Barack Attacks Homophobia at Holocaust Remembrance

There are people out there that actually believe the holocaust never happened (it's probably those same people that believe that we never walked on the moon and that slavery really wasn't that bad). The reality is 60 million Jews, 20 million Russians, and 10 million Christians were murdered, slaughtered, raped, burnt and humiliated by the Nazis. And this just happened about sixty years ago. Gay men were frequently condemned to Nazi concentration camps (oddly enough lesbians were not because women were not considered any type of threat). This was where the pink triangle that you will sometimes see used as a symbol for the LGBT community was developed. Gay men were marked by the pink triangle they had to wear. It was a way for those at any concentration camp to know why an individual was there. If you were gay - you wore the pink triangle.

When General Eisenhower discovered the autrocities that were happening he demanded that it all be recordered. Why? In his words, "To collect as much proof, films, testimonies, because the day will come when some son of a bitch will say that this never happened." Eisenhower was able to end the war and free those individuals that survived the tortures of the Nazis. Jews could return home. Christians could return home. But what about the gay men? Well although they were released from the concentration camps, homosexuality was still illegal post World War II. So they were forced to live in fear and silence before the war, during the war, and unlike all others that were freed they had to continue living in fear and silence after the war.

Last Thursday, President Barack Obama spoke at the National Holocaust Museum's Day of Remembrance. In his speech he condemned hatred in any form. He spoke against racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, sexism and xenophobia. In Obama's words, hatred "diminished us all." In the United Kingdom, they just removed the holocaust from all textbooks because it offended Muslims who believe the holocaust never happened. I think I'll close with this, sometimes people just need to be offended. We cannot deny the truth just appease a group of people that are living in ignorance.