The treatment of homosexuality in Latvia has varied greatly throughout its history, as the country has gone through periods of conquest and independence. Typically, laws targeting the LGBT community and particularly gay men have been harsher under periods of Russian or Soviet control than during periods of independence. Shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, homosexuality in Latvia was decriminalised in 1992. However, homophobic attitudes remain entrenched, and Latvia is considered one of the least hospitable countries for the LGBT community in the EU.
Governorate of Livonia
Legal Framework In 1832, a rule criminalising "copulation between men" () was introduced in the Russian Empire in 1832, along with the first collection of the laws of the Russian Empire. It was called Article 995, which stipulated sanctions only for anal intercourse between men, which included taking away all personal and property rights, and exile of the arrested to penal colonies (usually in Siberia) for 4 to 5 years. Moreover, if the sentenced person was Christian, he had to repent his sins in such a way his congregation leader prescribed. In practice, this law was not often enforced, particularly among the upper class.
Attempts to decrease the sanctions for the behaviour mentioned were successful. On 22 March 1903, Article 516 of the criminal code prescribed prison time no less than three months. However, this Penal code was not implemented. The "old" Article 995 was in effect in the Russian empire until 1917, when bolsheviks seized power in the former Russian Empire.
In Society In the late 1800s, a gay male subculture began to develop in the cities of Russian Empire. At the beginning of the 20th century, two (more or less) formed subcultures existed at the forefront, artistically and intellectually, with known poets and artists, and the sexually commercial bathhouses, cheap hotels, certain streets and other places of male prostitution. Just as in Western Europe, in Russia, homosexual relationships were most common in closed educational institutions, such as cadet corps, Junker schools, and so on. However, before The World War I in Latvian artistic environments same-sex sexual relationships between men was a taboo subject, so even in letters and memoirs of homosexual people nothing might be interpreted unambiguously as they do not include definitions of sexual identity. Therefore, today one might see only homoerotic hints in the texts of Rūdolfs Blaumanis, as well as in the seemingly passionate letter greetings of writer Ivande Kaija to poet Aspazija.
In entertainment, cross-dressing was a popular attraction. One of these performers, sometimes referred to as "impersonators", started his career at the local opera in Riga in 1903. Since that time Kārlis Lencs, as he was called in Latvian press, had performed in Berlin, Paris, London, America, but in the autumn of 1934 had arrived in a tour to Riga land also had performed in other places in Latvia - Vecauce, Durbe, Saldus. Such entertainment was available in Riga not only in 1903, but also in 1911. Intersex actor, Jespe (hermaphrodite), performed in cafe "Šata". "The actor sings very well, he also really likes young junkers and he is ready to do anything for them. The best idea is to dine with him and in the most critical moment to leave, he will be distraught, but that’s nothing," in a private letter one junker of Polotsk cadet corps advised to another.
In other countries, scandals related to homosexuality took place and were discussed: however, there was not much information about them in the Latvian press. The legal process (1895) against Oscar Wilde, who was convicted on the charge of pederasty and sentenced to two years of forced labour, was widely reflected in the Russian press. But in the Latvian press, it was mentioned only after 1905. Moreover, the authors of the publication did not even specify the crime he was charged with, but used a euphemism: "violation of morality".
In 1908 newspaper, Dzimtenes Vētnesis described the lawsuit (1907) of Prince Philip Eulenburg, a friend of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, against Maximilian Harden, the editor of Journal Zukunft, who in several publications had described the homosexual pleasures of the prince and other nobles. The newspaper also used the terms "homosexualism” and "homosexualist" emphasising that as in Latvian, "there is no name for such human depravities" many might not understand what does the charge of homosexuality mean?". The author explained that the first German Chancellor Bismarck had called the clique of Prince Philip Eulenburg "kinaids", and using equivalent Latvian words, "dog asses". Such statement were based in tradition that was reflected in the Latvian folklore, where the most valued masculine model was denoted by phallic symbolism (rooster, bull, foal, eel), but physically defective, socially lower and sexually deviant men were characterised by symbols of a dog and a wolf.
The researches of European sexologists about homosexuals were translated and republished in Russia soon after their publishing. The ethnographical essay "The third Gender of Berlin" (1904) by German sexologist and homosexual movement activist Magnus Hirschfeld was published in Russian translation four years after the original. The research about "sexual inversion" by British Doctor, writer, social reformer Havelock Ellis, which was banned in England, was published in Russian only after 1909. Essays about "the intermediate gender" written by English socialist, philosopher, homosexual movement activist Edward Carpenter, was published in 1916 with the permission of military censorship. Meanwhile, the most influential Russian specialist was Veniamin Mikhailovich Tarnovski, professor of Imperial Military Medical Academy in Saint-Petersburg, with the book about perversity of sexual desires published in 1885. Until the World War I commercial books that introduced to "the world of perversion" were published in Russia and the theme of homosexuality was widely used by Russian writers in their works. The option to read these texts, at least theoretically, existed in the territory of Latvia.
