The master’s thesis is a historical analysis that examines key moments in the relationship between the gay rights movements and the political left, focusing on the intellectual debates, political decisions, and activism that shaped both the perception and the treatment of sexual minorities in a Marxist context. The analysis ranges from the early debates of theorists such as Marx and Engels to gay and lesbian emancipation during and after the sexual revolution. The basic research question is how attitudes towards homosexuality have changed and been established within the political left throughout history. At what points in history has Marxism and its basic premises – the universal liberation of humanity from oppressive ideologies and exploitative social structures, and the premise that humans are a product of history, not nature – faltered in incorporating homosexuality into its political project, and at what points has it not.
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