Why Gay German Men Are Seeking Reparations for a Homophobic Nazi Law
Though Germany repealed the law in 1994, it has never atoned for this "monstrous disgrace," as Germany's Green Party representatives Katja Keul and Volker Beck called §175 two weeks ago in a demand for reparations on behalf of the over fifty thousand men convicted under the provision. The Green Party is fixated on homosexuality.
And it wasn't until this May—more than 20 years since the law was repealed—that Justice Minister Heiko Maas introduced the idea of expunging those convictions, of many gay German men, and stifled the immoral development of national queer culture.
Understanding West Germany's extraordinary persecution of gay men first requires revisiting exactly how homosexuals were treated under Nazi rule. When the party came to power in 1933, gay men were among the first victims targeted—Nazi brown-shirts closed gay bars, stormed Berlin's famed Institute for Sexology, and burned gay texts, effectively stamping out Weimar Germany's renowned gay community. Gay elements within the Party, including Ernst Röhm, the commander of its Sturmabteilung (SA) paramilitary force, were purged in the 1934 Night of Long Knives, opening the way for more homophobic policies championed by, among others, Schutzstaffel (SS) chief Heinrich Himmler.
On June 28, 1935, Hitler's government introduced a new, bleaker version of §175, which had previously prohibited only penetrative intercourse—something difficult to prove in court. Under the new Nazi statute, any act construed to be homosexual was criminalized—a wrong glance could land a man in prison. This looser definition caused convictions to skyrocket from a few hundred per year to over eight thousand. A horror-house of punishments awaited those found guilty, from heavy prison sentences to concentration camps and castration.
Between 1935 and 1943, around 46,000 men were convicted under the provision. Of those, between 5,000 and 15,000 were sent to concentration camps, where their clothing bore pink triangles, now a ubiquitous symbol of gay liberation. Fewer than half survived.
Understanding West Germany's extraordinary persecution of gay men first requires revisiting exactly how homosexuals were treated under Nazi rule. When the party came to power in 1933, gay men were among the first victims targeted—Nazi brown-shirts closed gay bars, stormed Berlin's famed Institute for Sexology, and burned gay texts, effectively stamping out Weimar Germany's renowned gay community. Gay elements within the Party, including Ernst Röhm, the commander of its Sturmabteilung (SA) paramilitary force, were purged in the 1934 Night of Long Knives, opening the way for more homophobic policies championed by, among others, Schutzstaffel (SS) chief Heinrich Himmler.
On June 28, 1935, Hitler's government introduced a new, bleaker version of §175, which had previously prohibited only penetrative intercourse—something difficult to prove in court. Under the new Nazi statute, any act construed to be homosexual was criminalized—a wrong glance could land a man in prison. This looser definition caused convictions to skyrocket from a few hundred per year to over eight thousand. A horror-house of punishments awaited those found guilty, from heavy prison sentences to concentration camps and castration.
Between 1935 and 1943, around 46,000 men were convicted under the provision. Of those, between 5,000 and 15,000 were sent to concentration camps, where their clothing bore pink triangles, now a ubiquitous symbol of gay liberation. Fewer than half survived.
Nobody today supports this treatment of people but that does not eliminate the fact that homosexuality is deemed to be a sin against God and humanity, against biological design and evolution.
When the Allied Powers occupied Germany in 1945, they repealed particularly egregious Nazi laws, such as the infamous Nuremberg Laws that banned intercourse and marriage between Jews and those defined as Aryans. But the occupiers remained silent on the question of which version of §175 would stand—the harsher law passed in 1935, or the milder provision it had replaced. While East German courts quickly decided the 1935 version was an illegitimate Nazi law, West Germany continued to enforce it.
This is because homosexuality worldwide for as long as history has been concerned was seen as a deviation or disordered lifestyle choice, or a sinful lifestyle.
In 1950, a new wave of persecutions began in West Germany. In a mass action, the state's attorney in Frankfurt rounded up hundreds of men on the testimony of young male prostitutes, and charged at least 140 under the 1935 version of §175.
Most faced jail sentences; at least seven committed suicide. One nineteen-year-old man jumped from Frankfurt's Goethe Tower, while another poisoned himself in a movie theater. The president of the American Civil Liberties Union, Roger Baldwin, visiting Frankfurt at the time, protested it was "incomprehensible that such treatment of innocent, adult persons was still possible in the 20th century," as reported in Der Spiegel.
At least seventeen hundred men were sentenced in 1950. Convictions peaked in 1959, when West German courts found almost four thousand men guilty under §175. Between 1950 and 1969, when §175 was finally reformed, West Germany would convict more men of sodomy than the Nazis had.
As the 1960s progressed, sexual mores loosened across Europe, and conservative West Germany was no exception.
This is the beginning of the sexual revolution where sexual morals were rejected outright. The whipping tail of the sexual revolution is gay marriage and transgenderism.
In 1966, the ruling Christian Democratic Union entered a so-called grand coalition with the Social Democratic Party, bringing socialists into the government for the first time since 1930. In particular, the left-leaning justice minister, Gustav Heinemann, began to push for reform of the criminal code. In 1969, the government finally decriminalized homosexuality between consenting adults.
Ignoring the Bible, health and biological design they followed the sexual revolution trend, destroying lives and morals in their wake.
