05/04/2005
A Gay Holocaust?
From hatred springs....? A column by Leonard Pitts that was syndicated across the country last weekend looks at the attitude towards gay people simmering under the surface (and on the surface in some cases) in many parts of this country:
"Ours is a stable and prosperous democracy, so no, I don't predict train cars full of gays rolling toward death factories. Still, the mindset of aggrieved righteousness that allowed those trains to roll is not dissimilar from that which would ban books about gay people from public school libraries.
Maybe your instinct is to find the comparison unthinkable. Nobody is interning gays, nobody is mass murdering them.
You're right. But ask yourself: How many would if they could?"
Posted 12:30 PM EST by Andy Towle in Current Affairs | Permalink
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I just got finished reading it and I will take a somewhat different spin that the NAZI spin.
Gays are the new niggers: It's not the Nazis, its the KKK.
Underground terrorist organizations like the KKK just don't disappear, they go back underground until a new target emerges. In addition, the KKK analogy works for the Blue against the red states.
Urban areas escaped the KKK and African-Americans flocked to the North (Detroit) in the same manner as we flocked to the left and right coast of the US.
Dr Dobson is just George Wallace with a PhD
Posted by: John | May 4, 2005 12:56:50 PM
Interesting thoughts John. I'm inclined to agree.
Posted by: Rob | May 4, 2005 1:27:36 PM
well, the difference in the "nigger" analogy and the "nazi" anology, is that this hatred has been legalized and legitimized through organized relegion as well as local, state and federal governments. unfortunately, the laws on the books outlawing gay marriage, banning gay books and denying gays benefits won't just "go back underground." i'd say the situation is closer to train cars and concentration camps than hooded rednecks and burning crosses.
Posted by: john | May 4, 2005 1:32:05 PM
naaayyyyy.
none of the article, up to and including the melodramatic closer, is heavy enough of an argument to equate the current state of discrimination in the united states against homos to the unabashed slaughter and psychological violence of the jewish holocaust. it's also inept to call gays the "new" niggers, as that would be ignoring a massive amounts of important history unique to the issue of racism against african-americans.
i understand that people try to come up with ways of equating the fight for gay rights to previous human and civil rights struggles in an attempt to provide some perspective for those that might not "get it" yet, but any simple comparison would be a huge injustice to the demographics involved.
maybe it's enough to take the fight for gay and transgendered rights as the extremely unique scenario it is?
Posted by: marcus | May 4, 2005 2:27:25 PM
I think the analogy to racial prejudice is largely accurate. The demonization of black people in this country by organizations such as the KKK was sanctioned outright by state governments in the south until very recently. Laws supporting segregation, miscegenation and discrimination on every level were passed and enforced in those states. Some – though very few – of those laws are still on the books, but no one dares to try enforcing them. Even here in the south, it’s finally become unacceptable in most venues to publicly endorse racial prejudice (although it still goes on plenty behind closed doors, believe me). And gays have become the new target of social intolerance. Things are regressing. After a long battle, Georgia’s Supreme Court finally tossed out the state’s vile sodomy law in 1998. Soon afterward, several cities began offering domestic partnership benefits. It felt as if things were finally opening up and that we were moving forward. All that’s been wiped away in the past two legislative sessions, which have resulted in laws prohibiting or impeding gay marriage, gay adoption, domestic benefits, etc. Other states are worse. It’s state-sanctioned discrimination. Pure and simple. The same thing that happened to blacks in the 20th Century, only with the backing of the fundamentalist Christian movement (a large percentage of which, ironically, is headed by black ministers) and the political right. Worst of all, it creates an atmosphere that makes it okay for people to disparage or marginalize gays. As Mr. Pitts points out in his column, there’s a social backlash against us brewing out there, and it’s being fostered by local governments.
Posted by: kimmer | May 4, 2005 2:38:58 PM
I'm sorry, which religion will try and have us all killed?
http://www.washingtonblade.com/blog/index.cfm?start=4/28/05&end=5/5/05#523
Posted by: Mitch | May 4, 2005 3:16:12 PM
It's just disgusting that you would equate the systematic murder of 6 million Jews with the current discrimination faced by gays. Or the forced enslavement of African Americans and long battle against desegregation. It shows how uneducated you are; how unable you are to put things into perspective; and how ultimately selfish and self-centered you are. Getting denied hospital visitation rights is not the same as getting gased to death by Nazis or getting chained up, put on a boat, shipped to another continent and sold as a slave. It's no wonder why blacks and gays don't get along. Stop these kind of comparisons and "how many would if they could" questions. Abusing history this badly would be funny if it weren't so tragic.
