The Rt Rev Joseph Devine, Bishop of Motherwell, has come out with some particularly putrid comments. According to The Scotsman (via New Humanist via Stroppy) and the BBC, the Bishop has said

“It is ever-present at the service each year for the Holocaust memorial, as if to create for themselves the image of a group of people under persecution. We neglect the gay movement at our peril.”

The person doing the persecuting here is the Bishop. ‘Neglect the gay movement at our peril’; neglect from what?

The image here is a chart of some of the badges that inmates of Nazi concentration camps were compelled to wear. Take note of the pink triangles; they are the marks for homosexuals that were held because they were homosexuals. In his book, The Pink Triangle: the Nazi War against Homosexuals, Richard Plant gives the figure for homosexual men convicted by the Nazis between 1933 and 1944 as between 50,000 and 63,000. Plant and his partner, Oskar Seidlin, had to leave Germany because of the persecution of homosexuals.

The Bishop also said:

“The homosexual lobby has been extremely effective in aligning itself with minority groups.”

Good; as the Catholic Archbishop Óscar Romero said, “We who have a Voice must be a Voice for the Voiceless”. The Archbishop could do worse than remember the words of Niemöller:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out -
because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out -
because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out -
because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me -
and there was no one left to speak for me.

Rosa winkel is the German for ‘pink triangle’.

xD.

Posted on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Categories: Campaigns, Justice, Philosophy, Religion.
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