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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 7, 1993                   TAG: 9304070367
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

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NOTHING TO GUFFAW ABOUT

VERY RECENT history provides us with a disturbing example of government intolerance toward homosexuals. Some of the very same men who were guffawing so loudly at Oliver North's gay-bashing humor at a recent Republican fund-raiser, fought against Hitler as young men. They may care to remember that Hitler sought out homosexuals especially for persecution, and made them wear pink triangles to identify themselves. Before long, the climate against gays escalated into beatings, arrests, loss of status in society and, eventually, removal to death camps, where homosexuals were murdered.

If anyone thinks I am being unfair by comparing America to Nazi Germany, I urge you to pause for a moment and consider soberly the lessons of history. The Nazi death camps did not spring up overnight. Hitler did not achieve his sick ambitions through his own actions. No, he found broad support throughout society. Not everybody participated, but enough did - and enough stayed silent - that the passion and hatred soon got way out of control. All of this happened in the space of a few years.

If you had gone to Germany in the early days when the gay-killers were taking power, you would have found a land full of solid, good-natured, law-abiding, church-going people. In retrospect, we know that this seeming normality was just a front for a society that had it within itself to build and operate death camps. ROB CONRAD ABINGDON

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