There is absolutely no need for commentary. Really, you’ll see.
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Ok, maybe a little commentary. To read all my posts on Scott Lively’s tough gay nazi assignment, click here.
In various ways, over the last two weeks, Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association has advanced three theories about Hitler, the Nazi Party and homosexuals. They are:
1. Hitler was an active homosexual.
2. Hitler could not find straight soldiers who were savage enough to carry out his evil plans, so he recruited homosexuals to do it.
3. Homosexuals in the Nazi military led to the Holocaust.
Fischer produces several quotes from historians and students of the Nazi movement to support him. It seems to me that he pulls these quotes right out of their context and uses them to paint an incomplete picture of history.
Hitler’s sexuality has been examined from several different angles. He is an enigma for sure, but you wouldn’t know it by listening to Fischer who called Hitler “an active homosexual.” In the historical record it is clear that Hitler displayed some interest in certain women but this was glossed over by Fischer. Even if Hitler did have a homosexual period –this is by no means proven — there was a clear shift in attitude toward homosexuals after the murder of Ernst Rohm. It is accurate to say that Rohm and several of the SA Brownshirts were homosexual. Hitler tolerated them until they were no longer useful and had them executed in 1934 during the Night of the Long Knive purge. The man who led the execution of Rohm and who later had responsibility for instilling the uncompromising cruelty of the concentration camps at Dachau and later as general inspector of all camps was Theodore Eicke. Eicke, not mentioned in Scott Lively’s book, was married with two children; very straight and very savage.
What follows are just a sampling of quotes which are relevant to Fischer’s theories.
Hitler avoided contact with women, meeting with cold indifference during visits to the opera alleged attempts by young women, probably seeing him as something of an oddity, to flirt or tease him. He was repelled by homosexuality. He refrained from masturbation. Prostitution horrified but fascinated him. He associated it with venereal disease, which petrified him. (p. 23)
–Ian Kershaw in Hitler: A Biography (2008). WW Norton & Co.
“Diels says of Hitler, “He [Hitler] lectured me on the role of homosexuality in history and politics. It had destroyed ancient Greece he said. Once rife, it extended its contagious effects like an ineluctable law of nature to the best and most manly of characters, elimination from the reproductive process those very men on whose offspring a nation depended. The immediate result of the vice, however, was that unnatural passion swiftly became dominant in public affairs if it were allowed to spread unchecked”. (p.118) (Rudolf Diels was the first chief of the Gestapo)
–Frank Rector. (1981). The Nazi Extermination of Homosexuals. Stein & Day Publishing.
Hitler was prudish in his abhorrence of the “sins” of the modern big city like prostitution, homosexuality, and even immodest dress. He wrote of these matters as the “political, ethical and moral contamination of the people” and the “poisoning of the health of the body politic.” (p. 336)
–Robert Gellately (2007). Lenin, Stalin and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. Random House.
In November, 1941 Hitler even signed a decree making homosexual offenses among SS members and policemen a capital offense. Two months earlier, Hitler had explained to Goebbels the Darwinian underpinnings of his opposition to homosexuality. After remarking that homosexuality should not be tolerated, especially in the Nazi party and the Army, Hitler continued:
The homosexual is always disposed to drive the selection of men toward the criminal or at least the sickly than the useful in the selection of men. If one would give him free rein, the state would eventually be an organization of homosexuality, but not an organization of manly selection. A real man would defend himself against this endeavor, because he sees it as an assassination of his own evolutionary possibilities. (p. 131)
–Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress (2009). Richard Weikart. Palgrave MacMillan.
There are many more such quotes and accounts which demonstrate the clear distain for homosexuality from Hitler and the Nazis. Last week, I noted that Lothar Machtan, who Bryan Fischer quotes at length, discounted points 2 and 3 above. For more on homosexuality and the Nazis, consult this link and this one.
Over the last week or so, Bryan Fischer made a series of claims regarding homosexuality and the Holocaust. He summarized his arguments in an article on the RenewAmerica website:
Homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews.
In making his case, he relies heavily on two books: The Hidden Hitler by Lothar Machtan and The Pink Swastika by Scott Lively. Last summer, I did a series of posts critiquing The Pink Swastika. This morning I had a brief email exchange with Lothar Machtan regarding Fischer’s central thesis. His current schedule did not allow an extensive interview at this time, but he did react to Fischer’s claim.
