🎯 Conservatives see subjugation as default.

October 14, 1977, Anita Bryant is pied for her antigay bigotry at a press conference in Des Moines, IA.

It was 40 years ago today…

Never gets old.

40 years on and it still is gratifying

Anita’s still alive and kicking and being anti-gay. Thom Higgins, who threw the pie when he was 27 – and was poetically from Beaver Dam – passed away 17 years later at 44. Info on his life is here. The pie throwing was a big deal. In an age before the internet let gays feel connected, and long before ACT UP, the pie showed small pockets of gays that we could fight back.

it showed that gays were human beings, who might be in the room with you, that you had been accepting as being equals and treating as people. you didnt suspect them as bieng gay, why should you treat them different after? do they become less human after finding out? i mean, its almost like you just found out they have an oppinion on your bullshit

She was “pied” on TV.  All across the country, people got to see proof that the LGBT community weren’t going to just sit there and take it.  People who thought they had no choice but to stay silent saw a horrible woman get humiliated on live TV.  

One of the best moments in television history.

I can’t fucking believe my eyes. A man is being sentenced to death because he’s gay and a lifetime in prison would be something he would enjoy. This is sickening. Everyone should know about this.

Oh yes we love our carceral state

I hope he gets the justice he deserves. This is fucking terrible

As a queer man of color whose father’s family still live in Jamaicq, I was asked never to come back to the island by my many cousins. I have next to no contact from any of them and for good reason, one of them even threatened to come up here to the stastes and kill me himself. Contrary to popular belief life in Jamaica isn’t like the sandals all inclusive resort shows you. This man’s death is a reality for many queer men and women in Jamaica. I just pray he rests in power, and the hearts he touched will be stronger for his death and continue his legacy.

Jamaica is extremely homophobic, it is sad to say but they’ll brush his death off.

rest in power🖤🏳️‍🌈✊🏾

Toronto has had a serial killer operating in the gay Village for nearly a decade.

Gay men have been going missing in Toronto’s gay village since 2010. Last month, an arrest was made by Toronto police and Bruce McArthur has since been charged with 5 counts of first-degree murder. Today, police announced that six bodies were discovered on his property.

In June, I went to Toronto for the Gay Pride Parade. I spent a lot of time in the Gay Village. The first afternoon I was there, a friend took me aside and told me to be careful because people were going missing from the Village.

“Okay,” I agreed. No questions, no surprise. I went to Pride. My friend and I had a great time. We went out. We stayed out. And we were careful.  

I was in Toronto visiting friends over Christmas. On New Year’s Eve, my girlfriend at the time and I decided to head to the Village with some friends and hang out at a drag bar.

When we made plans, we were all keenly aware of the fact that there were rumors of a serial killer operating in Toronto’s gay village. We knew because we are queer, and we have queer friends, and we spend time in queer spaces.

In other words, we knew because we had to know.

It took me an afternoon of Googling to piece together how many people had gone missing in Toronto. The articles I did find generally came from the families of some of those who had gone missing, desperately searching for information, or from queer voices out of the Village, wondering why no one had bothered to take notice of a serial killer targeting a specific demographic of Toronto.

It was a rhetorical question. We all know why.

To make matters worse, a strong element of racial bias undergirds the entire investigation. The outcry from Toronto’s LGBTQ community details a sickening degree of racism and willful ignorance.  

I should disclose that I live fulltime in Montreal.  But my best friend lives in Toronto. I had a girlfriend there for several months. Two of my closest friends visit their parents in the city regularly. I made it my business to know when my friends were headed to the Village, and to make sure they checked in with me at the end of the night. There are some things that you don’t, as friends, always acknowledge openly. As a gang of queers in our early twenties, we tacitly agreed to keep an eye on another as best we could. Certainly no one else does. We knew that, too.

Toronto had a particularly intense cold snap at the end of December, and the city was offering free public transit for New Year’s Eve, so we gladly avoided walking when we could— we stayed warm, and, I thought, avoided ridiculous Uber fares.

