A Scots Catholic bishop has declared that gay people only attend Holocaust memorials to get sympathy.
According to the Daily Record, the Right Rev Joseph Devine said:
“The homosexual lobby has been extremely effective in aligning itself with minority groups. It is ever present at the service each year for the Holocaust memorial – as if to create for themselves the image of a group of people under persecution.”
Of course this insulting nonsense (as the Holocaust Memorial Museum attests) and akin to the claims by antisemites that Jewish people invented the holocaust to push their agenda (or “protocols”).
In The Times this morning, Christine Shaw, head of Holocaust Memorial Day Trust commented thus:
“Christine Shaw, head of Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, said it was important to remember all the victims of the Holocaust “be they Jewish, disabled, gay or lesbian people. The day is also about learning the lessons of the past to encourage society to tackle all forms of prejudice, including anti-Semitism, racism and homophobia,” she said.
But, also according to The Times, a church spokesperson has defended the Bishop:
A spokesman defended the bishop’s comments, “Anything which attacks the sanctity of marriage and the family will be opposed by the church,” he said. Civil partnerships are “an abuse” of the church’s teaching on marriage, he told Times Online.
Bishop Devine (not to be confused with the Divine) stopped backing the Labour Party because the government allowed civil partnerships and dropped the ban on gay couples adopting.
He also had a go at the government for honouring Sir Ian McKellen. Ironically, in one of his early roles, Sir Ian played a gay Holocaust survivor in the play Bent, and later played a part in the filmed version.
But, it is a troubling new twist to the standard “oh, mentioning the Holocaust is just a cynical means of gaining sympathy” tack. Is it now such a common thought that it can so easily and glibly be summoned up by those wanting to – in the Bishop’s own words – “pick a fight”? Indeed, the word “conspiracy” was used. The Bishop said:
“There is a giant conspiracy against Christian values, an agenda here.”
A “huge and well-orchestrated conspiracy” according to the Bishop, quoted in The Telegraph.
Agendas? Conspiracies? Fake Holocaust invocations? Yes, it’s all the standard fare now to a growing sect – drawing from both Left and Right of the political spectrum – that see the world in this way. What gives?
