The nature and status of LGBT+ rights in current and former actually existing socialist (AES) countries is a common subject of inquiry and debate throughout the political sphere, chiefly among LGBT communists looking for truth and answers regarding the actual rights enjoyed and issues faced by LGBT people under AES, among reactionary and anti-communist individuals and organizations seeking to utilize or misconstrue LGBT rights violations and policy failures under AES as a way to discredit and undermine AES countries, and by communists with anti-LGBT lines seeking precedent to uphold their anti-LGBT stances. Given these intersecting desires and aims, and in some cases, concerted reactionary and/or anti-communist propaganda campaigns, as well as the co-optation and weaponization of LGBT struggle by liberal, bourgeois, and imperialist organizations for destabilization of AES countries through color revolution, the subject of LGBT rights in AES countries is often surrounded with difficulty and controversy.
Distinguishing between real problems faced by LGBT communities under AES and anti-communist propaganda that seeks to use LGBT rights as a cover or vehicle for spreading misinformation and atrocity propaganda about AES countries is a persistent issue in the discourse around this subject.