In the Hidden Hitler, Dr. Machtan argues largely from circumstances, inference and second hand accounts that Hitler was a homosexual. He is in the minority in his view but he presents an account that is important to consider.
Everything about Hitler is historically interesting and relevant. If Hitler was same-sex attracted, it would be of interest to students of history in the same that historians have examined the imperial heterosexuality of Mao Zedong. Machtan told me that Hitler’s (alleged) homosexuality influenced his political career up to about 1934-35. However, he said in clear terms that Hitler’s cruelty was not due to his sexuality, saying, “Hitler’s atrocities primarily do NOT derive from his homosexuality.” Regarding the Holocaust, Machtan added, “Of course you CANNOT blame Hitler’s homosexuality for the Holocaust.” (Machtan supplied the emphasis)
I am about half way through The Hidden Hitler and am reserving my opinion until I complete it and perhaps until after I am able to interview Machtan. However, as I suspected, Machtan does not advance the simplistic causal links advanced by Mr. Fischer in the service of the culture war.
See my prior post relating to Bryan Fischer’s claims.
On Monday, I wrote about the corrosive effect of the culture war on the real business of Christianity. In that post, I wrote
On the other hand, my great concern is that culture warring lulls people into feeling that that the cause justifies the considerable offense that comes with vilifying those the church yearns to reach.
As if to volunteer to be Exhibit A, Bryan Fischer helps define “vilifying” for us. On his American Family Radio program this week, Fischer, who erroneously believes the New Testament teaches criminalization of homosexuality) made the tired and discredited link between homosexuality and the WWII Nazis. He did not do this as an attempt at a lesson in history but as a part of his opposition to gays serving openly in the military. He did not simply comment on his moral opposition to homosexuality, teaching his view of the matter from the Bible. He vilified an entire group of people based on distortions of fact and the behavior of a few. Listen for yourself, transcript to follow:
So Hitler himself was an active homosexual. And some people wonder, didn’t the Germans, didn’t the Nazis, persecute homosexuals? And it is true they did; they persecuted effeminate homosexuals. But Hitler recruited around him homosexuals to make up his Stormtroopers, they were his enforcers, they were his thugs. And Hitler discovered that he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough to carry out his orders, but that homosexual solders basically had no limits and the savagery and brutality they were willing to inflict on whomever Hitler sent them after. So he surrounded himself, virtually all of the Stormtroopers, the Brownshirts, were male homosexuals.
When Fischer says that Hitler could not find straights to be savage enough, he goes beyond even Scott Lively’s imagination. This is one clear example of what I meant by vilifying.
He followed up his radio performance with a column defending his views by quoting books by Lothar Machtan and of course, Scott Lively. Machtan speculates that Hitler was homosexual, although other historians have explored this possibility and most of them are skeptical. I explored the matter in this post and you can get a more objective look at the matter via the documentary Men, Heroes and Gay Nazis. I have a clip here dealing with Machtan’s book on the question of Hitler’s sexuality:
Note that the historians other than Machtan point out that there is no proof, no eye witness account. When Fischer confidently says that Hitler was an active homosexual, he misleads his numerically substantial audience. And he does so make a far more sinister point which he makes explicit in a column out today. In that article, he extensively quotes Lively’s book The Pink Swastika and echoes Lively when he writes:
Homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews.
Regarding the specific claims of the Pink Swastika, I did a series of posts with the help of historian J.D. Wyneken. We found that The Pink Swastika took some historical facts, threw in a lot of wild speculation and simply overlooked disconfirming facts to create a false picture – one which Bryan Fischer summarized over this last week to support his culture war position.
Here are related posts in that series:
May 28 – Scott Lively wants off SPLC hate group list
May 31 – Eliminating homosexuality: Modern Uganda and Nazi Germany
June 3 – Before The Pink Swastika
June 4 – Kevin Abrams: The other side of The Pink Swastika
June 8 – A historian’s analysis of The Pink Swastika, part 1
June 9 – A historian’s analysis of The Pink Swastika, part 2
June 11 – American Nazi movement and homosexuality: How pink is their swastika?
June 15 – Nazi movement rallies against gays in Springfield, MO (See this one regarding Fischer’s association of American Nazis with homosexuality)
June 17 – Does homosexuality lead to fascism?
June 23 – The Pink Swastika and Friedrich Nietzsche
June 29 – The Pink Swastika and The Hidden Holocaust?
