I understand that Jews were the primary target of Hitler’s “Final Solution.” I understand that, regardless of why people were sent to the death camps, a day like today should be used to mourn those who perished and celebrate those who survived. I understand that the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz is not necessarily the best time to push a progressive social agenda.
Still.
Wouldn’t it be nice if somewhere in all the speeches made today by all the world leaders, someone acknowledged the thousands of homosexuals who died in the Holocaust? Wouldn’t it be swell if just one of those speakers–perhaps, Dick Cheney, who ought to know first-hand about the discrimination GLBT persons face right here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, much less under the totalitarian Nazi state–denounced anti-Semitism, racism, and homophobia? Wouldn’t it be lovely if all this talk about how prejudice is bad and tolerance is good didn’t imply, “except when it comes to homos”? Wouldn’t it be a wonderful surprise if we weren’t cut out of the discussion altogether?
Maybe that’ll happen. Maybe it had already. I don’t know. I haven’t read transcripts of the speeches. But if history is any guide, odds are better that that kind of talk will get left in the snow.
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