By Ed Oliver
September 21, 2000

It was billed as, “A Response to Acushnet’s Middle School Controversy.” 

Two hundred letters were sent out by gay activists to surrounding schools, inviting administrators and teachers to attend. 

The Standard-Times newspaper gave it a big build-up. 

However, the meeting held last night by the Unitarian Church at their church in Fairhaven, which is next to Acushnet, amounted to about 50 disgruntled gay activists and Unitarian supporters.

The only controversy of the evening erupted after this reporter announced he was from Massachusetts News and asked for a show of hands from any parents whose children attend Acushnet’s middle school. 

Only three hands shot up. A group of people sitting together began shouting, “Leave here!” “Get out!” “Hater!” An audience member stood to challenge the shouters, reminding them that they were preaching tolerance and respect only moments before. One of the shouters then rose from his seat and stormed out of the building grumbling about “hate.” The moderator quickly retrieved the microphone from this reporter and said the question was not appropriate.

A state employee, Kim Westheimer from the Department of Education’s “Safe Schools Program,” a skilled moderator who attends every meeting like this across the state, was on the panel. She expressed her pleasure at the questions from the friendly audience. She dodged most of the questions, however, except to quote from bits of DOE regulations. Later, she told Massachusetts News she could not be interviewed on orders from the DOE and all questions would have to go to their spokesperson. 

Westheimer presented a workshop at the controversial Fistgate conference last March at Tufts University.

Support Group

The rest of the discussion at the Universalist Church resembled a support group with people giving personal anecdotes, exchanging platitudes, and bemoaning the apathy of homosexuals in the region. The moderator frequently tried to steer the discussion onto Acushnet, but without much success.

By far, the most interesting segment of the two-hour meeting was a slide show presented by Warren Blumenfeld, titled, “Homosexuals and the German Holocaust.” Blumenfeld compared anyone who disagrees with him with the Nazis. He told how the Nazis passed criminal laws cracking down on homosexuals and gay bars, along with laws against prostitution, habitual sex offenders, venereal disease, incest, pedophilia and “unnatural fornication between people and animals.” He admitted the allies passed similar laws, but he said they did not enforce them to the same extent.

Blumenfeld then said that the Nazis claimed homosexuals were recruiting school children, the Nazis opposed sex-ed in the schools, and they outlawed abortion. “Are we seeing a few connections here?” Blumenfeld asked, obviously implying that anyone who holds similar views is harboring Nazi attitudes.

Blumenfeld showed how Nazi racial ideology caused them to teach that homosexuality was caused by “Jewish blood.” Interestingly, it is gay activists today who have been proponents of the “gay gene” theory. 

Massachusetts News asked Blumenfeld, who is listed on the program as an author and educator, if he is implying that pro-life people are Nazis.

“I’ll be very frank. Many of the policies that the Nazis carried out: Anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-birth control and anti-sex education in the schools are the exact same four policies that the political right is perpetrating today in the states. I am not meaning to imply the political right are Nazis.”

Massachusetts News asked Blumenfeld if the Nazis also had laws against murder and theft? Is there not going to be an overlap in some of the criminal code, and the only difference is the Nazis were a murderous regime with much harsher penalties?

“I will let you and your readers make of it anything you want by just saying those four policies are the same. I will not interpret that for you or your readers,” said Blumenfeld.

Blumenfeld went on to say that when the state can control one’s body, they can control one’s mind too. He said the “political right” wants to control the bodies of women, gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered people. “The Nazis took away control of people’s bodies. The political right is trying to take away control of women and GLBT people’s bodies in this country and we are not going to allow you to do it.”

Asked if it is not gay people, who are using the schools to push their agenda, Blumenfeld said, “Students have a right to an education. By withholding sex education and withholding history, we are not giving them the tools to live in this world.”

Blumenfeld gestured toward his slide projector about Nazis and homosexuals. “This is history, and it is not allowed in the schools.” 

Massachusetts News asked Blumenfeld about the book, “The Pink Swastika,” and why he doesn’t have it listed on the bibliography he handed out to the audience.

“The Pink Swastika is total lies, total innuendo. It is saying essentially that the gay rights leaders of today are the direct descendants of the Nazis. It is total distortion and total lies.”

Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams authored the Pink Swastika. The book traces the homosexual roots of the Nazi party. It says “ While privately tolerating and even promoting homosexuality, the Nazis denounced it frequently in public, using trumped-up charges of homosexuality to arrest and remove those who disagreed with Hitler’s military and political goals.”

The book is listed in a bibliography on the web-site of the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. 

Author and historian William Shirer wrote in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, that Ernst Roehm, who organized the brown shirt thugs which were instrumental in Hitler’s rise to power, was “a tough, ruthless, driving man—albeit, like so many of the early Nazis, a homosexual….” He wrote further that German army generals were shocked at the tales “of the corruption and debauchery of the homosexual clique around the S.A. chief.”

Blumenfeld admitted he knew Ernst Roehm was gay after it was pointed out to him. Blumenfeld had even shown a slide of Ernst Roehm to the audience but had not mentioned the fact he was a homosexual. 

“I had to cut out 45 minutes of it. Yes, a certain percentage of the Nazis were gay.”

Blumenfeld said he does not think the “Pink Swastika” book is listed on the Holocaust Museum’s web-site, although Massachusetts News had seen it listed there when researching another article.
 

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