Traveling Holocaust Exhibit Details Nazi Persecution of Gays

I've noted before the deliberate attempts by some in the Christian Right to tie gays to those responsible for the Nazi horrors of the "Final Solution" and World War II - even as they themselves utilize the same propaganda techniques used against Jews 70 some years ago by the Nazi regime against modern day LGBT citizens. The clinically insane (at least in my opinion) Scott Lively is one of the worse of such pathologically lying propagandists as exemplified by his book "The Pink Swastika" which has been thoroughly discredited by legitimate historians even if the ignorant and uneducated fall for Lively's lie in parts of Africa. The Seattle Times has an article that looks at the lesser recognized victims of Nazi persecution.; gays. A link to more information from the Holocaust Museum is here. Note the chilling parallels between what the Nazi propaganda said against gays and what is disseminated virtually daily by Maggie Gallagher and her cohorts at OM, Tony Perkins and FRC, Virginia Cobb and the bigots at The Family Foundation here in Virginia, and of course the Wildmons at American Family Association. These people and their organizations are indeed little better than the Nazi regime of Adolph Hitler in the lies disseminated against LGBT Americans. Here are some story highlights:
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A traveling exhibit by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum sheds light on the Nazi persecution of gay Germans. Though the Nazis never intended to murder all gays, as they intended to eliminate all Jews, they nevertheless sent thousands of them to concentration camps and destroyed the lives of tens of thousands others.
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Some attendees had no idea before hearing about the exhibit that Nazis targeted gays, Simon said. "With what's happening today, especially with the bullying of homosexuals in schools, people said they wanted to have a perspective of what it looked like during the Nazi era."
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Within a month of taking power in 1933, the Nazis closed gay and lesbian publications and gathering places. Their aim was to terrorize gays into sexual and social conformity, according to the exhibit and a lecture Simon gave Sunday.
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Nazis targeted gays partly because of Germany's declining birthrate; 2 million German men had died in World War I. They thought gays endangered public morality and they considered homosexuality an infection that could become an epidemic, particularly among youth. In forwarding their hateful agenda, the Nazis often cited "traditional family values," Simon said.
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Under Nazi rule, more than 100,000 gay men were arrested; 50,000 were imprisoned. Thousands went to concentration camps. To avoid that fate, many gay men married, killed themselves or even castrated themselves, believing it would help them avoid prison, Simon said.
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The next time you see Maggie Gallagher or Tony Perkins engaging in an anti-gay harangue, close your eyes and visualize the faces of some of their role models - Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler - in how to denigrate LGBT individuals. It's an ugly image but quickly puts today's virulently anti-gay "family values" advocates in context.