Sunday, May 28, 2023 | 2 a.m.
In 1939, there were just under 10 million Jews in all of Europe. There were fewer than 400,000 Jews in Germany. But in 1935, Germany passed the Nuremberg Laws, which stripped Jews of various rights including who they might marry and employment opportunities, targeting them in ways that made them lawful victims of persecution. Sound familiar?
Today in the United States, 7.2% of the population is LGBTQ. That’s about 24 million people. This year, nationwide, legislatures have passed 21st-century versions of the Nuremberg Laws. They have passed at least 45 laws so far that attack LGBTQ marriage, endanger their employment and their First Amendment rights, limit what can be taught or discussed in schools and make them victims of persecution. The politicians also target those who defend the victims of these laws, as the Republicans did when they attacked the education commissioner in Kentucky.
When I was in junior high, a boy about my age was targeted by others, called names and picked on mercilessly. His sexual orientation was questioned profanely using all those words I’m sure you know.
Gym class was particularly painful for him. He had to have been miserable every day and I regret, to this day, not standing up for him. I make no excuse, I just wasn’t aware of what was happening to him. I truly have no idea what his sexual orientation might have been but I’m certain, wherever he is, he carries with him that trauma inflicted upon him at school by classmates a half-century ago. That’s why I write this today, to perhaps make up in some small way for my adolescent inaction.
I watched this last session as legislatures across the nation enacted anti-LGBT statutes, masking their bigotry with faux concern for adolescents while thrusting themselves between patient and physician. I also note those bigots are separating the T(rans) from LGBT as part of their strategy. But make no mistake — those remaining are next to be targeted.
The bigots justify their actions, too, by conflating sexual orientation with pedophilia, calling LGBT people (and those who defend them from attack) “groomers.” The same strategy has been used by bigots for centuries — Jews and Romany/Gypsies stole children; Blacks molested white women, immigrants are rapists and criminals who carry disease and drugs — and today, LGBT people are pedophiles. Same smear, different era utilized to persecute the minority.
Perhaps worse, these codified hate statutes make acceptable and encourage discrimination and bigotry, and permit the kind of bullying that I witnessed in a school in Florida in the ’60s.
The last refuge of the bigot is the ability to overtly discriminate against LGBT people. It’s the bigot’s version of the Alamo, their last stand. They can’t say the N-word, they failed to build a wall, they can’t call a Jew or Catholic or Muslim their favorite negative terms — but they can still point to LGBT people, bully them, discriminate against them, refuse to bake that cake and boycott that beer.
In 1960, Lyndon Johnson was quoted as saying, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
Just insert LGBT or immigrant and follow the money to the political party that panders to bigotry.
It’s all happened before. Just like for Europe’s Jews in the ’30s and ’40s, this won’t end well. If you’ve ever wondered what you might have done during the rise of fascism in Germany, the question is about to be answered. Don’t claim you didn’t know — it’s all over the news. In this nation, we have people, perhaps your neighbors, who’d happily serve as guards in a death camp.
Bill Adkins is an attorney in private practice in Williamstown, Ky. He wrote this guest column for the Lexington Herald-Leader.