“I wouldn’t want to take an Uber anyways,” one of the local girls remarked as I expressed fascination at the efficiency of Toronto’s streetcar system.

“Why not?” As someone who grew up in a small town with minimal public transit, and pitiful taxi service, I couldn’t imagine not taking advantage of [carpooling services].

“Well, they think the guy abducting people from the village has been posing as an Uber driver,” my friend told me nervously. “So I don’t really want to take an Uber to the Village and back. Just in case.”

By this point, 7 people had gone missing from the village since 2010. The latest victim had disappeared only a month prior, on November 25th, 2017.

On New Year’s Eve, I smoked a joint on Bloor and paraded my drunken self up and down the street with no problem. I did not see a single police car or officer.

Toronto’s police force has been under fire for months for abandoning previous investigative projects regarding the missing men. Despite outcry from the LGBTQ community, Toronto police declared last year that there was no evidence of a serial killer at work in the Village.

Between 1975 and 1978, 14 gay men went missing from the Village. Police suspected a serial killer at the time, but half the cases—in which 7 gay men were brutally and violently murdered—remain unsolved today. McArthur was in his mid-twenties at the time.

It took me a fair amount of research and time and reaching out to put together enough information to realize the scale of silence and avoidance on behalf of media across Canada and the Toronto police department. I don’t wonder why. Dead queers are not headline news. Especially if they aren’t White. Or they’re queer women. I suppose, in the end, a serial killer is only as interesting as his victims.

And so this is Toronto—Canada’s largest city, where the crosswalks are painted in rainbow colors. And this is homophobia. This is transphobia. This is racism. And this is Montreal. New York. Every small town, big city, or backwater village in North America. Rainbow flags in storefront windows do not mean a damn thing when we are being picked off and abandoned. We cannot be quiet. I will not be quiet and pretend like this is not happening merely because it is happening to people condemned to expendability by virtue of their sexuality, ethnicity, or gender.

I’m done hearing things about living in a “post-gay” moment. I’m sick of listening to people whine about tolerance and inclusivity and bathroom policies. “It’s 2018,” people sigh at me. “No one cares about this stuff anymore.”

I’m going to start telling people that they’re right. No one does care about this stuff anymore.

I’m just not sure they ever did.

(source)

–

I wish all the victims and all those affected by the atrocities in Toronto–friends, families, fellow queers, and LGBTQ folks alike—peace, wellness, and justice. Don’t sleep on this. We cannot be silent. 

RIP. 

@allthecanadianpolitics do you know anything about this?

I’ve posted a LOT about this.

You can find all I’ve posted about this disturbing story under the following hashtags: #Bruce McArthur, #Toronto, #LGBTQ, #Serial Killer, and #Homophobia.

Tonight I posted a new disturbing development in this story:

Remains of 6 people found at property tied to alleged serial killer Bruce McArthur

Rick’s Rant - Jason Kenney

Also a reminder that Jason Kenney is trying to get elected to Alberta’s legislature. On December 14th, he will run in a by-election in Calgary. So if you want to prevent him from getting elected and you live in Calgary, here’s some information:

Calgary-Lougheed byelection called for Dec. 14

Braid: NDP sets early byelection for riding Kenney needs to win

a new law is about to be passed in Saudi Arabia that will allow the government to execute people for coming out or being openly gay online.

ignoring the fact that this is literally something out of some kind of dystopian novel, in the interests of safety i’ve emptied out my face tag and may temporarily deactivate or password protect this blog.

please reblog this and get the word out, and if you pray, please pray for me and my fellow Saudi LGBTQ+/MOGAI family.

ALSO, for those who need it [x]. its a post on erasing all traces of yourself from the interwebs. 

this is not something to read and keep to yourself. please spread this around. may Allah keep everyone safe.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions instructed federal agencies and attorneys on Friday to protect religious liberty in a broad, yet vague, guidance memo that critics fear could give people of faith — including government workers and contractors — a loophole to ignore federal bans on discrimination against women and LGBT people.

