According to Scott Lively, a conservative "minister" and Uganda "kill the gays" lobbyist, the gays are responsible for the Holocaust. You read that right!
In his 1995 book "The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party", Mr. Lively suggests that gay men were the driving force behind the nazi party's brutality. His proof? There were gay men in the Nazi party.
The fact is, there were some "homosexuals" in the "national socialist" party. It seems possible that Ernst Roehm was "homosexual", but there isn't conclusive evidence. There aren't any records showing how many members were "homosexual".
In "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", William Shirer mentions "homosexual perverts" a few times, but he doesn't claim that the nazi party was full of "homosexual perverts". In fact, he only mentions "homosexuals" 8 times in his book. Five of those mentions were of Roehm and his "homosexual gang", the SA. Two other mentions were referencing the false accusations that a general was "homosexual".
As for the other leaders of the SA, I couldn't find any on Wikipedia who were "homosexual" aside from Roehm. Most of them had wives and children. The SA leaders who's wikipedia entries don't mention wives or children, they are all after the start of WWII. As such, it was well after the 1934 "night of the long knives" purge.
It seems that the conservatives are using the convenient fact of "homosexual" membership in the nazi party as proof that gay men in particular were responsible for the holocaust. The fact is, there were a fair number of Catholics in the early nazi party, mainly due to the fact that Munich was (and is) mostly Catholic. Does that mean that all Catholics are culpable for the nazi atrocities? Of course not! So, why do conservatives use "homosexual" membership in the early nazi party to place culpability for nazi atrocities at the feet of gay men? There is an indisputable fact that the nazi party actually had a member with Jewish ancestry. In fact, hitler wasn't bothered by this, since he gave Emil Maurice "honorary aryan" status to allow him to keep his leadership posts.
Here is an article where an ACTUAL HISTORIAN totally debunks this ridiculous lie.
http://www.bakersfieldcalifornian.com/opinion/forum/x254542695/Did-Nazis-persecute-gays-or-were-they-gay-themselves
The fact that the early nazi party contained some "homosexual" members does not implicate gay men or the LGBT rights movement in the holocaust. The conservative effort to link the two is offensive, not just to the LGBT community, but to anyone who cares about historical veracity.
If we're going to start using "the nazi" label to discredit a movement, why not use the nazi banning of abortion to discredit the misnamed "pro-life" movement? Why not? Because it is a lie. As much as I hate the moralizing bandit of anti-woman thugs known as "pro-life", I care too much about veracity to pull a dirty trick like that.
