In Europe, France was the first country to decriminalize homosexuality, through the 1791 new code penal, followed by the Napoleonic code in 1804. And the Napoleonic code served as penal base for a big part of Europe. Among the European countries who decriminalized homosexuality in the 19th century, there's Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands and some Switzerland cantons. Spain and Portugal did it too, but recriminalized it later ; late 19th century for Portugal, mid 20th for Spain, due to Franco dictatorship.
Other countries did it during the first half of 20th century, like Poland (1932), Denmark (1933), Iceland (1940), Switzerland at national level (1942), or Sweden (1944). Greece followed in 1951, Britain in 1967. For Austria and Finland, it date from 1971, 1972 for Norway, and 1973 for Malta, while Spain goes back to decriminalization after Franco dictatorship (1979). Then, with
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(1981) the European Court of Human Rights made it mandatory for any country member of the EU, or candidate to adhesion, to not criminalize homosexuality.
Counting the countries I haven't named, in 1950 more than half of the free European countries (therefore not counting Easter Europe under USSR domination) already stopped to criminalize homosexuality. Yet, even inside the Eastern block, some countries, like Croatia, Montenegro and Slovenia, all parts of the Federation of Yugoslavia, decriminalized homosexuality ; for the three named countries, they did together in 1977.
But decriminalization do not necessarily imply the end of discrimination. The most frequent one was centered around the age of consent, that was higher for same sex intercourse. It's what was abolished more recently in Europe. Yet this doesn't mean that the law was enforced, and for most countries it was abrogated recently because someone suddenly remembered that such law existed and it would be a good idea to change that.
Globally speaking, in half of Europe, only homosexuals who are now over 80yo possibly had to hide their sexual orientation ; yet only for a short span of years. As for the other half, for the biggest part of it, it's only homosexuals over 50yo who had to do it. In 1962, when Illinois became the first US state do decriminalize homosexuality, it was already legal in around half of Europe.
Fun fact, China decriminalized homosexuality before the USA did it at national level. It date from
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, therefore 6 years before
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; that isn't a law, and therefore can be reverted at any time.
Yeah... I totally see myself hiding that I'm gay because it's something that was already legal in the country when my great-great-great-grand father was born. Oh, wait...