Gays, Communists & Workers

A Working-Class History of the Struggle for Gay Rights

Em Smith

It’s that time of year: Citibank is prepping its Pride float and highlighting its gayest bankers on Instagram. Target is rolling out the tackiest Pride gear of the season. Democrats are writing heartfelt messages to the gays, like Washington Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, who issued this powerful statement on X.com marking Pride month: “I see you, I hear you, I love you.”

The corporatization of Pride has reached a new level, with Israel trying to rainbow-wash a genocide. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, said during Pride Month 2024, “You have Gays for Gaza. That’s an absurdity if I’ve ever heard one. If you are gay in Gaza, you’ll be shot in the back of the head.” More likely, you’ll be killed with an American-made bomb delivered by Netanyahu and the IDF.

Capitalists and Democrats may have taken over Pride month, but they aren’t friends of the LGBTQ struggle. We never won anything because of Citibank or Pramila Jayapal, much less Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Russian Revolution was Gay (and the German one, too)

The fight for gay liberation didn’t start at Stonewall. It took shape over a century ago.

The Russian Revolution remains the single most important victory in the history of the gay rights struggle. When workers and communists took power in 1917, they abolished the old Tsarist family laws, including the anti-gay “sodomy” laws, and made Soviet Russia the first country in the industrialized world to legalize homosexuality.

Gay leaders were in the top ranks of the Bolshevik Party. Gregory Chicherin, an openly gay man, helped lead the negotiations to end Russia’s involvement in World War I. He served as the Soviet People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs from 1918 to 1930, succeeding Leon Trotsky.

In 1925, Soviet physician Grigory Batkis wrote about the state’s new laws: “The Penal Code contains severe punishment for rape by physical or psychological subjugation, as well as coercion of a woman in a state of helplessness, to enter into sexual intercourse, if she is dependent on the abuser in a material or job-related way….However, legislation does not intervene in any sexual relationship between two adult individuals that is not forced and which is free from pressure….Acts of homosexuality, sodomy and any other forms of sexual pleasure have the same legal status as the above mentioned. Whilst European legislation defines all this as a breach of public morality, Soviet legislation makes no difference between homosexuality and so-called ‘natural’ intercourse.”

As far back as the 1890s, socialists in Europe were leading the fight for gay rights. August Bebel, the leader and co-founder of the German Social Democratic Party gave the first known political speech in favor of gay rights in January 1898, advocating the repeal of “Paragraph 175”, Germany’s “anti-sodomy” law.

When Russian workers took power, it set off a political earthquake. Workers across Europe rose up, including in Germany. German workers took over factories, a million munitions workers went on strike, and sailors mutinied. Their revolt succeeded in ending World War I.

The German capitalists held onto power, but they were badly shaken and afraid of revolution. They ushered in the Weimar Republic, which allowed unprecedented freedom in German society. Anti-gay laws weren’t repealed, but they went almost completely unenforced. A leading physician and LGBTQ advocate, Magnus Hirschfield, opened up the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin in 1919. The institute pioneered gender transition surgery (of The Danish Girl fame). Hirschfield wasn’t a communist, but his work was possible because of the Russian and German revolutions.

Gay Communists in America (and Britain)

The first national gay rights organization in the United States was the Mattachine Society, founded by communist Harry Hay in 1950, nearly 20 years before Stonewall.

By this time, Stalin had taken power in the Soviet Union and reversed many of the gains of the Russian Revolution, including re-criminalizing homosexuality in 1933. Hay was expelled from the Communist Party for his open advocacy of gay rights. But he was inspired by the militant wave of labor struggle of the 1930s and 1940s, and especially the organization of Black workers during that period.

With the Red Scare hitting its peak in the 1950s, the Mattachine Society was taken over by liberal leaders, who failed to make a political breakthrough. It took the explosions of the Compton Cafeteria Riot (1966) and Stonewall (1969) to put the gay rights movement back on a militant footing. These were rebellions led by Black, immigrant, poor, transgender, and working-class gays including Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. They formed new organizations like the Gay Liberation Front, named after the Algerian independence movement and the communist-led Liberation Front in Vietnam.

The Gay Liberation Front built solidarity with the antiwar movement, the women’s movement, and the Black liberation movement, including the Black Panthers. They protested the jailing and false charges against Black activists, and in 1970 donated $500 to the Panthers (about $4,500 in today’s money). In August of that year, Black Panther leader Huey Newton gave a speech on gay and women’s liberation, where he appealed to Black revolutionaries to support the struggle for gay rights: “Even a homosexual can be a revolutionary. Quite the contrary, maybe a homosexual could be the most revolutionary.”

Fifteen years later in Britain, Communist Party activist Mark Ashton founded Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners. The group raised $30,000 (nearly $100,000 today) to support the mine workers who were on strike against Margaret Thatcher. The National Union of Mineworkers became the most outspoken union in favor of gay rights.

In both Britain and America, it was these working-class struggles that led to the success of the gay rights movement.

Dump the Democrats — Build a Workers’ Party

It’s been a long fight for queer rights, and Democrats had nothing to do with it. For over 100 years after August Bebel gave the first political speech in favor of gay rights, the Democratic Party wanted nothing to do with us.

Bill Clinton championed the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” bill in the 1990s, enshrining bans on homosexuality in the U.S. military. Hillary Clinton opposed gay marriage until 2013. Just this year, the Democrats issued an “autopsy” of the 2024 election, where they blamed trans people for the defeat of Kamala Harris, while failing to mention their funding of a genocide in Gaza.

Trans and LGBTQ people can’t trust the Democrats or the courts. The gay rights movement was built by communists, workers, the poor, and the oppressed. It was built through solidarity with everyone fighting against capitalism, imperialism, sexism, and racism. It won’t advance a single inch by selling out Palestinians or collaborating with a party funding their genocide.

To stop the attacks on trans rights or win victories like free healthcare for all, we need to dump the Democratic Party. We need leaders who are communists and who fight for the working class.