Homosexuality is an Unhealthy Lifestyle

What’s wrong with this article? I mean besides the fact that there isn’t a single reliable fact within it. Moreover it is little more than a rant by ChristoFascists who have nothing better to do with their time than unifying the Republican Base by rallying that base against the GLBT community. In an attempt to remedy that situation I am republishing Part III of THE FOURTEEN CHARACTERISTICS OF FASCISM, a piece about this very topic.

By
Daniel
With Assistance from
Brian

A defining characteristic of fascism is the manner in which it singles out minority groups for deliberate persecution. Whenever fascists decide to test the water, when they want to see how much they can get away with, they invariably begin with a chosen minority or minorities, inflicting their abuse on a specific group or groups before they, the fascists, brutalize society as a whole.

Historically speaking, in western, Christianized nations, the two groups most frequently singled out for abuse are Jews and homosexuals. That doesn’t mean that other groups aren’t targeted. On the contrary. In Nazi Germany the list of victims included Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, Russians, Poles, Czechs, Communists, Socialists, defiant Christians, and just about anyone else who the Nazis regarded as either racially or ideologically impure. Essentially a right wing phenomenon, fascism has traditionally denigrated Socialists as Communists, Liberals as Socialists, as if in its own ignorance Fascism/Nazism could not, or perhaps would not, understand that there were distinct differences between the three.

As a gay, 23-year-old white male I understand well the consequences of right wing persecution and the right wing penchant for violence against those who it seeks to oppress. Some of you are probably familiar with the fact that I was beaten outside the apartment complex where I lived in 2003. My attackers were a gang of self-declared “Christians,” who, during the course of the beating, informed me that “Jesus hates fags.” Unfortunately for my attackers I survived the experience to talk about it, and like those who have survived past attempts at persecution, the new and improved Daniel Gallagher has adopted a “never again” attitude.

I won’t deny that the present wave of fascism, the one which emanates from the extreme right wing of the Republican Party and its Radical Christian Right supporters has selected a wide and varied group of minorities to persecute: mainstream Christians, liberals, human secularists, Muslims, foreigners–anyone and everyone who the Radical Christian Right imagines to be a potential threat. But, as a gay male I feel better qualified to speak about my own persecution and the persecution of gays and lesbians. It isn’t that I am unsympathetic to the distress of others. It’s just that I, like most individuals can speak more comfortably about personal experiences, about the things I see and hear happening to the gay community at large. And if you want the honest to God truth, my observations are beginning to ring some alarm bells.

In his lurid, often sociopathic political treatise/autobiography, Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler ranted obsessively about his favorite scapegoat, the Jews. “Was there in any form of filth or profligacy, particularly in cultural life, without at least one Jew involved in it?” Hitler asked. “If you cut even cautiously into such an abscess you find, like a maggot in a rotting body, often dazed by the sudden light a [Jew].” In a similar vein, Hitler denigrates Jews as being “cold hearted, shameless, and calculating.” At other times he obsesses over the idea of Jews seducing Christian girls.

I mention this, not to offend our Jewish readers, but to demonstrate the striking similarities between Nazi German hate speech of the 1920s, 30s and 40s and the virulent, gay bashing that we see in the Radical Christian Right of contemporary America.

*FACT: Nazi propaganda associated Judaism with everything from gambling and prostitution to communism and international crime. Today the Radical Christian Right, through extremist, Orwellian-named organizations like The Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, equates the entire gay and lesbian community with everything from pedophile attacks on boys to kleptomania to murder. Just as the Nazis associated Jews with racial inferiority and sexual perversion, modern, American hate mongers associate gays with everything from incest, prostitution, and sadism to bestiality, pedophilia, masochism, and necrophilia.

*FACT: In a similar vein, the Radical Christian Right has obsessed over gays and sexually transmitted diseases. Referring back to Mein Kampf, Hitler rants for page after turgid page about the evils of syphilis. Along with Judaism, Communism, and rabid German Nationalism, it’s a topic that obsessed the Austrian psychopath to no end. Smearing your intended victims as somehow diseased or deserving of disease is a classic, hate mongering tactic, and the fascist mindset of the extreme elements of the Republican Party displays the same kind of sick preoccupation with venereal disease whenever it attempts to discuss the topics of gay marriage, civil unions, and gay rights in general.

Not that the rhetoric they employ is always consistent. On one hand the far right argues that marriage and monogamy are good things because (in addition to providing a stable framework in which to raise children) marriage and monogamy also prevent the spread of Sexually Transmitted Diseases. But then, the Radical Christian Right reveals a truly genocidal nature and does everything in its power to deny gays and lesbians their rights, and by extension, protections which come through marriage. In many ways this is a continuation of the attitude (problem) which prevailed during the 1980s when the Reagen Administration seemed confused and irritated by frequent demands for funding increases for AIDS research. The attitude at the time (and now) was that AIDS was a punishment from God; it was killing the right kinds of people (gays, blacks, and drug addicts), so why ruin a good thing?

