Recent attacks by politicians on the LGBTQ+ community echo a dark past.
Pride Month is celebrated in June to honor the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, the birth of the modern-day gay rights movement in the United States. In recent years, it has been a time to celebrate the movement’s successes, the slow but steady march to legal equality and social acceptance. This story of progress fits the comfortable narrative of American exceptionalism, but it ignores the rise of stochastic terrorism against the LGBTQ+ community and the historical echoes from Nazi Germany.
Before 1933, Germany was a center of LGBTQ+ community and culture. Berlin was home to nearly 100 gay and lesbian bars and cafes. It hosted the world-renowned Institute of Sexology, an academic foundation devoted to research and the advocacy of LGBTQ+ rights. The Institute was a pioneer in gender-affirming care and coined the term transsexual. It promoted “justice through science” and championed equal rights across the Weimer Republic.
In May 1933, just three months after Hitler took office, the Institute was raided, and all the books in the library were emptied onto the street and burned. At the book burning, Joseph Goebbels, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, announced, “No to decadence and moral corruption! Yes to decency and morality in family and state!” What began as a project of “protecting” German youth from the perceived immorality of homosexuality would become a mechanism for genocide. The Nazi ideal was of white, heterosexual masculinity masquerading as genetic superiority. Anyone who strayed from that norm was deemed immoral and worthy of total eradication.
We hear echoes in 2023 America of the Nazi Party’s propaganda and the violence it wrought. Politicians have used the same mantra of protecting children to justify anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, including banning books with LGBTQ+ characters or themes. The marriage of white supremacy and homophobia was clear in 2017 when hundreds of avowed white nationalist marched in Charlottesville waving Confederate and Nazi flags while yelling antisemitic, racist and homophobic slurs.
When Adolph Hitler took power, he described a country in crisis due to moral decay and an opposing party with a “totally destructive ideology”. Similar messages have emerged in the United States. In a 2022 campaign ad, Senator Marco Rubio said about a children’s story hour hosted by drag queens, “The radical left will destroy America if we don’t stop them. They indoctrinate children and try to turn boys into girls.” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis tweeted that anyone who opposes a bill dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law is “probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce” it. His use of the term “groomer” reflects an age-old homophobic trope equating homosexuality with pedophilia.
Beyond inflammatory rhetoric, another tactic of Nazi Germany has surfaced: deputizing citizens to police the moral behavior of their neighbors. In 1933, the Gestapo encouraged tips or “denunciations” from the public about immoral behavior that violated the law. Today, in the U.S., some states are introducing bills to allow for criminal prosecution of librarians and educators for distributing “material that is harmful to minors,” thus allowing individual parents to impose their moral code on all children. A middle school teacher in Illinois was placed on leave and ultimately resigned after parents called the police claiming that she was “grooming students” with access to young adult novels with LGBTQ+ characters. In Missouri, parents called the police about the availability of “sexually explicit” books at the library.
Not surprisingly, the codification of anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment and the use of inflammatory language has resulted in an increase in violence against the LGBTQ+ community. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a warning about domestic terrorism, citing among other things the November 2022 mass shooting at Club Q, an LGBTQ+ bar in Colorado Springs. GLADD found 191 incidents of anti-LGBTQ+ threats since Pride Season 2022. These threats have taken the form of seemingly benign actions such as product and store boycotts to more menacing actions such as bomb threats.
Although there is no direct comparison nor moral equivalence between Nazi Germany and current events, the early parallels are difficult and dangerous to ignore. Hitler moved slowly, escalating his policies over years, aided by the silence and indifference around him. Elie Wiesel, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor, said, “We must always take a side. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” Take a side this June. Attend a Pride event, and do not allow the seeds of intolerance and bullying to sprout.
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