The guidance says the government cannot unduly burden people or certain businesses from practicing their faith, noting, “The free exercise of religion includes the right to act or abstain from action in accordance with one’s religious beliefs.”

The policy does not create new law, but rather interprets how the government should construe the Constitution and existing federal law. It comes on the heels of the Justice Department weighing in on a religious liberty case, in which lawyers under Sessions argued in a brief to the US Supreme Court that a Christian baker had a First Amendment right to deny a gay couple a cake for their wedding.

The guidance memo, which avoided mentioning pending cases by name but did refer to the ongoing controversy over contraception coverage in Obamacare, directs federal agencies to observe 20 “principles of religious liberty.” Among them, it says that religious employers are entitled to hire only workers whose beliefs and conduct are “consistent with the employer's’ religious beliefs” — a directive adopted under former President George W. Bush — and that some of the legal principles extend “not just to individuals, but also to organizations, associations, and at least some for-profit corporations.”

The US Department of Health and Human Services on Friday announced new rules that will allow employers with a “moral” or “religious” objection to stop covering contraception for employees.

One portion of the guidance directs lawyers in the Justice Department to scrutinize all proposed federal regulations, saying that the department won’t concur in the issuance of any rule that conflicts with the religious guidance.

The policy is the Trump administration’s latest offering to religious conservatives, who reluctantly coalesced around Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and then, after he won the election, studded his transition team with advisors. Evangelical activists have clamored for President Trump to rescind Obama-era policies against LGBT discrimination, or, failing that, let religious objectors opt out.

In developing the guidance, the Justice Department consulted with religious and political groups with a history of opposing protections for LGBT people. A Justice Department official said those groups included the Mormon Church, the Alliance Defending Freedom, and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. The Justice Department also consulted with the the American Civil Liberties Union, which supports LGBT rights. An official said the department did not consult “specifically” with LGBT groups.

“It doesn’t legalize discrimination at all,“ a Justice official said.

Particularly irritating to conservatives, former President Barack Obama issued an executive order in 2014 that banned discrimination against federal workers and contractors on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, and issued guidance that says Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects transgender workers.

A Justice Department official, asked if the new guidance would conflict with the Obama executive order, said that order remains in effect and would continue to apply to non-religious contractors. The new guidance does not legalize discrimination, the official said.

“It doesn’t legalize discrimination at all,” the official told reporters Friday. “It simply articulates what existing legal protections already exist both under the Constitution and federal statutes, and already-existing executive orders and regulations in federal law.”

Trump skirted controversy around the Obama order in May, when he issued Executive Order 13798 that commanded the attorney general to interpret “religious liberty protections” for agencies.

Session followed up over the summer by announcing forthcoming guidance that would, in part, clarify the role of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, known as RFRA, a federal law passed by Congress in 1993. RFRA says the government must have a compelling reason to burden a person’s religious exercise, and do so in the least restrictive way possible.

“If we’re going to ensure that religious liberty is adequately protected and our country remains free, then we must ensure that RFRA is followed,” Sessions said at a closed-door speech in July to the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative group that seeks to repeal bans on LGBT discrimination. (Sessions’ remarks were published by The Federalist, a conservative media outlet.)

It was unclear how the religious guidance issued by Sessions may apply to a particular policy, pending case, or belief — a Justice Department official said Friday the guidance doesn’t prescribe how any situation should be handled.

Other parts of the guidance are general, such as a provision that says, “A governmental action substantially burdens an exercise of religion under RFRA if it bans an aspect of an adherent’s religious observance or practice, compels an act inconsistent with that observance or practice, or substantially pressures the adherent to modify such observance or practice.”

Provisions like those raise questions about the rights of federal contractors that are not explicitly religious, but run by religious owners, and hold an anti-LGBT belief.

