My original post was very much about the context of a liberal Europe in the current climate which I had hoped had been picked up; not about China, Cuba or past regimes which I know were appalling in the way they treated homosexuals. Even that treatment was based on cultural prejudice rather than any ideals of Socialism or Communism (seems that even dictators have to be slightly populist on these kinds of issues!).
I say that because the modern philosophy of the western European liberal and left has adopted equality of differing sexualities while conservative and far right elements still yearn for the days when they could go "Queer-bashing" with impunity. Nostalgia?
You're right about the left in the West. Most of them have adopted individual freedom as a point as well.
But that was not the case in the traditional left (before the late 60s earliest), at least on the topic of sexual minorities. "The left" before then was pretty authoritarian and emphasized conformity. The left in the East Bloc never embraced this kind of "individualist leftism" as it did in the West until 1989/90, some of them maybe not even up to today.
The classic worker movement was not interested in sexual minority issues. Many traditional people from the working class are still prejudiced towards homosexuality. This issue has been brought into debate by the "intellectual" left, students' movement and so on, who care more about individual freedom and equality or environmentalism.
In Germany, this difference is reflected by different left-leaning parties: The Green Party is the party that directly followed the rise of individualist left movements in the late 60s and 70s. The center-left Social Democrats have adopted some of these stances too, but focus more on labor equality. And the far-left Left Party hardly ever mentions these stances, and their chairman was the only politican I saw making bigoted remarks in the campaign about the homosexuality of now Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle (who is libertarian) -- even the conservatives didn't do that.
When facing the choice between individual equality or environmentalist issues on one side, and improvement of worker rights on the other, the Greens (individualist left) will always chose the former. Vice versa the traditional left of the socialist Left Party: They couldn't care less about individual minority rights or environmental issues, as long as they get improvements for workers and unemployed.
The socialist East German dictatorship was a hellhole of pollution and environment destruction, and of minority bashing. Many traditional leftists focusing on the labor movement still have no problem with that, and many of the Left Party's supporters still buy into bigoted and hateful gay-bashing.
Since individual freedom is one of the most important topics for me, I could imagine (and have) voting for the Greens, but never for the socialist Left Party. They are not any less anti-individualist and authoritarian than the conservatives.