Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are as evil as Nazis? That sure seems to be the message in an email on Thursday from two Texas-based, religious-right groups, Dave Welch’s Texas Pastor Council and Rick Scarborough’s Vision America.
The email insists that “Christians must rally to defend Biblical marriage in Texas.” It then calls on readers to contact lawmakers in support of legislation that “defunds homosexual marriage” in Texas:
HB 4105 is a simple, two-page bill that affirms our existing law and also defunds homosexual marriage. This law will enable our Attorney General Ken Paxton to safeguard Texas against the potential upcoming judicial supremacy by the U.S. Supreme Court. The passage of HB 4105 now will enable Texas to defend against the imminent out-of-state pressure to impose homosexual marriage on Texas beginning the last week in June.
House Bill 4105 by state Rep. Cecil Bell, R-Magnolia, would do no such thing. While the bill would attempt to prohibit the use of state or local funds to license or support the marriage of gay and lesbian couples, it wouldn’t trump a Supreme Court ruling. The U.S. Constitution demands that Texas abide by such a ruling, just as the state had to abide by rulings striking down racial segregation in schools in 1954 and the ban on interracial marriage in 1967. In short, HB 4105 simply reflects a legislative temper tantrum by opponents of freedom and equality.
In any case, after asking pastors to include information about HB 4105 in materials for Sunday services, the email closes with a quote attributed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
Bonhoeffer was a Protestant minister who actively opposed the Nazis. The Nazis arrested him in 1943, then hanged him in the final weeks of World War II in 1945.
The suggestion that opposing the freedom to marry for gay and lesbian couples is like opposing the Nazis is repulsive. It doesn’t just demean loving, committed couples seeking to marry. It also diminishes the despicable crimes committed by the Nazis.
But in their desperation to stop the advance of freedom and equality for all, religious-righters are turning to increasingly hyperbolic rhetoric. And that rhetoric shows their opposition is based on little more than prejudice and hate.
Nazis also liquidated homosexuals so the comparison is a really bad one.
Explain that to the guys that think that Hitler was a Zionist agent and the Holocaust just a gambit to enable the founding of Israel.
At least the former claim was already made when Hitler was still in power by Old-Righters.
The ‘pink swastika’ guys claim that Hitler only had the weak homos killed but was a) gay himself and b) his whole power apparatus was gay to the core because only gays were fit to be so evil as he needed for his crimes.
In other words, nothing can be absurd enough not to be believed (Poe’s Law applied).
These unstable hyper-religious never cease to amaze me with their bold and brazen evilness. Bonhoeffer is up there with Harvey Milk, information suggests he was also very actively gay. Argumentum ad ignorantiam (argument from ignorance) and creating false dilemmas. The problem is the base population for the radicalized christo-fascist theocratic cults genuinely believe they are doing this “for god”. Any reasonable person of principle can see the complete disconnect and irrationality of their deluded analogies and misperceived persecution. This shows just how desperate the radicalized fundamentalists are, and that they are willing to say and do anything to maintain their controlling “right to hate” status.
Bonhoeffer was not homosexual. Also, just because someone believes in what the Bible says about certain things doesn’t mean they are evil and full of hate. Sometimes the messenger gets too involved and should let God be God. Nowhere in the Bible does it ever give Christians the right to persecute anyone because of sin or difference of opinion. God certainly doesn’t need any human’s assistance
Godwin’s Law (my version):
Once someone makes an analogy with Hitler or Nazis or the Holocaust, the conversation is over for all practical purposes.*
*Does not apply to discussions where the main topic is actually World War II or Germany in the 1930s and 40s.
Gary, I think the time is long since past to throw Godwin’s Law right out the window. Today’s American right-wing political movement is looking more and more similar to those of 1920’s and 30’s Europe, although lacking (so far) the in-your-face street violence that characterized that earlier era. These people need to be confronted.
Already, they are believing their own propaganda. They consider Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism” to be a work of history rather than the tome of a fascist apologist (which it is). They knowingly and purposely ignore the thousands of scholarly works which hold the fascists of mid-twentieth century to be right-wing creatures, and cling to their meme. Not calling them out on it has got us exactly nowhere; in fact, less than nowhere.
