Laphonza Butler Will Not Seek Full Term

Last Thursday, one day after being sworn in, Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-CA) announced she would not seek a full term in 2024.  

“Knowing you can win a campaign doesn’t always mean you should run a campaign,” Butler said in a statement, “I know this will be a surprise to many because traditionally we don’t see those who have power let it go.  It may not be the decision people expected, but it’s the right one for me.”  

Gov. Newsom (D-CA) appointed Butler to fill the seat of Dianne Feinstein (D) after her death earlier this month.

The Nazis and Paragraph 175

In the early 1930s, despite sexual relations between men being criminalized by Paragraph 175 of the German criminal code, Germany’s gay community had a vibrant network of gay bars, publications, and organizations.  

After Hitler was appointed Chancellor in January 1933, things quickly changed, and Paragraph 175 was enforced with vigor — bars were raided and closed, organizations dissolved, and books burned.

Trans women were also prosecuted, treated as men, under Paragraph 175.

In 1934 a special Gestapo division on homosexuals was formed, aggregating a list of suspected homosexuals.  Neighbors were encouraged to report suspicions.

In 1935 the Nazis revised Paragraph 175 to be punishable by a decade in prison.

In 1936 the Reich Central Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortion was established, allowing indefinite imprisonment of anyone dangerous to Germany’s “moral fibre.”

From 1937-1939, about 100,000 gay men were arrested under Paragraph 175, with just over half convicted and imprisoned.  Some were offered early release for agreeing to castration.  An unknown number were imprisoned in concentration camps, forced to wear a pink triangle, with homosexuality as their crime.  

Many more queer folks were sent to camps for being Jewish — or one of myriad other reasons Nazis gave for imprisonment.

Pink triangle prisoners in concentration camps were physically and sexually abused, publicly humiliated, and forced to do especially grueling or demanding labor.

Starting in 1942, judges and concentration camp commandants were authorized to force the castration of gay men.  

Starting in 1943 pink triangle prisoners were exterminated in the camps.

The number of gay men who died in the Holocaust is unknown, in part due to continued homophobia after the war ended in 1945.  More than half of homosexuals imprisoned in concentration camps are believed to have died.

After the war, West Germany arrested an additional 100,000 men under Paragraph 175 between 1949 and 1969, with about 59,000 convicted.  Though abolished in East Germany in 1968, it wasn’t until 1994 that a reunited Germany fully abolished Paragraph 175.

Gay men imprisoned by the Nazis were not acknowledged by the German government, and as a result were not eligible for compensation, until Nazi-era Paragraph 175 convictions were overturned in 2002, 57 years after the death of Hitler and the end of WWII.

Ohio Neo-Nazi Pleads Guilty

Aimenn Penny, a 20-year old neo-Nazi, pleaded guilty to a March 25 attempt to burn down a Chester, Ohio church — the Community Church of Chesterland — in response to two drag queen storytime events planned for April 1.  

According to the criminal complaint filed March 31 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Penny is a member of “White Lives Matter,” whose members, in response to another March 11 drag queen event in Wadsworth, Ohio, “showed up at the event carrying swastika flags and shouting racial and homophobic slurs and ‘Heil Hitler.’”

Penny will be sentenced in January and faces at least ten years in prison.

Republican Welcomes “Actual Literal Nazi” Support

“I’m not going to denounce anybody their right to be whatever it is that they want to be, whether I agree with what they do in their personal life or not.”  Sounds great, right?  

Republican candidate for mayor in Franklin, Tennessee — Gabrielle Hanson — recently said this of a self-described “actual literal Nazi.”

Last Tuesday voters rejected Hanson by a 60-point margin.  This thanks in part to excellent investigative reporting by Nashville’s Phil Williams, who provided a steady drumbeat of truth throughout the campaign.

This story would fill this entire week’s issue if I included everything, but John Oliver summarized it best: bit.ly/FCNP1023pw.