Posted by: puhlease | May 4, 2005 3:46:55 PM
well, the jews weren't suddenly haulded off to the camps one day...it was a long progression of small acts in an atmosphere of hate (this is Pitts' point) that eventually left them with no rights whatsoever. you seem to argue that things aren't so bad in comparisson. what are we to do, sit around and be silent? nothing is or hopefully ever will be the same as slavery or the holocaust; that's not the point. the point is that people's rights as human beings are being denied and an atmosphere of hate is being legally and morally espoused by those in power in this country. dangerous times, indeed, for those on the receiving end of the hate, regardless of what they look like, worship or who they love.
Posted by: john | May 4, 2005 4:38:24 PM
Well said John!
Posted by: Robert | May 4, 2005 4:49:19 PM
Faced with an unspeakable evil the liberal mind can't talk away, we turn to an easy enemy. We're as guilty as the right wingers that blame 9/11 on us.
Posted by: Mitch | May 4, 2005 5:10:15 PM
It's an insult to victims of the Holocaust to compare their mass, extreme suffering to gay discrimination just because of some similarities between the very early stages.
Not every book ban or adoption law turns into a Holocaust and there is a wide range of legitimate responses between "being silent" and yelling Gay Holocaust!
Not all injustice is the same and not all injustice needs to be put on the same level to deserve action.
The exagerration is in fact self-defeating if we want real results. Do you think middle Americans are swayed by gays comparing themselves to murdered Jews or enslaved African Americans? Please. Where I am from these kind of comparisons turn neutral people against us.
Gay hatred is on the rise with some groups of people only because we've never had as many rights and freedoms as we have now.
A book ban in Alabama or wherever it was does not negate a gay marriage in Massachusetts or the Supreme Court strking down sodomy laws.
When you consider bigger picture makes invoking the Holocaust even more ridiculous.
Posted by: puhlease | May 4, 2005 5:21:41 PM
This was an interesting article, BUT. Is everyone forgetting that it was not just the Jewish that were killed in the Holocaust? Yes, they bore the brunt of Hitler’s madness but gay individuals were rounded up as well. This is were we get the pink triangle. The colour scheme was yellow for Jews, red for political, green for criminals, pink for homosexuals, black for anti-socials, blue for emigrants, brown for gypsies, purple for Jehovah's Witnesses.
Posted by: Ross | May 4, 2005 7:34:19 PM
Puhlease seems to think it's just a matter of marriage and hospital visitation rights. That's hardly all the right-wingers have on their agenda; they'd prefer to strip us of all rights and recriminalize our private sexual conduct. There's also the question of the scores of gays and lesbians who are attacked and killed each year for being themselves--people like Sakia Gunn, the New Jersey teenager murdered at a busstop by a couple of monsters after she rejected their sexual advances by revealing that she was a lesbian.
If you regularly see a faction of society eager to both legislate a certain type of person into legal non-existence, and to kill members of that same group simply for being who they are, I think you can bring up the Nazis and Jews without some unimaginative contrarian shooting you down.
Originally, I was going to say that Puhlease was logically challenged for failing to understand that comparisons don't need to be exact to be valid, but instead I realize Puhlease lacks imagination.
Matthew Shepard and Anne Frank are equally dead. Shall we bring out the hate-o-meter to see which type of lethal hatred was more dehumanizing and despicable?
Posted by: Tom | May 5, 2005 2:15:39 AM
Imagination is one thing, results are another. Articles like this one syndicated in newspapers like the Salt Lake Tribune might make Towleroad readers imagine their plight is extra special but bringing up Holocaust comparisons is simply not going to resonate with the mainstream American voters who don't necessarily want us exterminated but who don't necessarily support marriage rights, either. Tom try to imagine a practical, steady, perspective and progress instead of imagining you are being rounded up for the gas chamber.
Posted by: puhlease | May 5, 2005 4:50:16 AM
I think that if you compare the behavior and attitude of those at the top of the Facist regimes of Italy and especially Germany you will find it is not such a large leap of imagination to see that behavior of those in charge in Washington today. The Facist's were big on Patriotism! and National Identity so is Bush and company. The Facist's had their scapegoats as to why things were so bad, Jew, Gays and Gypsies, and slowly but methodicly made rules to marginalize and de-humanize these groups so that it was easier to put in place their "Final Solution". The Nazi's also used a facade of religion in their retoric. The list could go on and not everything is the same but over all the behavior is to similiar to ignore and dismiss. America needs to wake up to the viper it is holding near to it's chest.
Posted by: Daniel | May 5, 2005 6:00:52 AM
There seems to be an intellectually sloppy desire for some to equate everything to the Nazis and the Holocaust. The reality is a lot more complex and a lot happier. In my lifetime attitudes here in the UK and in the US have moved fundamentally in our favour and rubbish like this article only does our cause harm.
‘But ask yourself: How many would if they could?’ No ask yourself how this article got past an editor.
