My monument is bigger than yours!

If you want to drive the Far Right insane, admittedly a redundant exercise if there ever was one, just mention homosexuals. The topic alone is a litmus test for the fanatical religionists and crazy side of the conservative movement.

One of the best examples of those driven insane by their god addiction is Michael Medved. He was once a film reviewer but then became a Far Right hack. He was one of the most vocal defenders of Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion of the Christ, insisting that old Mel was no anti-Semite. His record on that was about as correct as on other issues. Mel later launched a drunken tirade about how Jews manipulate all the wars in the world. Of course anyone paying attention knows that Mel’s father is a leading speaker in the world’s neo-Nazi movement and a vicious anti-Semite. But then Medved apparently wasn’t paying attention.

Medved is one of those who worked hard on the political Left until he discovered the value of being a turncoat and joined the lunatic Right. And that means he has to bash homosexuals on a regular basis in order to prove his bona fides to the bigots that dominate conservative politics.

His latest tirade was about the very small memorial to gay victims of the Holocaust that recently opened in Berlin. Medved calls the memorial a “misleading attempt to depict homosexuals as prime targets of Hitler.” Medved says that Jewish victims “outnumbered gay victims by more than 500 to 1.” Apparently this is a numbers game. And he says “it’s wrong to exaggerate the extent of victimization for politically correct P.R. purposes.”

How did this one small monument “exaggerate the extent of victimization”? Medved never answers that but then he doesn’t have to. The purpose of his piece is not to prove his point but to prove that he can gay bash like the best of the them.


Now let us put the actual two monuments into perspective with one another. If you look at the first photo you will see the actual memorial to gay victims of the Holocaust. Notice that it is taller than one man. In fact it is 4 meters high. Based on the photo and the relationship of the man to the monument I would estimate that it is no more that 3 meters long by 2 meters wide, probably a bit less. At most this is 6 square meters of space dedicated to the homosexuals persecuted by Hitler.

Now consider the actual size of the other memorial -- it is 19,000 square meters or 4.7 acres in size. That one took 21 months to construct. There is one concrete slab in the gay memorial and 2,711 slabs in the other. I don’t know how we compare such things. Most normal people wouldn’t. But in Medved’s warped mind this is important.

While he says that Jewish victims outnumber gay victims 500 to one we should note that the Jewish memorial is 1,166 times larger than the gay one. Apparently the exaggeration went in the wrong direction. If size of monuments is some indication of the victimization, as Medved seems to think, then the gay monument should have been doubled in size. Would Mr. Medved say that the other monument is exaggerating “the extent of victimization for politically correct P.R. purposes”? I suggest he would not.

Israel Gutman, a spokesman connected with Israel’s Yad Vashem Institute whined about the small memorial to gays as well. He insinuated this was evidence that the Germans don’t understand the Holocaust. He said that the memorial was “an error” and that they two shouldn’t be near each other. He claimed it would confuse people into thinking “there was not a great difference between the suffering of Jews and those of homosexuals....” Apparently being killed is worse when it done to Jews than when it does to homosexuals. Gutman said a memorial to gays being killed is a “scandal” and that “a sense of proportion must be maintained.” I doubt he was suggesting the Jewish memorial should be reduced to half its size.

The fact is that the Nazis singled out and persecuted various groups. Jews were the largest group but not the only group. And it is not groups that suffer and die but individuals. The memorial is not scandalous or inappropriate. And the very suggestion that we have to measure monuments to get some “sense of proportion” is obscene. Shame on Guttman and double shame on the meshuggener, Michael Medved.