"The policies of socialist and communist parties and regimes toward homosexuality have been at best ambivalent and often much worse; even so, many gay liberationists have espoused socialism. Indeed, from the first stirrings of homosexual emancipation, a number of its pioneers and most prominent advocates - Magnus Hirschfeld in Germany, Andre Gide in France, and Harry Hay in the United States, to name just three examples - placed their hopes for “liberty, equality, and fraternity” in socialism and resolutely adopted a leftist stance."