澳彩开奖

Professor is the latest historian to that gay men were largely responsible for the Nazi Party and the Holocaust. Zimmerman is chair of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences in the Professions at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.

The gay Nazi claim derives from the 1995 book , by Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams. (Lively鈥檚 routine defamation of the LGBT community led to his being added to the 澳彩开奖鈥檚 hate group list). In that book, the authors claim that 鈥渢he Nazi party was entirely controlled by militaristic male homosexuals throughout its short history鈥� and that those men largely orchestrated the Holocaust. Lively and Abrams also argue, in contravention of the historical record, that persecution of homosexuals by Nazi Germany is largely a myth.

But as Zimmerman writes in his editorial, Lively鈥檚 鈥渉istory鈥� has nothing to do with reality. Rather than encouraging or coddling gays, he says, the Nazis banned homosexual activity as early as 1935. And in 1936, the Nazi Party established a Central Office for Combating Abortion and Homosexuality. In 1941, Hitler ordered the death penalty for any SS and police members found guilty of homosexual activity. Between 1933 and 1945, Zimmerman says "the Nazis arrested roughly 100,000 men as homosexuals." Most were sent to prison, but "between 5,000 and 15,000" ended up in concentration camps, where they were forced to wear pink triangles. Many died.

These facts have long been known to virtually all serious World War II historians and, in fact, were highlighted earlier this month, when .

Lively's book has been discredited by other legitimate historians (see , and ), but that doesn't stop people like Bryan Fischer, director of issue analysis for government and public policy at the (AFA) from as a way to demonize LGBT people (the 澳彩开奖 lists AFA as an anti-gay hate group). Nor does it stop antigovernment conspiracy sites like . Joseph Farah, editor of WND, brushes off criticism of The Pink Swastika and instead says that 鈥淸t]he book more than stands up to all the attacks I鈥檝e seen, most of which are completely baseless.鈥� That from a man who's sure President Obama in this country and who publishes articles on his site like , in which the writer claims that soybeans cause homosexuality.

There is an irony to all of this. As Zimmerman points out in his editorial, before Hitler came to power, rampant anti-gay prejudice in Nazi circles was highlighted by German socialists and communists as a way to discredit Hitler and his hateful party. And now anti-gay groups are using claims of Nazism to discredit LGBT people. What a tangled web they weave.