World War I and Latvian War of Independence
The war gave opportunities to cross the gender lines without punishment. Led by the idea of patriotism, young women dressed up as men to have the opportunity to fight. Some managed to join Latvian Riflemen units in World War I (there are six known women) and during the Latvian War of Independence. War was one of the exclusive attributes of masculinity, therefore those few women who managed to obtain the permission to fight at the front-lines, were given male names in documentation. Līna Čanka, one of the three women cavaliers of the Order of Lāčplēsis in August 1915 with the documents of her brother Jānis Čanks, volunteered at the Latvian riflemen battalion and fought as a man for some time. In 1916, Emīlija K. from Ķemeri, was attached to one of the riflemen battalions as "Pēteris K". She received respect among her war comrades because she "just beat up" those who intrusively tried to show her their affection.
World War I created the emancipation of awareness of homosexuality in the territory of Latvia. Due to the wars large inhabitant masses (and experiences) moved. Migration paralysed the usual mechanisms of social control. Unprecedented possibilities appeared to realise the seemingly impossible, to see what had been unseen until now. In general, that encouraged people to become aware about the diversity of sexual practice.
Transgender people used the situation of war to start their lives in their desired gender. During wartime, Alvīne Osis replaced documents to become Arvīds Osis and joined the army to affirm the new identity. A soldier, who in the beginning of 1919 during the Latvian War of Independence, had served in the North Latvian brigade created in area of Vidzeme occupied by Estonian army, married as a woman. In 1923, the soldier wanted a divorce and asked the clerks of Riga registry office "to change them from a woman to a man". It meant giving out documents that would confirm the respective gender. At the time when there were no possibilities to change the I gender by surgery it was the most radical thing that could be demanded.
Information about the emancipation of homosexuality in territory of Latvia during the wartime is rather scarce and fragmentary. For example, an entry in a document that the person X is "a pederast from the last war 1914-1918", or a note that the accused had his first homosexual experience during the World War I, while serving in army. The documents of post-war Court of Honour of the Latvian Armed Forces indicated that such behaviour among the professional soldiers during "peacetime" was condemned. For example, a homosexual Lieutenant Colonel, who was a board member of Riflemen Society, that is, he participated in World War I as an officer, was forced to retire.
The war did not encourage homosexuality, but it made it easier for men who were already homosexual to have same-sex relationships, overcoming the social and sexual oppression that had been dominant in their lives before then. Hence the war created an interesting paradox. Despite its traumatic nature, war gave homosexual people an alternative environment where they could ignore repressive traditions and to find out their identity. It made it easier for men to investigate their sexual desires outside traditional social structures and 'mechanisms of social monitoring'. For example, the experience of war for one group of the German homosexual community provided the modern image — a gay man as a warrior and the rhetoric that was against the idea that homosexuals have feminine nature.
The war built the self-identity of homosexuals, for example, in Germany homosexual men saw military as the opportunity to show their patriotism, masculinity and their integration with society. Sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld researched the influence of war on homosexual men. From 1914 to 1918 soldiers from the frontline sent him thousands of letters, pedantically telling about their homosexual experiences. On one hand, the army considered homosexuality unnatural and immoral, but on the other hand exactly in the military environment homosexual men "emerged". A soldier wrote that war gave him opportunity to educate his fellow soldiers and dispel the negative stereotypes. Homosexual relationships became more noticeable, and homosexuals were tolerated because they shared the front-line experience with the others.
Incidentally, during the World War I a common part of entertainment if USA Navy were men, who played female parts in theatre. Likewise, British Army paid artist corps that did the same, to perform at the front-lines of Great Britain. The colourful but problematic dressing op of men as women seemingly renewed gender norms in a homosocial (based only on male relationships) soldier community. Dressing up as women on stage symbolically resolved the oppression of sexuality.
The Republic of Latvia (1918—1934)
Legal framework After World War I, on 18 November 1918 the Republic of Latvia was founded and it defined 22 March 1903 Criminal Code of the Russian Empire as its Penal Code. In different parts of Latvia, they were in force before the county founded. The occupying power of Germany had declared the Criminal Code as the Penal Code in the administrative region (including Kurzeme and Latgale) of the Commander-of-Chief of the whole Eastern front. Whereas in the German-occupied Vidzeme they came into force in February 1918. Latvian People's Council, already on 15 March 1920, adopted the law about the implementation of the criminal code in Latgale. It means, that in certain places of Latvia the penalty for committing acts of pederasty was decreased already during World War I. Article 516 of the Penal Code named "Immorality" prescribed a prison sentence of at least three months for these acts.