For other issues of sexuality/human rights in the GDR, see also: "Out of the Closet, Behind the Wall: Sexual Politics and Social Changed in the GDR"

In 1985, however, the media began an open, albeit government-ordered, discourse on homosexuality that is unparalleled in other Central and East European countries.9 The new openness concerning homosexuality was evident not only in literature and scientific publications, but also in print and broadcast media. In 1984 the popular monthly health magazine, Deine Gesundheit (Your health), began printing a series of readers' letters on homosexuality; soon after, several other major publications published substantial articles on sexual orientation.'0 More than two hundred articles on the subject appeared in the GDR during the 1980s, but, despite the openness in the press towards male homosexuality, lesbianism received only marginal coverage.

The television health program Visite was the firsto break the taboo against the discussion of homosexuality on that medium with its broadcast of a report in September 1987 that described homosexuality asan entirely natural variation of human sexuality. Under contract with the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum (German hygiene museum) and in conjunction with gay and lesbian activists, the state-controlled film production company, DEFA, produced the GDR's first documentary on homosexuality, Die andere Liebe (The other love), in 1988. The next year DEFA released a feature film about a homosexual teacher, Coming Out.

The most important signal that the state was interested in accepting homosexuals into GDR society and in preventing them from organizing outside of state control was the establishment of gay and lesbian clubs within state and party institution.

tfw you can no longer go to the state run gay bar in germany :ooooooooooooooh: