A lot of good perspectives over the last two days about why equality for LBGTs is important

[Hydra]

But here's another one for those still not getting the reality here. My friend sent me this in response to one of the threads I sent her. One of the posters attempted to dismiss the importance of LBGT concerns by saying that this wasn't the holocaust.

In order for people to see it as a tragedy it must take on the scales and proportions of the holocaust because its easier and more convenient to do so then face the truth that everyday the lgbtqi community is persecuted, harassed, oppressed, and labeled a social deviant. My family no longer speaks to me because I'm a gay rights activist, my job harasses me regularly because I will not submit, and I face the real possibility of being homeless with two children because I won't attach myself to a "man." but because there are no visible ovens, but plenty of metaphorically one, I should shut up and stop crying myself to sleep at night.

How bad do things have to get before we've decided they've "suffered enough" to "deserve equality"? How many people like Matthew Shepard have to die needlessly before the LBGT community is seen as having "paid their dues"?

And something even darker occurred to me- if things did indeed become as bad as the holocaust, what would the excuse be then? Would people still claim that "It isn't that bad"?

[ananda]

1. If one person or group is oppressed..

.. everyone is oppressed.

[last1standing]

2. Gays were sent to the ovens as well.

But it was OK to hate us then and it's apparently OK to hate us now. We didn't get our own country, we got Proposal H8.

[BR_Parkway]

3. I'm sure some well intentioned Germans at one point said "it isn't

that bad" too - until it was too late to turn that train around.

When does murder become massacre? When does massacre slide into genocide? at every step along the way, I'm sure there were those saying "it isn't that bad"

And for anyone who wants to say this is just hype, let me know when the number of GLBT killed are enough to reclassify it into either a massacre or genocide would be enough to satisfy that condition. It would put you right there with Huckabee who seems to think enough of us haven't had our heads beaten in yet to qualify somehow.

[Uncle Joe]

4. The Holocaust didn't start in the 40s with the concentration camps

it started in the early 30s when certain segments of the population became disenfranchised, viewed as subhuman, losing their power to an increasingly authoritarian regime, eventually segregated to ghettos.

It was an erosion over time, the primary victims in number were the Jews, but Hitler was full of so much hate, the Jews weren't enough to satisfy his hunger, the Poles, Gypsies and homosexuals were eventually sent to concentration camps to be exterminated.

But it all started with the concept that some people weren't equal to others in the eyes of the law, that's a dangerous slippery slope to be avoided at all costs.

Thanks for the thread, Hydra.

[Hydra]

6. Thank you for posting as well

I'm disturbed that so many people are willing to casually mark another group down as "Not as important"

As you pointed out, that's how it starts.

[readmoreoften]

5. Considering that up to 100,000 gay people ALREADY died in the holocaust, I'll say no.

Most people don't give a fuck about our history. They don't care that we had our testicles removed and were given hormone treatments during WWII. Or lobotomies up until the 1970s in Germany. Or that 40% of the homeless youth in NYC are LGBT. Fuck all that. Fuck us.

If anyone wanted to kill us for being the "pedophiles" and the "criminals" that the Religious Right constantly says we are, it'd be welcomed as a "difference of opinion"

[Hydra]

7. Shock treatment up until recently by a certain religious group in my state

You're quite right- in a way, none of you exist in the minds of the "normal people."

And your second point is why I fight alongside all of you. The religious right would happily burn all of you at the stake if they had the chance...and then they'd be coming for me, not being a part of their religion.