Without even touching on the Bible, natural law would tell you that something is amiss with the homosexual lifestyle. That isn’t Nazism, Communism, Islam or whatever else. The universe operates according to fixed principles. Airplanes have to be made a certain way because they have to live in a universe that operates according to fixed natural laws. Homosexuals can’t reproduce, and one of the reasons they are so touchy is that the great majority of Americans do not adhere to their chosen lifestyle. They believe it is a moral perversion. They are trying to live outside of fixed natural law.
We wouldn’t know if anyone was hetero or homosexual unless they opened their mouths. It just isn’t something that needs to be discussed in polite society.
The other aspect is that one cannot clamor for civil rights and then ask for government intervention. The side doesn’t matter.
Live and let live. Both sides need to quit encroaching on the other.
That is the obnoxious thing about this whole deal. Too much name calling, subjective opinion and the like.
As far as the Nazis they were left wing socialists. Islam is right wing. Both are unfriendly to those who are not their own.
There you go again: “… As far as the Nazis they were left wing socialists.”
There is probably no statement you could make that could be further from the truth. Many hundreds of historians, producing thousands of vetted scholarly works ALL say exactly the opposite. Yet you choose to ignore them and parrot the propaganda of the fascist hack, Goldberg.
Fascists are the opposite of socialists – they always have been and always will be. The great enemy of all fascists is the socialist and/or liberal. Witness that those first placed in the Nazi concentration camps were not Jews (or, laughably, “conservatives”), rather those first imprisoned were the socialists and liberals. The great street battles of the 1920’s and 30’s in Europe did not pit the fascists against the “conservatives.” Rather, those battles were always the fascists vs the left – the liberals and/or socialists, and also trade-unionists. At no time was it any different, and it is no different today in this nation.
Fascism is, and remains, a right-wing phenomenon. The perversion of language does not change that. Choosing a name for one’s fascist organization which includes the word, “Socialist,” only adds to the facade. It is no different than the word, “Democratic,” appearing in the title “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.” Our present day fascist apologist, Goldberg, has made good use of this ruse – well aided by the confirmation bias of the right, but certainly not by scholarly research.
RICK SCARBOROUGH SHOULD SHUT THE HELL UP. HE IS A NOBODY, A TOTAL FING DAMN MORON. STAY ON YOUR FARM IN NACOGDOCHES AND TEND TO YOUR PIGS YOU ASSHOLE
No, being a member of the LGBT communities is not as bad as Nazism. They harm nobody, they do not try to kill those who disagree with them, they are the same as the rest of us, with the good, bad, etc.
What IS DANGEROUS TO OUT REPUBLIC are the bible-thumpers who want to turn decent people into criminals.
FEAR of others is what drives the Christian religious “right.” I want to ask those bigots what any LGBT person has ever done to YOU. How have they tried to prevent you from marrying the person you love? How have they in ANY WAY harmed you.
You hypocritically say that they offend your little itty-bitty deity. The term that was used in the Hebrew bible means “this is what we do not do” referring to religious rites that were practice in Egypt and Canaan.
THE SAME HEBREW WORD IS USED IN RELATION TO SHELL FISH. Jews are not permitted to eat fish that does not have scales and fins because they are bottom feeders and cause sickness,
So take your hate and do as Jesus told you to do: Hate your neighbor as you hate yourself. Oh, he also said DO NOT PRAY IN PUBLIC but show me a Xian and I will show you someone who will do exactly the opposite of what he told them.
Hitler wasn’t a homosexual and the Nazis liquidated them. Hitler tolerated Roehm and the SA because they were helping him accomplish his aims. As soon as it was no longer needed he had the SA killed including Roehm. Many Germans were put off by the overt homosexuality of the the SA and so Hitler had a public relations nightmare.
In the Holocaust a pink triangle was used and Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, said awful things about them. He needed to be hanged.
Socialists are socialists and they were very clear on the fact they wanted to totally wipe out democracy. They had no use for democracy and capitalism. They were interested in stamping out Christianity and others, JWs got the purple triangle. The really awful thing is that they said their new religion was POSITIVE CHRISTIANITY which was neither positive or Christian. Which is annoying that many church leaders supported Hitler.
Hitler, Stalin, Mao and others like them are all wicked evil people.