Ways to wank LGBT+ rights

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

Yeah. I think the only way to get an earlier gay-rights trend in the modern day is...

Sit down and make a list of all the things that you think contributed to the Sexual Revolution, be it postwar prosperity, the Pill, the decline of religion, whatever.

Then, figure out a way to have all those trends emerge earlier in the past, however far back you consider plausible.
 

Dorozhand

Banned
The USSR not lapsing back into nationalism and social-conservatism under Stalin and his wrecker-gang would result in a veritable Mecca for LGBT+ people as the shadow of fascist-eugenicist blood-madness begins to loom over Europe and the world. The USSR could, under alternate leadership, become a safe haven for persecuted intellectuals and minorities (which was to a degree true IOTL despite Stalin, as the USSR pitted itself against racism during the Cold War) to the point where the fascist-to-communist brain drain would benefit Soviet industrial development during the vital phase of socialist primitive accumulation (in this vein, I think Sokolnikov or Preobrazhensky at the helm would be a good foundation, or even Radek, he was a very perceptive guy) and in this way help to hasten the fall of fascism as well as bolster the intelligentsia of the USSR such that socialist culture is enriched and Soviet soft power becomes an influential force from an early stage. Without Stalin, we would also likely see a USSR championing the feminist movement, especially if figures like Zemlyachka and Kollontai aren't sidelined.

Aside, it is often under-appreciated just how grievous a blow to the USSR it was when Stalin murdered all the Old Bolsheviks and remade the state in his image.
 
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I do think that the strategy of the French, which involved decriminalizing gay sex at a very early date but also involved repressions of anything contrary to public morality, might be the best route for some kind of liberalization. If not being straight is not criminal, as such, merely embarrassing, that might provide some space for people to mobilize. A Napoleonic victory in Europe establishes French laws as the standard?
 
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 think there would still be potential for a more LGBT+ friendly Communist movement to have an indirect and long-term impact in the wider world. The mere fact of there being countries where LGBT+ rights were, at least on paper (in practice would probably take some time to catch-up), being supported would go some way to legitimising them. Those non-Communist European countries where the Communists were still a relevant force would get a boost to their LGBT+ rights struggles (OTL the French left had a pretty homophobic streak AIUI), which in turn is going to impact the rest of the Euro-Anglosphere. Countries that had a strong Social Democratic movement are likely to have some influence from the Communist-line, with those on the left of the left at least engaging with them and providing a vector of transmission for left-wing LGBT+ rights.

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?

Maybe have someone Jewish come out on top (Trotsky is a bit cliche at this point but Kamanev and Zinoviev are plausible contenders). Their Jewish heritage might have made relations with the Orthodox Church much more strained, and as a result they double-down on anti-Clericalism and militant Laicism resulting in the decriminalisation of homosexuality staying in place, even if only out of spite.

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.

They don't have to not be homophobic to improve LGBT rights over IOTL. They just have to be:
  1. Less homophobic than the Nazis.
  2. Not close down the institute that was a major pioneer in promoting transgender rights andd recognition.
  3. Not put in place the anti-homosexual laws that the Nazis put in place, which both East and West Germany inherited and kept on the books until the 60s.

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 affects 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.

That sounds really interesting. Australian politics and history tends to be one of my main blank spots when it comes to modern history. Do you know where I can find out more?

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.

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

Sounds a bit myopic to me. LGBT+ rights have made progress despite these pre-existing values, so unless we were living in the best of all possible worlds with a post 1900 PoD for LGBT+ rights, which I personally doubt, it stands to reason that there are things that could have been done to improve them further than IOTL.

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.

That is true, although having another disease take the place of HIV/AIDS in terms of stigma would still have the benefit of being much less fatal to those afflicted with it.
 
Have the churches intimately involved in the nationalist lead up too and the fighting of world war one, then have the Nazis intimately linked to a very conservative strain of Protestantism. The backlash from religion wing involved in two of the bloodiest wars in memory should reduce the power of the church and their standing as the western guardians of morality. Another idea would be to push back the thirty years war and have some sort of religious war in the 1800's perhaps in place of the Napoleonic wars with the Franco prussian war acting as a continuation with ww1 and ww2 as the coda to a long line of religious wars.

In the end you need to reduce the power and standing of the churches somehow in order to Kickstarter a lgbt+ movement earlier. Just about the only thing I could think of besides that would be the Nazis crimes against homosexuals getting more exposure generating sympathy in the aftermath of ww2. So either a reduced church presence in public life or a massive tragedy which can be ignored and shoved under the carpet.
 
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. . .
English legal reformer Jeremy Bentham either finds a co-author which he tried a little to do, or he finds a way to advance his ideas in a series of medium steps through a series of essays ? ?

Jeremy was most probably not gay himself, but per his utilitarian philosophy, he could find no reason to view homosexuality as anything other than a natural variant of the sex drive. In fact, he also wrote about what we now call homophobia. And basically, it's that people throw down on a pleasure which doesn't appeal to them anyway, and they thereby feel more viturous in a cheap way. And also relieve some of their guilt on their own pleasures.

Shame Bentham didn't publish. A missed opportunity. It was a failure of courage, and also of skill of how to go about it.

------

* We think of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) as a philosopher. He thought of himself as a legal reformer.
 
To be quite honest, you forgot one major potential POD: tamp down the Religious Right. So many of the hindrances to the LGBT rights movement post WWII-particularly from the '70s onward-can be tracked down to the rise of the Religious Right that it might boggle ones mind completely, or at least if one wasn't familiar with it beforehand.
 
The entry I recommend to Australian history is Connell and Irving Class structure in Australian history as it explains the relationships and processes of political economy and society as a result of class struggle. So you get a sense of why the alp and unions existed and worked even though you won't know who Harold holt was.

For Australian queer history I'm not aware of a seminal text but wiki SBS and the alga archives have good entry texts.

Yours,
Sam R.
 
Sometime after 1800 have a case come up before the United States Surpream Court that defines sexual consent.
That would define rape and maybe inadvertently legalize homosexualality.
 
English legal reformer Jeremy Bentham either finds a co-author which he tried a little to do

Co-author of what, exactly?

That would define rape and maybe inadvertently legalize homosexualality.

No because homosexuality wasn't illegal because of the lack of consent. It was illegal under sodomy laws, which often also criminalized heterosexual anal intercourse. It wasn't a question of consent but of the practice itself.
 

Loghain

Banned
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

Who said we need to Have Swedish LGBT stance in whole world ? We are trying to wank the rights there, that doesnt mean its Best outcome or bust.
 
Lesbians nonetheless faced legal challenges, for example in the armed forces.

Hence the 'technically' part... I know that being lesbian could ruin careers even if there was no prison time. Or lead to being committed.

Of course it could depend where one worked. Academia could be more liberal especially if one was particularly talented. There was a lecturer in my old uni who was extremely openly lesbian at a time when it was...problematic, but the college didn't give a good goddamn and she had her job till she died basically.
 
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