But some ambiguity is to be expected. A highly specific policy risks being challenged for preferring one type of religious belief — for example, opposing same-sex couples marrying — over another article of faith, thereby violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. A law to that effect was blocked temporarily last year in Mississippi (it was later reinstated by an appeals court).

But the lack of specificity in Sessions’ guidance could render it a limp tool for someone seeking a legal defense. Does Sessions’ guidance saying faith is protected, as a general matter, mean a federal contractor has a legal defense to fire a transgender man, or to deny birth control coverage to female employees?

Nevertheless, some religious conservatives have at times embraced ambiguity in religious freedom policies in the past, believing the scope can be litigated in court. Among the champions of this strategy has been the Alliance Defending Freedom, which has crafted several bills modeled on RFRA for state legislatures.

Since RFRA passed in Congress with bipartisan support, conservative activists have battled in court to expand its scope. Notably, in the case of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, lawyers for the craft store persuaded the Supreme Court to rule in 2014 that RFRA gave closely held corporations an exemption from providing contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act, based the owners’ religious objections.

The Alliance Defending Freedom has also argued RFRA and the Constitution allow people of faith to turn away customers for same-sex weddings, even in states that ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

This fall, Supreme Court will hear an Alliance Defending Freedom case on this very dispute. The justices will consider an appeal by Jack Phillips, a Colorado baker who refused a wedding cake for a gay couple. And Phillips has a powerful — and unexpected — ally in Sessions. In August, the Justice Department lawyers took the unusual move of filing an amicus brief with the Supreme Court supporting the baker’s case.

“Forcing Phillips to create expression for and participate in a ceremony that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs invades his First Amendment rights,” the Justice Department lawyers, led by Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall, wrote.

Justice Department also made a case for why it was weighing in for the baker, saying, “The United States has a substantial interest in the preservation of constitutional rights of free expression. It also has a substantial interest in the application of such rights in the context of the state statute here, which shares certain features with federal public accommodations laws, including Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

i wish these assholes cared one iota as much about gun violence, cost overruns in the pentagon, corporate colonialism masquerading as foreign policy, or hurricane relief as rhey do their 'right' to push back against the civil rights movement.

IF YOURE EGYPTIAN AND LGBTQ+ GET OFF ANY QUEER DATING SITES, THE POLICE ARE TRACKING AND HUNTING PEOPLE DOWN AGAIN. DELETE YOUR ACCOUNTS.

This is very real.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/amp/human-rights-groups-urge-egypt-halt-crackdown-gays-n806641

current as of oct 2nd 2017

i don’t know if people outside of brazil are aware of this, but our country just decriminalized gay conversion therapy. basically, it is now 100% legal for therapists to treat homosexuality as a disease if they want to.

btw here are are some sources to read more about it (they’re all in portuguese): 1, 2, 3, 4.

we need more people talking about this on the media.

please reblog this, especially if you’re not brazilian. 

PENNYWISE’S “PROBLEMATIC FREE MEAL” WAS INSPIRED BY A REAL-LIFE HATE CRIME YOU FUCKING DICKHEAD

this is long but stick with me, because we need to remember Charlie Howard.

Charlie Howard moved to Bangor, Maine during the early 80s. he was proudly gay and discriminated against because of it.

he was kicked out of a club for dancing with a man and assaulted by a woman in a supermarket, who yelled slurs at him. his kitten was found strangled on his porch.

on July 7th, 1984, as Charlie left a potluck with a friend, a car full of teenagers–3 boys, 2 girls–pulled up beside them. Charlie was chased down by the boys, brutally beaten, and called slurs. he had severe asthma and began having an attack. the boys dangled him over a bridge and, when he begged for his life because he couldn’t swim, they pried his hands off of the railing and threw him over. his friend fled to pull a fire alarm, but, by the time authorities got there, it was too late: Charlie had drowned. he was 23.

the murderers left the crime scene to attend a party, where they bragged about what they had done. they were minors and all the boys served under two years. the girls faced no chargges for not reporting the crime and helping the murderers leave the scene. the memorial in honor of Charlie that now stands beside the bridge has been defaced with homophobic slurs on numerous occasions. he’s dead and people still want to spit on his ghost.

