The GDR pivoted on queer rights in the 1980s and enacted a massive series of reforms to essentially legalize queer existence and developed education programs to combat stigma. This guy is definitely a lib, but here's a good article about it for anyone interested: https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/gay-liberation-behind-iron-curtain/
For further reading, he wrote a book called States of Liberation: Gay Men between Dictatorship and Democracy in Cold War Germany by Samuel Clowes Huneke. The last chapter before the epilogue covers this policy turn and the public pressure campaign that spurred it.
For a brief summary, the queer liberation movement in the GDR eventually ended up organizing alongside the church after they were rebuffed for going through more official means. The organizing under the church began to swell with membership, and the security services began to grow concerned with the partnership.
Membership continued to swell and activists began to coordinate strategy at national meetings. They soon agreed on a set of wide-ranging policy goals, including better access to housing, abolition of the higher age of consent for homosexual sex, ability to serve in the military, and better access to sexual health services. [...]
Under pressure to stem the tide of gay liberation, the secret police began debating new strategies. Departments exchanged flurries of memos debating what course of action the government should pursue. In 1985 the Stasi finally produced a new set of guidelines on how to prevent what it termed “the political misuse of homosexuals.” Some of its recommendations were unsurprising, such as ramping up surveillance of gay activist leaders. But its final recommendation was entirely novel. It insisted that the government find “resolution[s] to homosexuals’ humanitarian problems.” That is, the Stasi decided to actually address activists’ demands.
The phrase "political misuse of homosexuals" is kind of goofy, but the Stasi began to realize that the marginalized nature of queer people within socialist society made them a vector for subversion via blackmail. If the state removed the legal restrictions, such as the possibility of being removed from positions for one's sexuality or gender identity, then blackmailing queer people was no longer a possible vector for Western subversion. This tactic is still used to this very day! The zionist entity does this to Palestinians. Further, addressing the demands of the activists meant that the relationship between the queer community and the church would no longer have reason to exist.
Thus began a series of genuinely radical changes in East German society. The state-censored newspapers, which for decades had hardly ever mentioned homosexuality, suddenly started printing dozens of stories about gay men and lesbians. The government also freed periodicals to accept personal advertisements from gay men and lesbians looking for partners.
The state tasked Berlin psychology professor Reiner Werner with writing a book titled Homosexuality: A Call to Knowledge and Tolerance, which appeared in 1987. Its initial run of 50,000 copies sold out in a matter of weeks. It would also approve a gay film, Coming Out, that premiered on November 9, 1989, the night the Berlin Wall fell.
In addition, the state began granting official recognition to gay groups, such as the Sunday Club, a secular activist collective run by Sillge that had been meeting in East Berlin since the early 1980s. And it authorized East Germany’s first gay discos, such as Die Busche, a club that still exists today.
The government even allowed gay chapters within the Free German Youth (FDJ), the state’s official youth scouting organization, and mandated that all FDJ members attend educational sessions dealing with homosexuality. All of a sudden, East German youth were required to attend meetings of gay groups such as the Sunday Club. [...]
In 1987 the East German Supreme Court struck down the law that set a higher age of consent for gay men and lesbians. The following year, the military allowed gay soldiers, reversing a policy the government had instituted in the 1950s.
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