Rev. Flip Benham Is Right About Holocaust

"What is happening in Jackson today is exactly what happened in Nazi Germany!"

That is the rhetoric of Rev. Flip Benham of Operation Save America. Benham was protesting in front of Mississippi's last abortion clinic, an accounting of which, Abortion Under Siege in Mississippi, is in today's Salon from Michelle Goldberg. It is a MUST read.

"The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world," and asked the arresting officer, "Are you a Jew?"

That is the drunken rhetoric of Mel Gibson, according to an Associated Press reporter.

The Rev. Flip Benham is right. Gibson, whose father denies the holocaust, is wrong. The holocaust happened, and the Jews were not responsible.

I assume Rev. Benham went to see Gibson's Passion of the Christ and probably, like many evangelicals, helped promote it, but how can these two people be on both sides of the holocaust issue? Gibson is a real son-of-a-holocaust denier, and Benham clearly believes there was a holocaust and that abortion, gays, and Muslims are linked in its modern day revival. "Islam is the same thing as abortion and homosexuality," he said. "It's the black-colored glove covering the same fist, which is the fist of the devil."

I worked for a short time in the media relations office of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The first time that a historical artifact that could be traced to a living homosexual survivor arrived at the museum, I, a gay man, stood with chills, along side an equally moved New York Times reporter and the Dutch historian, Klaus Mueller, who was documenting gay victims of the holocaust. Klaus carefully unpacked the pink triangle, the symbol the Nazi's used to identify gays under Paragraph 175. Some of the earliest Nazi book burnings, that were the precursors of the horrors to come, were in front of Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science, in Berlin.

Rev. Benham was denied a fire permit for his book burning by the Jackson, Mississippi authorites. He wanted to burn a copy of the Koran. He and some of his followers did tear apart a rainbow flag, as he decried homosexuality. Norma McCorvey tore a copy of Roe v. Wade, for which she was Jane Roe, then the woman who needed, but could not get, a legal abortion that now she would deny others.

As a Christian, it is hard to witness today the distorions of my faith by the likes of Rev. Benham, but he's right, what is happening in Jackson may well be like what happened in Germany. That Germany was a place and a time about which every democracy-loving soul must remember one thing: the National Socialists were voted into power democratically. I feel sorry for Rev. Benham, he is simply confused about what role he is playing within his own historical analogy.

At least Gibson asked for forgiveness.