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Originally Posted by schoolboi
Less then one hundred years ago a “civilized” country much like ours was overrun by fascism. Millions of people were exterminated. Who would have thought that could have ever happened? During that same time period we rounded up thousands of our own citizens and put them in to internment camps. Who would have thought that could have ever happened?
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I'm not sure that the comparison here is quite fair. I agree that there's room for a lot of improvement for gays and lesbians in the United States, but hate crimes are (as far as I am aware) not as widespread as they were against jews in pre-Hitler Germany and Austria. As early as 1909 laws against participation of jews in public events were enacted in Austria; the infamous Kristallnacht of 1938 was a government sponsored
physical attack on jews, and to my knowledge the US government is not yet declaring homosexuality a crime fit for capital punishment. The Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I was not written by jews, but it caused such widespread poverty and discontent in Germany that the hunt for scapegoats, an utterly despicable but nonetheless human characteristic, was inevitable; the jews (and to a lesser extent communists) were perfect for the role since they had been perceived as thieves and liars for ages. During the same period that anti-semitism increased once more in Europe, the gay rights movement was taking its first steps, along with the first feminist wave.
For all the discriminatory flaws in your system that cause inequality, misunderstanding and distrust, there have been improvements with the implementation of same-sex marriages or similar - though I give you, inferior - institutions and the invalidation of sodomy laws. Internationally speaking, particularly in Canada and western Europe, things are looking even brighter.
As for the right-wing zealots at "Focus on the Family" and "Concerned Women for America", they might be desperately trying to make it look as if the gay community IS waging war on America, there is a big difference between trying to alienate an entire group of citizens from equality and dropping an atom bomb on them.
Perhaps things will get worse before they get better, but I do think it's important to treasure what HAS been achieved so far.