Ashwini Bhatia/AP - Archbishop
Desmond Tutu, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his part in fighting
apartheid, speaks during a felicitation event for him in Dharmsala, India,
Friday, Feb. 10, 2012.
Tutu urges Uganda to drop bid to jail gays and lesbians
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/tutu-urges-uganda-to-drop-bid-to-jail-gays-and-lesbians/2012/12/05/74efb30a-3f01-11e2-8a5c-473797be602c_story.html
By By Fredrick Nzwili| Religion News Service,
The Anti-Homosexuality Bill is expected to become law after Parliamentary Speaker Rebecca Kadaga offered it to Ugandans as a “Christmas gift.” The bill is believed to exclude the death penalty clause after international pressure forced its removal, but gay rights activists say much of it is still horrendous.
“I am opposed to discrimination, that is unfair discrimination, and would that I could persuade legislators in Uganda to drop their draft legislation, because I think it is totally unjust,” Tutu told reporters here on Tuesday at the All Africa Conference of Churches meeting.
The former Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, who was a hero of the anti-apartheid movement, has emerged as a leading pro-gay voice both in the church and across Africa.
With African church leaders passionately preaching against homosexuality as sinful and against African culture, Tutu said the church must stand with minorities.
“My brothers and sisters, you stood with people who were oppressed because of their skin color. If you are going to be true to the Lord you worship, you are also going to be there for the people who are being oppressed for something they can do nothing about: their sexual orientation,” he said.
Tutu said people do not choose their sexual orientation, and would be crazy to choose homosexuality “when you expose yourself to so much hatred, even to the extent of being killed.”
Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933-1945
INTRODUCTION
Between 1933 and 1945, Germany's National Socialist (Nazi) government under Adolf Hitler used its monopoly of authority to attempt to rid German territory of people who did not fit its vision of a "master Aryan race." Foremost among the so–called racial enemies, according to the Nazis' antisemitic ideology, were the Jews. When Germany's pursuit of "living space" led to World War II and the conquest of much of Europe, the Nazis undertook the systematic murder of every Jew in Europe.
Between 1933 and 1945, Germany's National Socialist (Nazi) government under Adolf Hitler used its monopoly of authority to attempt to rid German territory of people who did not fit its vision of a "master Aryan race." Foremost among the so–called racial enemies, according to the Nazis' antisemitic ideology, were the Jews. When Germany's pursuit of "living space" led to World War II and the conquest of much of Europe, the Nazis undertook the systematic murder of every Jew in Europe.
Many other groups were targets of persecution and even murder under the Nazis’ ideology, including Germans with mental and physical disabilities, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roma ("Gypsies"), Poles, and Soviet prisoners of war. Millions perished in this state–sponsored tyranny.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is dedicated to preserving the memory of all who suffered during this unprecedented tragedy. This online exhibition examines the campaign of persecution and violence against the homosexuals of Germany.
The Nazi campaign against homosexuality targeted the more than one million German men who, the state asserted, carried a "degeneracy" that threatened the "disciplined masculinity" of Germany. Denounced as "antisocial parasites" and as "enemies of the state," more than 100,000 men were arrested under a broadly interpreted law against homosexuality. Approximately 50,000 men served prison terms as convicted homosexuals, while an unknown number were institutionalized in mental hospitals. Others—perhaps hundreds—were castrated under court order or coercion. Analyses of fragmentary records suggest that between 5,000 and 15,000 homosexual men were imprisoned in concentration camps, where many died from starvation, disease, exhaustion, beatings, and murder.
In the racist practice of Nazi eugenics, women were valued primarily for their ability to bear children. The state presumed that women homosexuals were still capable of reproducing. Lesbians were not systematically persecuted under Nazi rule, but they nonetheless did suffer the loss of their own gathering places and associations.
Nazi Germany did not seek to kill all homosexuals. Nevertheless, the Nazi state, through active persecution, attempted to terrorize German homosexuals into sexual and social conformity, leaving thousands dead and shattering the lives of many more.
