WI: USSR Becomes Pioneering Nerve Center Of Gay Life

WI the Crimean became a convenient place for gays to sneak away for holidays? WI certain bath houses -in other major cities -gained reputations as goo places to xxxxxxxx people. As long as every one parties discretely, neighbours cannot complain. This bath houses become popular watering holes for visiting scholars .... and the mischief begins!
 
Dose does not give a full sense of how closely Hirschfeld was sometimes associated with the far left. Hirschfeld called, at the outbreak of the German revolution in November 1918, for a “true people’s state with a genuinely democratic structure” and a “social republic.” He had a significant influence on Soviet sexual policies in the 1920s. His work was cited for example in the discussions that led to the decriminalization of homosexuality in the Soviet Union in 1922. Soviet Health Commissar Nikolai Semashko and Institute of Neuropsychiatric Prophylaxis director Lev Rozenshtein visited the Institute for Sexual Science; Hirschfeld reciprocated with a visit to Moscow in 1926
Magnus Hirschfeld: The Origins of the Gay Liberation Movement. By: Ralf Dose, translated by Edward H. Willis. Monthly Review Press, 2014. 144 pp.

All the satements I read by Nikolai Semashko were indeed pretty positiv. A more "avant-garde" leadership might have listened to his advice and at least not recriminalize homosexuality.
 
The USSR, a "pioneering nerve center of gay life"? Not very likely, not even in a world without Stalin; a communist Germany in the early 20th century, however, could've become such a thing, even though I doubt anything like today's gay culture would've arisen from it.

If they'd ever made pro-gay propaganda, it would've probably featured same-sex couples working side by side for the glory of the Party, or lovingly looking at the war orphans they've adopted as their own children, counterposed to their "debauched", "decadent" capitalist equivalents. (*)

In fact, making it mandatory for gay couples to adopt at least an orphan in order to get married could've been a useful measure in the aftermath of a war and maybe, it would've improved the opinion of gay people among the general population as well.

(*) Most socialist regimes of the 20th century were just as or even more socially conservative than their capitalist counterparts, and I don't think their endorsement of gay rights would've changed things.
 
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Interestingly having the Soviet Union legalize homosexuality would likely hamper the LGBT movement in the US because it would be conflated as being "socialism," the ultimate dirty word in American politics.
 
By 2003 almost nobody was enforcing their sodomy laws. You don't think that the state of Florida knew what/where all the gay establishments were?

Well, that kind of backs up my point. Joyeaux said that decriminalization will lead to normalization. But in big cities like Miami, there was relative normalization compared to what you'd get in a small town, regardless of which state had legalized or not.

I grew up in Canada, where sodomy laws were removed earlier than anywhere else in North America except Illinois. But it still wasn't until quite recently that a person could feel comfortable being openly gay. There was a bathhouse raid in my hometown in the early 80s, and even one in Toronto(self-proclaimed capital of social liberalism) at the same time. (I believe there was also a raid on a Toronto lesbian bathhouse within the last decade or so, but I don't know all the details.)

Perhaps a better example...

I don't think Korea ever had sodomy laws on the books, but most Koreans I've asked tell me that they don't personally know any gays. And they're probably not consciously lying, since the closet door is slammed pretty shut here. I'm guessing that even in 1990s Florida, if you asked most people if they knew someone who was gay, they would answer yes. At least in the larger cities.
 
The USSR could decide to suck political mileage out of being anti-Nazi to a much greater extent than OTL, offering themselves as a refuge to all groups the Nazis tried to destroy - Jews, Europe's Slavs, and GAYS.
 
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