July 6 – The Pink Swastika and Hate 2 Hope (See this one regarding Fischer’s association of American Nazis with homosexuality)
Factoid: Fischer is a confirmed speaker at the Values Voter Summit.
After the premiere of Missionaries of Hate tonight, Mariana van Zeller has posted several additional extended interviews. Here is a little over 6 minutes of Scott Lively discussing his role in Uganda, the reason why the Anti-Homosexuality Bill should be passed and his view of American evangelicals.
Lively has said that it is racist to claim that Americans were responsible for the anti-gay bill and yet he claims credit for starting the “pro-family movement” in Uganda because they did not know what to do. Brace yourself, everything is said with a straight face.
Read my interview with Mariana van Zeller here.
Perhaps in preparation for the upcoming Current TV documentary on Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill, Scott Lively is going on offense. In a May 22nd email to supporters, Lively wrote:
Friends,
I’m looking for a good Christian media source to interview me on film on the Uganda issue for posting online. I intend to get off defense and counter-attack the false witnesses with hard facts about Uganda and the dishonest way the media has addressed the story. Please forward this to any pro-family journalists you know and ask them to contact me at sdllaw@gmail.com.In the mean time, I have created a new category of news stories at DefendtheFamily.com under the title “Uganda.” There are about 20 stories there now, going back to about 2003 which show the growing problem of pro-homosexual activism in that country, long before my 2009 seminar which is now being blamed for creating a climate of “homophobia” in Uganda. There are also numerous examples of liberal media propaganda about the anti-homosexuality bill.
If you happen to hear someone criticize me based on the intense, global anti-Scott Lively character assassination by these media, please refer them to our website, both to read the material there, but also to download Redeeming the Rainbow: A Christian Response to the “Gay” Agenda which was the source of all of my comments and teaching in Uganda.
Thanks for standing with me through the firestorm,
Dr. Scott Lively
As he notes on his website, there are several articles going back to 2003 (although some of the links are broken), including a letter addressed to the Parliament of Uganda back in March. The letter is long but the highlights are that he favors targeted criminalization but with the aim being rehabilitation rather than prison. He indicates in this letter that he knew the Parliament was considering new legislation at the time (March, 2009). He also frames his views as a “don’t ask, don’t tell” public policy:
I believe you could easily adapt this model to your purposes by imposing this same reporting requirement on anyone with knowledge of homosexuals who involve themselves with anyone under a certain age. If, for example, you encompassed all youths under the age of twenty-five within this shield of protection, you would stop virtually all “gay” recruitment in your country, since normal young men and women are usually firmly set in their heterosexual identity by their mid-twenties. On the other hand, you would preserve the right to privacy of adults who are not activists or pederasts but simply want to live their lives in relative peace. This would function much like the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in the United States military. Adult homosexuals would remain subject to the law, but not actively pursued if they are discrete about their lifestyle.
Lively professes opposition to the death penalty but the reasons sound pragmatic rather than principled.
First and foremost, the inclusion of capital punishment for what you have classed as “aggravated homosexuality” is, in my view, a disproportionately harsh penalty. You may not be aware that capital punishment has been banned in numerous countries, even for the most extreme cases of aggravated murder. This is held as such an important policy that these nations will often refuse to extradite criminals to their home countries (including the United States) if there is any possibility that they will be subject to capital punishment there. Advocating the “death penalty” for “mere” sexual crimes evokes such a severe negative reaction in most Western nations that all other aspects of the law, and the rationale for drafting it is ignored, and very “gay” movement we seek to oppose is strengthened by public sympathy they would not otherwise enjoy.
Conversely, if the “death penalty” provision were removed, it would take the wind out of the sails of their current campaign against the bill. With so much of the international opposition rooted in the idea that this is a “Kill the Gays” law, the removal of this provision would represent enough of a concession on your part that a great many of the people who are now siding with the homosexual movement out of sympathy would consider the matter resolved. The “gay” activists and their political allies will, of course, continue to attack the bill, but from a much weaker position.
You can read the whole thing and form your own conclusions, but according to the response provided, the bill supporters did not want to make any changes. Note the players involved in getting the letter to Parliament and then the response to Lively. Martin Ssempa received Lively’s letter and forwarded it to Parliament. Then, the responder was Charles Tuhaise, who has emerged as a major supporter of the bill. Here is the reply:
My letter was forwarded to Members of Parliament by Dr. Martin Ssempa. This was the reply.
