Historical Context

Normally, I try my best not to get too offended by the memes that people post on social media, but if you read the blog often, you know that I sometimes fail at this. I usually don't see a point in arguing with the people who post the stuff, because I find them beyond hopeless. However, as this is my place to rant, I will speak here.

When marriage equality became the law of the land, people began to make their profile pics rainbow-tinted.  As I blogged about before, this offended a lot of the haters because they really can't stand the idea of non-homosexual people supporting those who are. Many of their criticisms, complaints, and whining post-marriage equality have been directed toward allies.

One meme I've seen recently really pissed me off. Someone had taken that iconic picture of everyone heiling Hitler with the one guy who isn't and rainbow-tinted it except for the guy who isn't heiling. The caption is "Be this guy." I suppose the intent was that the plucky little righteous people should stand up to all the popular gay supporters and show how deeply cool they are by not participating. Yes, I realize I had some sarcasm in there.

This is one case where intent really doesn't matter though because the history connected with Nazis comes into play. Nazis hated German gays.They were routinely arrested and put into camps, just like Jews and anyone else the Nazis didn't like. They were often segregated from the general population and given very dangerous work assignments. A lot of experiments were done to them, in  the hope of trying to find a 'cure' for homosexuality. Sometimes they were castrated.

So while the people who post that meme are trying to say that they are 'good' because they don't side with the 'bad people= Nazis,' what they miss is that the Nazis were far closer to their thinking on homosexuality. And probably if they unpacked a lot of the things they currently say and believe, they'd find they have quite a lot in common with the Nazis in many, many ways.

If they can see that the Nazis were evil for what they did, maybe it's time to take a good hard look at what that makes them. In the meantime, they should at least give some reflection to the historical context of a meme before they post it. Then again, these are the some of the same people who didn't process why waving a slavery flag to protest the visit of a black president was offensive.