Ways to wank LGBT+ rights

I was wondering if you guys could help brainstorm various ways to improve the rights, representation and living standards for the LGBT+ community worldwide.

Off the top of my head:
  • Prevent Stalin from rising and re-criminalising Homosexuality in the USSR, which in turn provides a base for the furtherance of LGBT+ rights in the USSR and Communist movement as a whole.
  • Prevent the Nazis from rising to power and shutting down the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, which, amongst other things, was providing groundbreaking research and advocacy for gay and transgender rights.
  • A better response to the AIDS crisis (or better yet preventing AIDS).
  • Possibly a Barry Goldwater Presidency (assuming he doesn't start WW3) given his later support for Gay rights.
 
Alexander wrote:

Possibly a Barry Goldwater Presidency (assuming he doesn't start WW3) given his later support for Gay rights.


I think Barry Goldwater in 1964 would not have substantially departed from the typical conservative line on social issues, or at least, be no more than one or two steps ahead of the crowd.

By the time Goldwater came out in favour of gays in the military, the Cold War was over, and he was a GOP elder statesman, free to do and say as he pleased without having to worry about pissing off the peanut gallery.

An early-60s President Goldwater, by contrast, would be governing at the height of the Cold War, with his eyes on an electoral base that considered almost any form of civil-rights activism to be a front for Communism, let alone a SEXUAL rights campaign. Can you imagine how the None Dare Call It Treason crowd would react to the idea that gays should be afforded equal legal rights with heterosexuals?

The only possible way it could work is if AuH2O's standing with the John Birchers is so cement-solid that he can say any crazy thing he wants, and they'll just go along with it because he's Barry Goldwater. But I think a more likely scenario is the Birchers just saying "OMG!! The Commies got Barry too!!", and then scrounging about for another saviour.
 
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Alexander wrote:

Prevent Stalin from rising and re-criminalising Homosexuality in the USSR, which in turn provides a base for the furtherance of LGBT+ rights in the USSR and Communist movement as a whole.

This MIGHT have an effect in countries where the Moscow-line Communist Parties were a significant political force, eg. France, Italy, and Greece. It would have zero impact almost anywhere in the euro-anglosphere(ie. the US, UK Cananda, Australia etc) where no one cared what the Communists thought.
 
I was wondering if you guys could help brainstorm various ways to improve the rights, representation and living standards for the LGBT+ community worldwide.

Let's also deal with the substantive as well as liberal rights discourse ;)

Off the top of my head:
  • Prevent Stalin from rising and re-criminalising Homosexuality in the USSR, which in turn provides a base for the furtherance of LGBT+ rights in the USSR and Communist movement as a whole.
Okay firstly is there any evidence that the other serious contenders were any less hetero bigots and family lovers, sex lives 1917-1923 not withstanding? Or that for want of a better descriptor "state capitalism" wouldn't create and mobilise the proletarian family like 19th century capital to put the cost of improved labour power on women?

  • Prevent the Nazis from rising to power and shutting down the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, which, amongst other things, was providing groundbreaking research and advocacy for gay and transgender rights.

Because the Spd kpd and germanliberals weren't homophobes? Shit, I don't even know if the kapd/aaud took a proletarian position on sexuality.

  • A better response to the AIDS crisis (or better yet preventing AIDS).

It's outside of the Manchester house rule so let's say that other nations have an Australian attitude to sex and drug use and terrorise an entire generation of x and ys about coitus. Search grim reaper advertisement aids.

  • Possibly a Barry Goldwater Presidency (assuming he doesn't start WW3) given his later support for Gay rights.

I assume that to become president he would be synchronised into the demands of the Us state.

Many of these sound like sledgehammers to crack a nut. So let me suggest a 40000 tonne press: wage equalisation for women in 1920 in all advanced and developing capitalist states.

Or hell maybe the UK GLF can bomb mail boxes with tha angry brigade.

Yours,
Sam R.
 
Possible PODs:

Have Wallace succeed Roosevelt and keep the progressive movement going
Less successful Comintern which dampens or averts the Red Scare (which created a lot of anti-LGBT persecution)
Soviets decide against setting up the Iron Curtain (see above)
 
In 19th century Australia there were many men with mates and passing women. The first premier of Queensland had a good mate. So forms of passing and non policing are possible and possible to expand. The obvious POD is that the Catholic family wage concept doesn't influence the harvester judgement leading to a legally diluted concept of family in trade unionism and the fights for male and female wage. The long term effects being a reduction of the capitalist family and support for the sole bread winner concept of the proletarian individual. And cashed up individuals tend to demand the right to buy or root whomever they wish.
 
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The Holy Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, all Protestant denominations, Judaism and (I believe) Islam all are against homosexuality and sex roles beyond the traditional, and won't even think about "gender identifying" at any of these PODs mentioned. Stalin wanted conformity, not diversity. Hitler wanted lots of blonde-haired, blue-eyed babies to run the world.

Your POD would have to be waaaaaaaaaay back in time to change what's been happening lately, because it's taken the weakening of the religious influences and science to get here.
 
(or better yet preventing AIDS).

Very possible-the equivalent of AIDS in Chimpanzees appears to actually be quite rare. One hunt which went unlucky, or maybe one meal of chimpanzee that got served overcooked instead of rare might be all it takes to keep AIDS (or at least the most common strain of AIDS) from jumping to people.

While this will help prevent the stigmatization of the gay community due to AIDS, the lack of the epidemic will completely change the course of gay male and FTM trans culture and therefore the rest of the LGBT community. Perhaps gay male culture will come out of the '80's more radical, and not push for 'bourgois' goals like gay marriage which IMO has gone a long way to promoting mainstream acceptance of gays.
 
I think it's as likely that gay and bisexual sexual radicals, in a no-AIDS timeline, will go on to make common cause with their straight counterparts. Others may do differently, depending on their inclinations.
 
Have revolutionary or Napoleonic France impose its Penal Code which legalized homosexuality (because of anti-clericalism, not because the French were specially fond of LGBT rights) on even more countries.

This won't change opinions of LGBT persons, but life will be easier for gay men if they don't have to face prison or even death for their lifestyle. Then they'll be able to live and love more openly, and this in turn might boost tolerance.
 
What's really needed here, unfortunately, is a 'Blood Sacrifice'. Something even the most hardcore homophobes can't argue about.

Let's say the Union raises a "Gay Battalion" and it is in the vanguard of the Cold Harbor attack. They take horrendous casualties. After that they are stuck with a the most dangerous assignments but perform them valiantly. By wars end they build up a grudging respect that sets the foundation towards further advancement.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
  • A better response to the AIDS crisis (or better yet preventing AIDS).
Getting rid of the Reagan Presidency might help with this. Indeed, the Reagan Administration unfortunately treated AIDS like a joke at first. :(

Have revolutionary or Napoleonic France impose its Penal Code which legalized homosexuality (because of anti-clericalism, not because the French were specially fond of LGBT rights) on even more countries.

This won't change opinions of LGBT persons, but life will be easier for gay men if they don't have to face prison or even death for their lifestyle. Then they'll be able to live and love more openly, and this in turn might boost tolerance.

Good idea. After all, if Napoleon could implement Jewish emancipation throughout Europe, why not this as well?
 
If not HIV/AIDS what about the wonderful gamut of other STIs to stigmatise a newly militant population that threatens the patriarchal family? AIDS was the excuse, the stigmata were inflicted for the crime of love being love not domestic bondage.

Yours,
Sam R.
 
We need a POD around the time of the first christian church. Otherwise we need a ASB to have the entire world embrace the Swedish LBTQ stance
 
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