*FACT: In Nazi Germany Jews were frequently condemned because of their alleged financial success and higher levels of education. Today the fanatical core of the Republican Party (which seems to have a phobic reaction when it comes to funding higher education) complains bitterly because gays and lesbians are highly educated and make decent livings. Ironically, this argument comes from the same Social Darwinists who routinely condemn the idea of class warfare, but who, in their rabid attempts to demonize the people they love to hate, have adopted the very class warfare rhetoric which they so stridently and hypocritically condemn. Go figure.

*FACT: Early on, the German Nazis frequently claimed that the Jews not only controlled the banks, but the German media as well. Now fast forward to the year 2005. Today the Radical Christian Right tells us that in addition to Jews, gays and lesbians are in full control of Hollywood, radio, and television. Unless of course you’re listening to Christian broadcasting or the AM, Rush Limbaugh hate band–in which case you’re confronted with a nonstop flow of anal retentive drivel which sounds as it were penned by the likes of Paul Josef Goebbels.

*FACT: During the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, German Nazis routinely condemned all Jews as “Christ-killers.” Some things never change. The Radical Christian Right is still virulently anti-Semitic, but it also spews paranoid drivel about the alleged role that Gays and Lesbians are playing in a New Age Satanic plot designed to corrupt our youth, destroy our schools, and take over the world. Never mind the obvious self judgment on the part of the Radical Christian Right, the truth of the matter is that many gays and lesbians (present company no longer included) have accepted the Bible as the inspired word of God and are seeking a closer relationship with their maker: not to mention and open, accepting atmosphere in which to peacefully worship without fear of harassment or the threat of physical abuse.

*FACT: Nazi propaganda often referred to Jews as rats and vermin. Today delusional clergy men and vociferous hate groups denigrate gays and lesbians as “rats” and “evolutionary mistakes.”

*FACT: German Nazis were genocidal in the extreme. Their blood soaked atrocities are a well known part of the historical record. Few, however, are familiar with the insane ranting of Paul Cameron, who, in 1983 had advocated the extermination of homosexuals. Two years later, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Cameron attempted to put his remarks in a more acceptable context: “Unless we get lucky in the next three or four years one of the options discussed will be the extermination of homosexuals,” said Cameron. In subsequent years Cameron was thoroughly discredited, his so-called research debunked, but yet the Radical Christian Right continues to use his deluded drivel to further its incredibly oppressive agenda.

*FACT: Homosexuals are frequently accused of wanting to persecute or harass Christians, or of wanting to give AIDS to Christians. This type of rhetoric is highly similar to the kind of twaddle that the German Nazis spread about their Jewish victims, but if you want to take a look at who the real culprit here you only have to look at the Westboro Baptist Church out of Topeka, Kansas, and its moronic leader, the “Reverend” Fred Phelps, who travel around the country attending public events such as funerals and graduations where they spew anti gay slogans. Their latest tactic–attending the funerals of young American Soldiers who were killed in Iraq, because Phelps and his merry band of borderline psychotics are convinced that young soldiers are being killed because America has embraced a pro-homosexual agenda. Yeah. Right. And to make the situation even more bewildering, Cameron once considered himself a (conservative) Democrat–that despite the fact that his foolish attitudes on everyone from Gays and Jews to Mister Rogers put him squarely in the Republican Religious Right. Go figure.

I’m sure that the Radical Right “Christians” who are reading this will, as usual, attempt to claim that this is an attack on their religion, when, in fact it is not. I am merely condemning those who would wrap a fascist agenda in a cloak of Christian hypocrisy and call it Americanism. I’m sure our little effort here will be countered with half-baked conspiracy theories and cooked social research from just about ever right wing site imaginable. And I’m even more certain that the Radical Christian Right will turn around and accuse us of persecuting Christians.

Well, if that’s their delusion of the month they can believe it. They can wallow in it. They can set it to music and sing it from the choir come this Sunday if that’s what turns them on. The only thing I would add is this:

For the most part America is a tolerant society. Most people have open minds when it comes to the subject of equal rights for gays and lesbians, gay marriage not withstanding. And it is perfectly allowable to point out fascism when we see it.

We are not obliged to tolerate would be tyrants and we do not, repeat not, have to keep our minds so open that our brains fall out.

Finis

GENERAL SOURCESBOOKS

MEIN KAMPF
By Adolf Hitler
The complete original version as published by
Houghton Mifflin Company in 1939

GENERAL SOURCES

WEBSITES
United States Holocaust Museum
Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933-1945
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/hsx/

SPECIFIC SOURCES

WEBISITES
hatecrime.org
Matthew Shepherd Online Resources
Nazi Anti-Jewish Speech vs Religious Anti-Gay Speech
http://www.hatecrime.org/subpages/hitler/hitler.html

The World Congress of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Jews
New Israel Holocaust Memorial Honors Gay Victims
March 16 2005
http://www.glbtjews.org/article.php3?id_article=145

Gay & Lesbian Community Notes
“The Truth About Reagen and Aids”
By Michael Bronski
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Jan2004/bronski0104.html

Wikipedia Article about Fred Phelps
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Phelps#Criminal_record

Sexual Orientation: Science, Education, and Policy
Paul Cameron
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_cameron.html

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