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Yes Virginia, Homophobia Still Exists

By stcynic on October 2, 2005.

An email received by Andrew Sullivan:

"It's always been clear to me that you have a fine mind and the ability to write, but these talents are attenuated by your unremitting homosexuality - the emotional need to have aberrant sex. Clearly, your perversion and deviancy have affected your reason. Thus, you have no credibility as an observer of the current social and political climate. You are simply another frustrated fag who is trying very hard to legitimize his sexual perversion by striking out against anyone who wants to maintain thousands of years of normalcy. God, what must the average and decent American do to put the sexual deviates in their place (in concentration camps or mental institutions)."

What's scary about this is that the syntax clearly indicates that it was not written by some uneducated redneck, but by someone with at least something resembling a classical education. Sullivan points out that he receives such email regularly and posts it once in a while just to remind people that there are still pockets of serious irrational hatred in this country, even if covered over with a veneer of acadmic respectability.

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Gay Rights

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This was an interesting piece.

Three points, all regarding Konzentrationzentren (that's the Nazi term for "concentration camps")

One: my partner's grandfather was actually interred in the Dachau KZ. Not because he was homosexual. One wonders who others this writer might want to inter in the KZ.

Two and three will be merely links, because the subject matter needs a strong stomach to read.

Homosexuals and the Third Reich http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/pwh/steakley-nazis.html

Pierre Seel: The Death of His Lover http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/pwh/seel.html

Anyone who suggests that homosexuals should be assembled into concentration camps is a monster.

raj-

I could not agree more. I think analogies to Nazis are far too overused in our system, but this one isn't an analogy. This man IS a Nazi.

I beg to differ, Ed. This man is a monster. The Nazis were monsters, but they were not the only monsters.

I could expand at length, but, for the moment, I'll refrain. It really is too painful.

Pockets?

By Ginger Yellow (not verified) on 03 Oct 2005 #permalink