Lesbo Confirmed to SC

[Xavier_Onassis]

The dislike of homosexuals is not determined by economics. It is basically a societal prejudice, which has been encouraged by religion, notably, but not exclusively, Christianity. The Bible has a number of violently anti-gay passages, and this attitude no doubt comes from the Hebrew culture.

I have no idea why Lenin or Stalin had whatever notions they did, but it was not a product of Marx or anything that could be deduced from Marxist theory. Lenin was a Russian/Chugash, Stalin was Georgian.

[BT]

And five years in the gulag is a far cry from what Matthew Sheppard had to endure, so the comparison of Stalin to his (Matthew's) killers is absolutely nonsensical.

Meanwhile Sheppard's killers got life sentences and Stalin gets your approval.

[Michael Tee]

<<Meanwhile Sheppard's killers got life sentences and Stalin gets your approval. >>

Yeah, ironic, eh?  Or would be if you ever got around, despite your numerous failed attempts, to show that Stalin did anything as heinous to a homosexual as Sheppard's tormentors did to Sheppard.

And, BTW, my approval of Stalin has nothing to do with his homophobic leglislation, it mainly centres around his destruction of Nazi Germany and saving the world from fascism.  If Sheppard's killers have any comparable accomplishments to their credit, I must have missed that part of their biographies.

And I wouldn't be so smug about their life sentences either.  If they had killed a white mother of three, or a retired white grandfather, they would have both been sentenced to death.  Where is the evidence for that statement?  Just my own common sense and my knowledge of life in the U.S.A. generally. 

[BT]

If they had killed a white mother of three, or a retired white grandfather, they would have both been sentenced to death.

One of the defendants copped a plea to avoid the death penalty pre-trial and the other copped a plea during the trial to avoid the death penalty. So yes the death penalty was on the table for these guys.

Stalin on the other hand was responsible for hundreds if not thousands of men (lesbianism was not outlawed) being sent to the gulags. How many do you think died under such extreme prison conditions?

[Michael Tee]

<<Stalin on the other hand was responsible for hundreds if not thousands of men (lesbianism was not outlawed) being sent to the gulags. How many do you think died under such extreme prison conditions?>>

Neither one of us knows if anybody was ever actually sent to a gulag for homosexuality, we don't know if any such survived or not.  A gulag is not an extermination camp, it's a prison camp in a cold climate where there was probably a lot of abuse of prisoners by guards.  A kind of Alabama penitentiary with snow and ice.  If anyone died in a gulag and was there only for homosexuality, it's a fucking crime and if it was Stalin's fault that he died there, that would make Stalin guilty of his death.

For every guy that died in a gulag for homosexuality (and I'm not aware of a single one) we have to consider how many lives were saved by Stalin's destruction of Nazi Germany and the millions of Nazis that were killed by the Red Army under the guidance and leadership of Comrade Stalin.   They don't excuse the deaths of any homosexuals who may have died in gulags, but they make Stalin less of a fiend than those bastards who murdered Matthew Sheppard in cold blood and never killed a single Nazi or otherwise contributed to the betterment of humanity.

[BT]

The lowest point in the history of the relationship between socialism and homosexuality undoubtedly begins with the rise of Joseph Stalin in the USSR, after Lenin's death, and continues through the era of state communism in the USSR, East Germany, China and North Korea. In all cases the conditions of sexual minorities, including transgender people, worsened in communist states after the arrival of Stalin. Hundreds of thousands of homosexuals were interned in gulags during the Great Purge, where many were beaten to death. Some Western intellectuals withdrew their support of Communism after seeing the severity of repression in the USSR, including the gay writer Andr? Gide.[33]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_and_LGBT_rights#The_homophile_movement

[Michael Tee]

Well, if that's true then it's sickening and it would certainly lessen my admiration of Stalin.  At the same time I will never forget what he did to Nazi Germany, to the Nazis and to their collaborators, or the difference he made to the fate of the world and the human race.  Too bad these positive contributions could not have been made by a better man, but our history is what it is.   

I guess the lesson should be to avoid the cult of the personality and any kind of hero worship; human beings are complex and some can embody both good and evil impulses.  Perhaps Stalin was simply mistaken in equating homosexuality with latent fascism, and in his campaign against homosexuality, he was liquidating people whom he sincerely believed to be fascists.  An unfortunate error, but no different in principle from the errors of the Purges, when the dangers were recognized, but the net cast too wide.  The intention was to save the Revolution from its fascist and capitalist enemies, and to preserve the gains of Socialism against the enemies of the people.

[BT]

The intention was to save the Revolution from its fascist and capitalist enemies, and to preserve the gains of Socialism against the enemies of the people.

Wouldn't the same apologia work for Hitler?

[Michael Tee]

<<Wouldn't the same apologia work for Hitler?>>

LOL.  Only if you believe the Cold War propaganda bullshit equating the crimes of Hitler with the "crimes" of communism.  But that's already happened.  I knew Hitler would be rehabilitated one day.  Human nature is what it is.  You can't get away from it. 

[sirs]

The intention was to save the Revolution from its fascist and capitalist enemies, and to preserve the gains of Socialism against the enemies of the people.

Wouldn't the same apologia work for Hitler?

Touche', Bt   

[BT]

<<Wouldn't the same apologia work for Hitler?>>

LOL.  Only if you believe the Cold War propaganda bullshit equating the crimes of Hitler with the "crimes" of communism.  But that's already happened.  I knew Hitler would be rehabilitated one day.  Human nature is what it is.  You can't get away from it. 

This is no attempt to rehabilitate Hitler. What it is is an effort to point out inconsistencies in your logic. Who is to say that Hitler was not as motivated in protecting the homeland and the advances made by the revolution as Stalin was. Yet you make excuses for ones excesses and not the other.

[sirs]

Communism/Naziism.......2 peas in the same evil pod

[Michael Tee]

<<This is no attempt to rehabilitate Hitler.>>

That would be the exact result of that kind of thinking.  From a monster to the status of our former war-time ally.

<< What it is is an effort to point out inconsistencies in your logic. Who is to say that Hitler was not as motivated in protecting the homeland and the advances made by the revolution as Stalin was.>>

Say for the sake of argument they were both equally altruistically motivated - - the one to assure the success of the workers' and peasants' revolution and end the exploitation of man by man, the other to make the world a better place by exterminating all the Jews and reducing the non-Aryan races to servitude.  Merely to state the competing objectives is to expose the ridiculous nature of your claim, which becomes even more ridiculous when one compares the crimes of the Nazis with the largely imaginary "crimes" of the Soviets, which are mostly Cold War propaganda BS.

<<Yet you make excuses for ones excesses and not the other. >>

As I say, Stalin's alleged crimes against homosexuals were balanced by his real-world good deeds, consisting, inter alia, of  the destruction of Nazi Germany and the killing of millions of Nazis in the process.  And Hitler's all-too-real crimes were balanced by . . . ?

[BT]

Homosexuals or  Jews, whats the difference. Both were considered enemies of the state, respectively.

 

[Michael Tee]

I think that the campaign against homosexuals, if in fact based on their alleged complicity in fascism, was pure nonsense.  That's why I claim, with the caveat that I am not sure it was as described, that it was a crime. 

The difference of course is that only an idiot would equate five years in the gulag with the deliberate extermination of six million human beings, men, women and children, for the "crime" of being born to their natural parents and the intent to seek out and exterminate all the rest of them.