when liberals say the communist oppressed lgbtq people thing they mean it as a criticism of communism in comparison to capitalism, as in "the ussr under stalin had bad lgbtq legislation therefore capitalism is a better system" this is a rejection of that criticism because how could this possibly indicate that capitalism is better when the failure of communist in this particular case is that they werent better capitalist like they were supposed to be.

Correct, but I dislike that liberals point that out when the Western world has done the same. They are either ignorant of those laws or think liberalism and their politicians are allowed to get away with it. If we confront them, they always say that's "whataboutism."