? My subjective impression is a majority (not overwhelming) of socialists in the West today pay at least lip-service to "gay rights", communist states continue to oppose them (see, for instance, the section on Cuba). And when socialists continue to whitewash the very real instances of persection of sexual minorities by socialist movements and communist states, it doesn't engender confidence in gays and lesbians that there is any real commitment on the part of socialists to their struggles.

All mainstream socialists and a good portion of radical ones in the West support gay rights. Only some fringe groups oppose them. The article, as it stands now, tries to smear even openly pro-gay socialist groups by claiming that they weren't so before the 1960s (as if any political ideology was openly pro-gay before the 1960s), or gives more credence to rumors and accusations than to a party's own manifesto and statement of principles! (as with RESPECT in the UK) -- Nikodemos 14:06, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Forgive the grumpy tone of this post; I will return to sweet and reasonable ntennis in a couple of minutes :) ntennis 01:55, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

That's ok, but I am a bit exasperated with your apparently deep distrust of socialists in gay rights issues, which is utterly unfounded in my opinion. Before the 1960s, socialists typically followed the dominant cultural views on homosexuality (only extreme authoritarians like Stalinists and Maoists were more homophobic than the society they grew up in). After the 1960s, socialists have been among the most outspoken advocates of gay rights. Why is there hardly any mention of this in the article? Why is there no section on the role socialists played in the struggles of sexual minorities for the past 40 years? -- Nikodemos 14:06, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Neither my alleged "deep distrust" nor your deep faith in socialism's support for "gay rights issues" should be the basis for this page. Rather, we should aim towards referenced facts. Have you familiarised yourself with wikipedia's WP:NOR and WP:NPOV policies? However, in the interests of declaring our biases, I will describe where my politics lie: as a working-class person of countless generations, my sympathies are strongly with the poor and against capitalism, and I have many years of activism under my belt to prove it. As a queer however, history and much personal experience tells me that I'd be naive to place my faith in the Socialist movement to address queer oppression. Far from such distrust being "utterly unfounded" (?!?!), if you actually read the article you will see plenty of instances of socialist governments perpretating atrocities against queers, and socialist organisations expelling, vilifying and sidelining queers — in some instances they continue to do so, especially if the person in question refuses to maintain the fiction that left-wing goverments have always been our friends. Often, an aversion to homosexuality is one of the only things that left and right-wing governments have had in common politically! I'm not saying anything particularly radical here - there's a mountain of published material to back this up, even from socialist academics. See, for example this article by Jeffery Weeks (published in the New Internationist magazine), or any of the Socialism and Sexuality seminar series (eg. the 2001 series). Are you familiar with any of the published work on this issue?

I don't know why you are fixated on the 1960s as the golden age for socialists embracing gay rights. Again, read the article. In the 1960s gays were being expelled from major communist parties around the world. In Cuba they were being incarcerated in hard-labor "re-education" camps, with the communist party declaring that ‘all manifestations of homosexual deviations are to be firmly rejected and prevented from spreading’.

As for a "pro-gay" pattern from "Democratic Socialist governments": "Democratic socialism" is a term broad enough to have been applied to the governments of the UK and Australia, but who are no more progressive on the issues than any other western capitalist country. In fact, in the most populous "democratic socialist republic" in the world, India, homosexuality is illegal. Personally, I worry when you read statements of historical fact and call them attempts to "smear" groups that are currently pro-gay. Your words echo the right-wing Prime Minister where I live, Australia, in his response to calls from Aboriginal people to recognise the past injustices perpetrated by the White Australian goverment (see Stolen generation). When Howard says "why dwell on the bad things, we're not like that now", it's really a sleazy attempt to silence this history. Given that you recently deleted a large section on the entry on Lenin titled "criticisms of Lenin", I urge you to consider aiming toward balance and accuracy on wikipedia over a program of hiding unpalatable facts.

On another note, I find it much easier to follow discussion pages when writers present their entries in discrete sections, rather than interrupting each others' posts with rebuttals. This is especially true when indented block quotes are used (as I have done); it is unclear who is talking. Also, when you interrupt my post to rebut a comment I made further down the page, it is very confusing to others who would like to get involved in the discussion. Thanks. ntennis 07:45, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

P.S Happy New Year :) ntennis 07:48, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

p.p.s You are right, in my last suggestion for re-wording the opening sentence, "overwhelming" is too strong. How about "largely"? Alternatively, I am thinking of another way to introduce the subject. ntennis 08:51, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