Stephen King says that this crime is what woke him up to the violence faced by LGBT+ people. as a straight man, he had had the privilege of not having to think about this issue and says that this complacency and ignorance is what led to Charlie’s murder.

King included a fictionalized version of the murder in IT. in the novel, a gay man named Adrian is brutally beaten and thrown off a bridge as his boyfriend watches. he barely survives the fall and Pennywise is waiting for him at the bottom, drawn by the fear, suffering, and hatred. It crushes the still living Adrian’s ribs and bites him while taunting Adrien’s boyfriend, before dragging Adrian into the sewers.

It revels in the event and uses an image that is explicitly linked to the hate crime to torment Adrian’s boyfriend. this moment is there to make a clear statement: the homophobic murder of an innocent gay men is an act of pure, depraved evil. the embodiment of evil literally kills Adrian to conclude the hate crime.

Pennywise/It is also fueled by acts of racism, antisemitism, sexual violence, domestic abuse, and child abuse. he is monstrous in every sense, and often meant to represent the real bigotry and violence faced by children and marginalized people.

tl;dr: Stephen King was so horrified by the brutal murder of Charlie Howard, an innocent gay man, that he included a recreation of the hate crime in his book and added Pennywise to comment on the pure evil of homophobia and Charlie’s murder.

Also, I’m currently reading the book and you dingbats don’t seem to understand that Pennywise/It INFLUENCED a lot of what happened in Derry and that Stephen King’s style draws from real life horrific events woven with supernatural horror.

for some reason i don't believe anon is a gay man

Texas State Legislature is considering passing a law that would mandate teachers to out young gay kids to their parents

At first glance, this new bill proposed by Texas Sen. Konni Burton seems harmless. Do a little digging, however, and its intention is crystal clear: The bill would require teachers to out LGBTQ students to their parents. The public knows this because Burton said as much herself.

this is so vile

God this is disgusting

NO

WHATEVER YALL FUCKING DO DONT LET THIS BILL PASS

As a closeted queer kids, the only irl place I can be myself is at school. The people there know. I’m not quiet about it. And they’re okay with it. And that takes some of the pain of being closeted from my family okay because hey I have a community that accepts me.

I wouldn’t be affected by this bill but for all the kids that are like me, that consider school a save haven, this could fuck some major shit up.

Don’t let this bill pass. Please.

Texas what the fUCK… Please don’t let this be real

DON’T LET THIS PASS!!!

Okay, this post is for everyone who is on the fence about this stupid post or needs to face the reality of it, okay? Lets get real. Story time.

So when I was freshman in high school, I knew this sweet girl. We’ll call her Hailey. She was a high b-average student, and she wanted to be a veterinarian. She had a rough life but was like a younger sister to her friends, and got along well with about everyone because of her bubbly nature. And as you probably suspect, she was gay. She found herself around sixth grade, so she established to her friends. But her friends only.

But during her freshman year, something horrible happened. One of her friend’s parents told her parents she was gay. Now what you need to know about this woman is that she didn’t do this out of any sense of cruelty. Her own son was gay, and she’d really struggled with that for awhile before accepting him and openly supporting him. And their relationship was great now.

So she wanted to tell Hailey’s parents, as a conservative parent as a gay child herself, because she felt like her reaction had been extreme, and she’d acted cruely and had wronged her child. She wanted to be there for them if they had negative reactions, and talk them through her experience.

Now Hailey, she had begged this woman not to. She had even cried over it, because she knew her parents, but this woman really thought she knew what was best and everything would be better once she no longer had to hide. And went off and told them behind Hailey’s back, without listening to her or giving her *any warning.*

And this woman said Hailey’s parents were quiet when she gave them the news. They listened to her entire story and experiences. They even asked a question or two, and said they’d talk about this with Hailey. And the woman left feeling like she’d done the right thing.