March 10, 2010
Dr. Ssempa,
Thanks for sending Dr. Lively’s Letter. His proposals can be considered as we make our revisions, but, while I appreciate the need to have people like Lively campaign for the Bill and the law when passed, there are obvious dangers in trying to equalise the policy and law on homosexuality between USA and Uganda. The two countries are dealing with totally different situations. The time when USA should have enacted a preventive law like we are contemplating passed a long time ago and they are faced with a huge and financially and politically powerful gay population recruited into homosexuality because no one foresaw the need for a preventive law in time (probably in the 1940s). If such comprehensive law (not merely about sodomy) had been in place, people like Alfred Kinsey would not have done so much damage by opening the door wide for homosexuality.
The situation in Uganda today is different because homosexuality is still a budding problem. We either nip it in the bud now with a strong, preventive law or give it a foothold to grow from.
The danger I see in Dr. Lively’s suggestions is in proposing to
normalise homosexual practice for adults (whatever age they may be). That is the Western approach generally which has failed miserably, because what is held as normal practice by adults will be adopted by children and youth automatically. It’s just a matter of time before the whole culture is swamped in homosexual practice. That’s how pornography broke barriers in Western society and became insidious. It’s like the proverbial “Camel and herdsman story”. Today it is a foot in the hut, tomorrow it is a leg in the hut, next day its the head in the hut; before long, the herdsman is tossed out of the hut.I agree with Dr. Lively that the Death Penalty can be removed, but it must be replaced by equally strong and detterent penalties. The purpose of penalties is to detter people from behaviour with far-reaching consequences. What the Bill needs, to me, is solid research into the consequences of homosexuality. Its huge health-risks and social, cultural and economic disruption need to be documented and not merely talk about defending our “religious and cultural practices”. In countries or territories with legalised homosexuality, parents and religious bodies have lost the right to teach against homosexuality; a property owner will not refuse to rent a house or hotel room to a homosexual couple based on belief, conscience or fear of influence on neighbouhood children; teachers must teach that homosexuality is normal lyfestyle or lose their licences; children in Kindergarten are introduced to homosexual books and other indoctrination e.t.c. All these are reasons we must do everything to stop and prevent homosexual practice.
Ultimately, I see no way out in taking a stand and paying the price. We cannot adopt an innefective policy against homosexuality just to prevent loss of donor funds. Our friends in the West must stand with Uganda as we take a serious stand against homosexual infiltration. What we need is more nations to stand up and do the same. There will be no place for lukewarmness, the way I see this situation. It’s time for nations to stand up for what is right and pay the price. The more nations do this, the more the tide will turn against the homosexual movement. Christians in the West must know that it is time to pay the price for truth. Unwillingness to do this is responsible for infiltration and takeover of virtually every western insitution by homosexuals, including the church.
I admire the courage of my friend Dr. Lively, because he has stood up to homosexual intimidation for so long as a lone voice. We need more people like him in the days, weeks, months and years ahead. The homosexual machine is well organised and its agenda is not conciliation with anyone but total take-over of society. Africa is probably is the last place they are trying to take-over that has the best hope to turn the tide, if we do not mess-up the opportunity.
Charles Tuhaise
(P/S: You can forward my comments to Dr. Scott Lively)
Mr. Tuhaise may have forgotten where he heard all about pornography and homosexuality. According to Lively, about the same message came from his highly successful visit to Uganda in March, 2009:
The Ugandan people are strongly pro-family, and there is a large Christian population which is much more activist minded than that of most western countries. However, the international “gay” movement has devoted a lot of resources to transforming the moral culture from a marriage-based one to one that embraces sexual anarchy. Just as in the U.S. many years ago they are leading with pornography to weaken the moral fiber of the people, and propagandizing the children behind the parents’ backs. On the TV show we exposed a book distributed to schools by UNICEF that normalizes homosexuality to teenagers. (We expect a massive protest by parents, who are mostly not aware that such materials even exist in their country, let alone in their childrens’ classrooms.)
Mr. Tuhaise seems to be saying that the bill is necessary based on what Scott Lively taught when he was in Uganda. The Ugandan supporters of the bill believe they are carrying the teachings of Lively to their logical conclusion.
…..
Read a current update on the status of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
For all articles on Uganda, click here.
ABC News Nightline went to Uganda and filmed Martin Ssempa showing porn in church and then got Scott Lively on camera. Here it is:
