Communist and gay

I made brief mention in an earlier post about Right wing panic attacks that gay marriage is a Marxist/socialist/feminist plot to turn all of our youth into limp-wristed/butch (as the case may be) homosexuals/gender benders. 

Now, it has to be said, it's not as if there aren't Marxist progressive feminists types out there who do have an avowed, um, queer affirming society agenda?   Look at Roz Ward, as the obvious recent example.

But it's also true that actual communist countries didn't show any particular sign of sympathetic tolerance of homosexuality. And their "we're all in this together" feminism of encouraging women into the workplace hardly changed any cultural ideas about gays.

I just Googled the topic and found this letter which is pretty interesting.  Harry Whyte, a serious British gay young Communist wrote at length to Stalin in 1934 trying to get him to reconsider the criminalisation of sodomy.  What I find surprising about the letter is how current the arguments feel -  arguing that panic about the corrosive effects of allowing a small percent of homosexual live their life don't really make sense, and that it is an innate sexuality that can't be cured, etc. 

It counts, I suppose, as a more or less well reasoned argument that Marxism, as properly envisaged, has nothing to fear from legal homosexuality.   (He does gild the lily by seeming to claim that bourgeois capitalism encourages opportunistic homosexuality - but hey, he was trying to convince Stalin.)  Anyway, it's quite a different argument from later feminists that Marxism and justice require the breakdown of gender and sexuality roles.  That's where it all gets silly, and it's no explanation for how quickly many countries have learnt to tolerate homosexuality.