But she the furthest thing from the right thing that you can imagine. Hailey’s parents didn’t pick her up at the bus stop, so she walked home all by herself. She didn’t know she’d been outed, or anything was off. She thought her parents might just be working late.

And as she’s told me of the account afterwards: “I was happy. I’d passed that math test and I was going to ask my Dad if he might help me practice driving when I get home because I was thinking about taking Driver’s Ed. I thought it weird they weren’t returning my texts to tell me they were going to be late because we don’t live in the safest neighborhood, and they don’t like me walking alone, but I wasn’t worried. And then I got home… And then I got home and my parents were waiting for me, and I just. Knew. I just KNEW. Something about their expressions and way they stood up gave it away.”

And what happened next I was forced to believe. She told me, she just ran to the front door, but her Dad grabbed her and held her down. And as he held her down, her Mom proceeded to beat the living shit out of her.

And I’m not talking a slap across the face, or being struck with a belt. It was so bad that her screams - she was lucky enough to have run and got to the front door to be heard by a passing neighbor walking his kids home - who called the police.

But until they arrived, for minutes on minutes she was beaten by Dad and Mom. When she came back to school, she had bruises on her wrists from where she’d thrashed trying to get away from her Dad’s iron grip, and a fractured wrist. She had an ugly bruised and STITCHED forehead from where her mom’s wedding ring had gotten her, and black and bruised skin across her stomach from where she’d been repeatedly stomped on.

And you must be thinking, oh my God what horrible parents. They must have been punished harshly.

No. They spent just a single night in jail, and I still don’t know if they were later charged. Hailey was forced to leave her home. She told me no one would take her in, and never told me where she ended up having to stay.

And did I mention she was made to come to school the next day? Because she did. She tried to hide the injuries, but you really can’t hide those. Especially when you aren’t even wearing your own clothes because you weren’t allowed to go home and get them.

And I could tell you more. I could tell you how her parents wouldn’t let her back in her house to get ANY of her things. I could tell you how aunts and uncles turned her away like she was ridden with an STD.

I could tell you about how she dropped out of high school, or apparently the girl who wanted to be a veterinarian one day because she wanted to take care of sick animals and make them better tried to take her own life months later.

I could tell you that after that day, I didn’t see her again until I ran into her a YEAR later by chance. This girl VANISHED for a year. Her friends clammed up about her, like they were afraid and determined to not tell anyone where she was at any time. Ever.

So the next time you say OUTING someone couldn’t be that bad, or that making it law for a child’s safe place to out them is right or doesn’t concern you - remember Hailey. Remember the little sister-like girl who wanted to be a vet and once only seriously worried about math tests and learning to drive.

And you what? Hailey told me she still sees herself as someone lucky. Because she lives with her Grandpa now who flew down from Florida to take care of her. And she feels lucky because she still has someone, and because she’s still ALIVE.

So you remember that when they try to pass this law. You remember Hailey, and all those like her who were treated worse and aren’t here anymore. You probably know of someone. Remember people like Hailey, and protect them. Because when they say it IT ISN’T SAFE FOR THEM TO BE OUTED, believe them!!!

Because all it took was ONE person feeling obligated to out her, who didn’t believe Hailey, and before she was ready to leave home safely to cause all this.

Roast the fuck out of them. Being family doesn’t mean you ever have to be okay with that shit.

*slow clapping at the dad*

I always reblog this.

This country is full of hatred and irate people… I’m so scared

Why??

Share the pic of the guy so someone recognises and reports him to the authorities.

Darren William Beach Jr., 26 is wanted in connection with this arson.

Anyone with information regarding Beach’s whereabouts is asked to call Phoenix police at (602) 262-6151. 

A reward of up to $1,000 is being offered for information leading to an arrest.

Give this man a metal

delete your blog

A Florida man was murdered early Sunday morning defending his gay friends from a drunk homophobe who followed them out of the restaurant where they were eating. 