You might be wondering where I have gone off to since our old discussion above. Well, I had written a rather lengthy response the same day you posted your last comments, but my computer crashed and I lost everything I had typed. This frustrated me to such a degree that I did not come back here for days, and eventually I forgot about this article completely. I just noticed the article in my watchlist today, remembered our discussion, and came here to see what was happening. I feel I must congratulate you for your excellent rewrite and expansion of this article. Our old discussion is largely obsolete now, since there is no longer any POV issue. I will look over the article in greater detail and see if there is anything I can do to improve it further. Once again, great job! -- Nikodemos 00:13, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Nikodemos. I don't know how I missed it earlier but I just saw your last comment. I am still working on the article and would appreciate any further thoughts. In particular, I feel the article is too long but am not sure how to reduce it; also, I'm not sure how to approach the "recent history" section. ntennis 04:51, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Just for the record, I don't think the article is too long at all. The only ways I could think of breaking it up, if that were necessary, would be by date or location, but sometimes its okay to have a long article, I think. -Seth Mahoney 05:05, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Hello. I created this Wikipedia article, and I want to thank all the men and women that have greatly improved the article's writing and expanded the resources provided. Browned. Jan 2006. I hope that this article will honestly show the Socialist response to LGBT people; both good and bad. (unsigned comment by 216.239.8.22, 08:08, 5 January 2006).

[edit] Overhaul of article

OK I'm finally beginning to get my head around this rather enormous subject, and have been rewriting the article significantly (though nothing has actually been lost). I hope others find it neutral and better structured. I think the regional grouping of content is less useful than a historical and ideological grouping, so i've begun moving stuff from the country sections to more general sections above. The country stuff probably has a place at the end, but reduced, especially as it is often covered by the relevant "gay rights in..." article. ntennis 03:54, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] removed content

I'm removing content to shorten the article, but keeping some of it here "just in case":

In his book The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels condems homosexuality among men of ancient Greece in two seperate passages, describing it as "morally deteriorated", "abominable", "loathsome" and "degrading".^[1] In his "Early Writings", he wrote that "the relation of man to woman is the most natural relation of human being to human being" ^[2]. In correspondence with Engels about a text promoting sexual freedoms (Gedanken über Gewissens Freiheit, Thoughts on Freedom of Conscience), Marx described the author disparagingly as "that queer prick" ("Schwanzschwulen").

ntennis 07:40, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Lifelong friend of Goldman Alexander Berkman also wrote about homosexuality in his book Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist, written about his experience in prison in the U.S. from 1892 to 1906. When first encountering homosexuality he was disgusted, but he came to appreciate the existence of love in the harsh culture of prison, and spoke fondly and admiringly of a gay couple. He argued that radicals should not seek to destroy homosexuality as a capitalist vice, and recognised that homosexuals are found in every class.

ntennis 08:04, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Homosexuality was tolerated throughout most of Chinese history. Many Chinese plays and stories dealt with homosexual themes, in which love between two men was seen as as good or bad as love between a man and a woman. It was also not uncommon for two men to enter into a long-term union similar to a marriage. It was not until 1740 that a law was introduced to make homosexuality a crime, and this was tied to the Qing Dynasty promotion of heterosexuality as part of a larger program to ensure that men would become fathers. However, the law was all but forgotten in later years.

Also moved russian stuff to Gay rights in Russia. ntennis 10:32, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries many democratic socialists held the position that homosexuality was a disease that was the result of capitalism and its alienation of the worker. Yet, democratic socialists felt that they had a moral obligation to speak out against exploitation and injustices which did not solely stem from economic class. The result was that some notable socialists spoke out in favor of the legalization of homosexuality.

The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw began to circulate a petition in an unsuccessful attempt to secure the release of Oscar Wilde who had been imprisoned for his homosexuality. Upon his release, Wilde would endorse democratic socialism and criticize the execution of the anarchists involved in the Haymarket Riot.

In Germany, the Social Democrats would create a coalition with Scientific Humanitarian Committee led by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld (who was Jewish, gay and a supporter of the Social Democrats) to push the legalization of homosexuality in exchange for a public campaign to encourage gay Germans to support the Social Democrats in parliamentary elections.

August Bebel gave two speeches in the German parliament calling for the legalization of homosexuality and comparing the laws against homosexual persons to the laws against Jewish persons. Later Social Democrat leaders such as Karl Kautsky, and Eduard Bernstein would support the work of Hirschfeld and the party official publication, Die Neue Zeit carried the news about the gay rights movement. Across Europe, Emile Zola, Albert Einstein and Leo Tolstoy also supported the legalization of homosexual relations between consenting adults in private. The embryonic gay rights movement would be crushed in 1933 with the rise of fascism in Germany that burnt down the Institute for Sexual Research as one of its first acts when it gained power.

Most of above has been kind of covered in earlier sections; some may need to go back in. ntennis 11:14, 16 February 2006 (UTC)