Posted by: Bill | May 5, 2005 9:59:22 AM
I have never understood the reluctance to compare current social trends with 1930s Germany -- as if any comparison is an insult to those who died. Previous posters have already pointed out that gays and lesbians were the FIRST (along with political dissidents) to be rounded up in concentration camps. I would also have to STRONGLY disagree that conservative fundamentalists in the US will stop at anti-marriage and adoption laws. This has no been their history. Simply look at the AIDS crisis in the 1980s -- Reagan never even said the word "AIDS" publicly until more Americans had died from it than the Vietnam War. These people do want us dead -- don't kid yourself. Additionally, holding the Nazi Holocaust up as the penultimate expression of evil is not only Euro-centric but historically inaccurate. There have been holocausts since then that have been larger (Stalin murdered at least 20 million in the 1950s) and more rapidly accomplished (some 4 million Rwandans were slaughtered in a single year). Minorities are in constant danger of being made scapegoats for a society's problems and we only need to look at RECENT Western history to see how quickly discrimination can escalate into a full-fledged genocide. The author of this article is not comparing modern America with 1940s Germany but rather 1930s Germany and I think the comparison is apt and appropriate. The current political climate in this country meets much, if not all, of the criteria for fascism and totalitarianism as did the democratically elected government of 1930s Germany. Stop being so naive -- the Holocaust did not happen in the abstract nor in ancient history -- it was a phenomenon in modern Western civilization not so far removed from ourselves.
Posted by: David | May 5, 2005 11:35:53 AM
You know, we're having trouble in this country keeping the teaching of evolution in the curriculum of our schools because large numbers of people believe instead that a man sitting on a throne floating on a cloud waved his magic wand and brought everything into existence 6000 years ago. Under those circumstances, I plan to remain on my toes regarding public attitudes toward us and the potential dangers we face. The history of the human race is filled with a lot more illogical hatred and violence than mature acceptance and tolerance. Events in Bosnia and Rwanda in the '90s show us that human beings are still willing to commit hideous atrocities against people they've lived alongside peacefully for years.
Posted by: Tom | May 5, 2005 11:59:38 AM
Excellent comment, David.
Posted by: Tom | May 5, 2005 12:50:26 PM
I highly reccommend a visit to the travelling exhibit "Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals, 1933-1945," from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/index.php?content=traveling/
The exhibit is currently in Fort Lauderdale and will be here in Atlanta next April.
I make no comparison between my lot and those who suffered at the hands of the Nazis. However, I see no compelling argument that history cannot repeat itself, even in this country....
"The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life." - Adolph Hitler, My New World Order - 1933
Posted by: Atlanta | May 5, 2005 4:10:44 PM
Hitler came to power by winning elections in a democracy. He had support at 80% levels. The Jews were a convenient target because Christians in general and the Catholic Church in particular characterized them as "Christ killers."
The new Pope has demonized the gay community and openly opposes gay marriage. (Perhaps it is the shortage of priests that compels his actions?)
It is a slippery slope. All it takes is a few elections.
I hope this is the peak of the anti-gay movement that we now see emboldened by the re-election of Bush. I hope we change course. Time will tell.
Posted by: jessejames | May 5, 2005 6:13:13 PM
I don't really equate gays to being the new "blacks" as I do to us being hated in the sense that Jewish people have been demonized. There is an envy of us that has been particularly similar to that of Jewish people in terms of success, income and expectations - many gay men do quite well in academics and are successful in their careers, and I think that it drives straight men crazy to see us doing so well in life. They see us continuing on to post-graduate school, getting new cars, moving into newer homes - things they can not do with a wife and child(ren). There is a freedom we have (whatever our income level) that straight people do not have. They hate us for that.
I came out 15 years ago, and until last year I never gave it a second thought that I could be attacked for who I am. After I came out, attitudes towards gays seemed to get better, and I didn't really fear for my safety. This past year has been a real awakening for me - I continue to see these pick ups with BUSH stickers on them, Marriage = Man + Woman, confederate flag stickers, etc and to me that is a direct attack on us as gay people. The more cars I see with those stickers, the more it reinforces to me - there's a LOT of people who hate us. As gay men we need to be particularly careful because most of those cars and pickups belong to cute boys that we would normally be glancing at in line at the store or the gym. Not all these guys are like this, but I'd say the majority of them are.
What bothers me in all this is gay men have become more indifferent towards each other than ever. It seems like gay men don't give a shit about each other anymore and that's too bad. Government policies and protections are not the answer - WE ARE! We have to start getting over ourselves and our prejudices against other gay men - for some of us this community is all we've got. There is a potential for us to be such great friends but nobody seems interested in giving it a chance.
It's just so isolating sometimes - it seems as if the straight society (much of the time) is cold and hostile, but other gay men can be just as indifferent and mean. So there's no sense of a safe place to go. I know I can't be the only one who fees like this.
Posted by: Jon | May 7, 2005 7:42:31 PM