Multiple witnesses reported that the killer came after the group and shouted, “If we were in my country I’d kill all of you like rats. I hate you damned gays. I’m going to kill you all here.”

The victim, 22-year-old Juan Javier Cruz , was shot dead with a handgun Mena pulled from his pocket after defending his friends.

This is not right that people have to die just because homophobia is flourishing in America.

RIP  Juan Javier Cruz, you are a hero.

Source

Trigger warning for some truly fucked-up stuff.

This week, it was revealed that at least 27 people, most of them gay, were slaughtered in a single night by officials in Chechnya, Russia. A newspaper even released the names of the dead. Chechnya has reportedly been rounding up and torturing gay and bisexual men for several months.

To make matters even more real and terrifying, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov gave an interview this week where he said that gay people are devils, not people. He claims there are no LGBTQ people in Chechnya, but that if there are any, they should leave immediately. 

People are being murdered, a foreign leader is giddy about it, and radio silence from Trump. Remember that the Russian LGBT Network is helping people evacuate the area; you can donate to them here. 

That article was dated July 11. This is happening now. Please support the Russian LGBT Network if you can (link above) and pressure your representatives to speak out against this atrocity.

When the Nazi concentration camps were liberated by the Allies, it was a time of great jubilation for the tens of thousands of people incarcerated in them. But an often forgotten fact of this time is that prisoners who happened to be wearing the pink triangle (the Nazis’ way of marking and identifying homosexuals) were forced to serve out the rest of their sentence. This was due to a part of German law simply known as “Paragraph 175” which criminalized homosexuality. The law wasn’t repealed until 1969.

This should be required learning, internationally. 

You need to know this. You need to remember this. This is not something to swept under the carpet nor be forgotten. 

Never. Too many have died for the way they have loved. That needs stop now. 

Make it stop? 

I did a report on this in my World History class my sophomore year of high school. It was incredibly unsettling.

My teacher shown the class this. Mostly everyone in the class felt uncomfortable. 

I have reblogged this in the past, but it is so ironic that it comes across my dash right now. I a currently working as a docent at my city’s Holocaust Education Center (( I say currently because I’ve also done research and translation for them )) and out current exhibit is one on loan from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ((USHMM)). This is a little known historical fact that Paragraph 175 was not repealed after the war and those convicted under Nazi laws as a danger to society because they were gay were not released because they had be convicted in a court of law. There was no liberation or justice for them as they weren’t considered criminals, or even victims for that matter. They were criminals who remained persecuted and ostracized and kept on the fringes of society for decades after the war had been won. Paragraph175 wasn’t actually repealed until 1994. And it was only in May 2002, that the German parliament completed legislation to pardon all homosexuals convicted under Paragraph175 during the Nazi era. History has forgotten about these men and women — please educate yourselves so this does not happen again. Remember this history. Remember them.

@mindlesshumor ok how the fuck did I miss this when I’ve studied The Holocaust like nobody’s business??? wtf

Because the history we have left regarding it is literally the contents of this first hand account.

It is a thin little book.

When I first opened it, I wondered why it was so thin.

Why there wasn’t other books like it.

Other first hand accounts.

By the time I finished it, I didn’t wonder anymore.

Further reading:

I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi Terror by Pierre Seel

An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin by Gad Beck

The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals by Richard Plant

Branded By The Pink Triangle by Ken Setterington

Bent by Martin Sherman (fiction; however, it’s often credited with bringing attention to gay Holocaust victims for the first time since the war ended)

This is one of the memorial sculptures in Dachau.  It was erected in the early 60s and is missing the pink triangles.  Because in the early 60s, homosexuality was still a crime in most of the world. Our tour guide explained why the pink triangles have not been added later - if they were, then folks would assume that they had always been there.  This way people ask “why aren’t there pink triangles?” and somebody can explain why - because in some ways, the rest of the world was as bass-ackwards as Nazi Germany.

can i just say i was literately in a genocide and holocaust class and i didnt even learn this