In Bolshevik Russia

[ComradeGrant]

Before gay marriage was outlawed again, how many homosexual marriages were there?

[thesadmafioso]

That is actually a very fascinating question, though I'm not sure there if there would be much documentation on it to be honest. I don't think it was enough of a salient issue during the time for it of to of been viewed as something to keep thorough records on.

Though if anyone has anything to the contrary of that thought, I'd be most interested in seeing it as well.

[Binh]

Great question. You'd have to comb the archives of the civil authorities and compare the names to see if there were same-sex couples (the Soviet government secularized marriage).

[Aurora]

The October Revolution legalized homosexuality, i'm not sure if gay marriage was ever legal.

[Thirsty Crow]

The October Revolution legalized homosexuality, i'm not sure if gay marriage was ever legal.
Yes, the issue is not with gay marriage specifically but with politics of sexuality in general.
Thus the regression to older notions of criminalization and medicalization took place with the profound shift within the Bolshevik party and the society as a whole.

[DarkPast]

Yes, gay marriage was never legal in the Soviet Union.

Under Stalin, male homosexuality, divorce and abortion were explicitly criminalised and penalised with up to five years of hard labor. These laws remained intact right up to 1993 in Russia (though after Stalin's death the punishment was rarely enacted).

[blake 3:17]

Under Stalin, male homosexuality, divorce and abortion were explicitly criminalised and penalised with up to five years of hard labor.

Is that right? My understanding was that the Bolsheviks abolished a whack of laws surrounding victimless crimes, but that the nationalist drives in the mid-late 1930s brought back fairly conservative family laws and policing of sexuality.

Was anyone sent to hard labour for a divorce?

[Agent Ducky]

I think even if it had been legalized, not many homosexual couples would've gotten married. The cultural attitudes surrounding homosexuality at that time were quite negative and I think most people would avoid getting married due to fear of social ousting. Not sure though >.>

[DarkPast]

Is that right? My understanding was that the Bolsheviks abolished a whack of laws surrounding victimless crimes, but that the nationalist drives in the mid-late 1930s brought back fairly conservative family laws and policing of sexuality.

Was anyone sent to hard labour for a divorce?

Sorry, I had a brainfart when writing that - the punishment was only for male homosexual intercourse. Divorce wasn't strictly illegal, but it was made much, much more difficult to obtain. Abortions were re-legalized in 1968 (though there were still some restrictions).

But in Stalin's time they were quite serious about restoring the traditional family. Just look at this:

The enemies of the people, the vile fascist hirelings - Trotsky, Bukharin, Krylenko and their followers - covered the family in the USSR with filth, spreading the counter-revolutionary 'theory' of the dying out of the family, of disorderly sexual cohabitation in the USSR, in order to discredit the Soviet land.

[Binh]

Yes, gay marriage was never legal in the Soviet Union.

What part of the legal or civil code made it illegal?

[Rafiq]

Homosexuality was never something that was critically analysed by the bolshevik party. They simply repelled a horde of tsarist laws, one of them declaring homosexuality illegal. I imagine under the conditions and problems that were in Russia during the time had people tend to think marriage was the least of their concerns. And I imagine homosexuality wasn't something that was accepted into the vast majority of different cultures in the Empire during the time.