Reply #7: Exhibit on Nazi persecution of gays [View All]

Last weekend I visited the opening of a traveling exhibit here in Kansas City on the Nazi persecution of gays. Time after time it hit me how similar the views of the radical right was to that of the Nazis.

There were, however, two major differences between then and now:

1. The Nazis didn't hide their hatred behind religion as the religious right does. Instead, they made it a point of national pride to root out any person that did not add to the "pure" Aryan race. They viewed homosexuality as a disease that could affect all those perfect Aryan men, rather than as a moral/religious issue.

2. The Nazis used eugenics to justify their hatred. Even as odious as the concept of selective breeding and building a "master race" is to us today, their ideas were based in "science" (or more accurately, psuedo-science) instead of religion.