LGBT rights under communism
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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LGBT rights in communism has evolved radically thought 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.
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History
Marxism
Early history
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". Marx 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.
The Communist Party abolished all Czarist laws and its subsequent 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, homosexuality remained a criminal offense in certain Soviet republics in the 1920s.
In 1933, Joseph Stalin added Article 121 to the entire Soviet Union criminal code, which made male homosexuality a crime punishable by up to five years in prison with hard labor. The precise reason for Article 121 is in some dispute among historians. The few official government statements made about the law tended to confuse homosexuality with pedophilia and was tied up with a belief that homosexuality was only practiced among fascists or the aristocracy.
The law remained intact until after the dissolution of the Soviet Union; it was repealed in 1993.
According to RT, the law against homosexuality led to "several hundred people [being] charged with it every year" and it "was also a convenient tool for smears and was tacked onto spying allegations during the NKVD purges".
Gay men and communist party membership
Gay men were sometimes denied membership or expelled from communist parties across the globe during the 20th Century, as most communist parties followed the social precedents set by the USSR. However, this was not always the case.
Notable gay members of Communist parties include:
- Mark Ashton (founder of Lesbians and Gays Support the MinersTemplate:Sfn and LGBT rights advocate) – member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.Template:Sfn
- Harry Hay (gay rights activist, labor advocate,Template:Sfn Native American civil rights campaigner,Template:Sfn Mattachine Society founder,Template:Sfn co-founder of LA Gay Liberation Front)Template:Sfn – member of the Communist Party USA.
Association of communism with homosexuality by anti-communists
The phrase sexual Bolshevism originated in Weimar Germany in the 1920s by Pastor Ludwig Hoppe of Berlin as a more general term of approbation at licentiousness. When Nazi Germany came into being after the failures of the Weimar government, the Nazis used the term "sexual Bolshevism" to refer to perceived sexual degeneracy, in particular homosexuality.
Events leading to the association of communism with homosexuality
The advance of doctors, psychologists and social workers into the arena of human sexuality during the Weimar era (as well as the feminist movement) threw up a variety of conspiracy theories, especially amongst more conservative aspects of society, regarding communism and homosexuality. Any form of sexual revolution was derided as promiscuity and leading to a rise in sexually transmitted infections. The response of those who opposed "sexual Bolshevism" was to promote eugenics and family values.
There are specific events which glbtq.com ("an encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer culture") claims to have contributed to the linkage of communism with homosexuality in the United States, as well:
...For example, in 1948, Whittaker Chambers, an editor and writer at Time magazine and a former Communist Party member and courier in a Soviet spy ring infiltrating the American government, accused Alger Hiss, head of the Carnegie Endowment, of perjury and, implicitly, of Soviet espionage. The vast media coverage of the scandal hinted that Chambers had a crush on Hiss, establishing a link between Communism and homosexuality. Chambers was only too eager to strengthen this link, declaring to the FBI that his homosexual activities had stopped once he had left the Communist Party. In addition, the 1951 flight to the Soviet Union of gay British spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean also helped fuel the association of homosexuality and treason in the public imagination.
Cold War
Template:See also During the height of the McCarthy era (in the late 1940s and early 1950s), American senator Joseph McCarthy associated homosexuality and communism as "threats to the "American way of life." In both cases, association with sickness and disease provided means of legitimating isolation from impressionable young people." Homosexuality was directly linked to security concerns, and more government employees were dismissed because of their sexual orientation than because they were left-winged or communist politically. George Chauncey noted that, "The specter of the invisible homosexual, like that of the invisible communist, haunted Cold War America," and homosexuality (and homosexuals) were constantly referred to not only as a disease, but also as an invasion, like the perceived danger of communism.
McCarthy often used accusations of homosexuality as a smear tactic in his anti-communist crusade, often combining the Second Red Scare with the lavender scare. On one occasion, he went so far as to announce to reporters, "If you want to be against McCarthy, boys, you've got to be either a Communist or a cocksucker." Some historians have argued that, in linking communism and homosexuality and psychological imbalance, McCarthy was employing guilt-by-association if evidence for communist activity was lacking.
Senator Kenneth Wherry similarly attempted to invoke a connection between homosexuality and anti-nationalism. He said in an interview with Max Lerner that "You can't hardly separate homosexuals from subversives." Later in that same interview he drew the line between patriotic Americans and gay men: "But look Lerner, we're both Americans, aren't we? I say, let's get these fellows [closeted gay men in government positions] out of the government."
Connections between gay rights groups and radical leftists were not merely a figment of the imaginations of demagogues. The Mattachine Society, one of the earliest gay rights groups in the United States, was founded by Harry Hay, a former member of the Communist Party USA, who was kicked out of the gay rights group he'd founded for his ties to the party.
Famous ex-communist former Soviet agent Whittaker Chambers notably spent his time in the left-wing underground pursuing both homosexual and heterosexual affairs, but he kept his liaisons quiet since his communist associates despised homosexuality. Chambers later monogamously married the pacifist painter Esther Shemitz, working as a journalist and editor.
Modern day
In recent times, some on the American right wing have endorsed conspiracy theories regarding communism, homosexuality, and LGBT rights. For example, in addressing the Dean Bible Ministries Men's Prayer Breakfast, Rafael Cruz (father of American Republican Senator Ted Cruz, backed by the Tea Party Patriots) has claimed that same-sex marriage, evolution and LGBT rights are all part of a communist/socialist plot to destroy God, America, and the nuclear family.
See also
- History of communism
- LGBT rights
- Pink capitalism
- Socialism and LGBT rights
- Queer anarchism
- New Left
- Gay Left
