Schools right to teach gay persecution during the Holocaust

By Jeff Evans, Academic Director, LGBT History Month
Julia Gasper, in the first paragraph of her article ‘The Myth of the Homocaust’ purports to address an important point in the especial study of the 20^th century about the language of mass murder and specifically the quantitative definition of what constitutes a ‘genocide’ or ‘holocaust’.  Quite correctly Gasper notes the long established and proper warning that such terms‘…should not be thrown around lightly.’ [p1] Gasper selects out the highly peripheral use of the term ‘Homocaust’ to define the Nazi state’s (1933-45) tightening of the laws against sexual diversity represented in the increasing criminalisation of and severity in punishing acts of sex between males. In the opening paragraphs of the article Gasper advances a comparative quantitative argument against such usage; namely that while the ‘Holocaust’ of the Jews – although exact numbers can never be known – is numbered in millions, the persecution of ‘homosexuals’ is perhaps best understood to be numbered in thousands. Although body counts provide a sound single empirical measure, the horrors of mass murder is an argument that it not engaged by Gasper.
However, Gasper appears to have another far less academically exacting goal in writing the article that makes itself known in its opening page. Gasper begins the second paragraph of the article with a string of sweeping, contentious and unqualified assertions that render the creators of the crass term ‘Homocaust’ as beginners in the school of distortion!
The first sentence boldly makes the following unqualified and sweeping statement:-
“British schools are now under increasing pressure to teach homosexual history and prominent among the items for inclusion is the so-called “Homocaust”.
That is:-
1.       “British schools are now under increasing pressure to teach [homosexual history]…”
This remarkable sweeping statement is unsubstantiated in the article and suggests that the article has not been the subject of peer review or perhaps even academic oversight.
2.      That British Schools ‘teach homosexual history’
Again this remarkable sweeping and statement is unsubstantiated in the article, and would appear to fly in the face of the published evidence on the topic of homophobic in British Schools.
3.      That part of the teaching of homosexual history in British Schools includes ‘…the so-called “Homocaust” ’.
The only reference to support this sweeping statement is one to ‘The website of “Gay” History Month’[1] which does not exist. It apparently includes a lesson resource for the teaching of ‘LGBT history’. If she is referring to LGBT History Month, the lessons listed on ‘The Classroom’ section of that website, including one KS3 lesson on Nazi Germany and a KS4 lesson on hidden histories make no mention whatsoever of ‘Homocaust’.
This apparent abandoning of the normal standards of academic writing by Gasper and the adoption of a highly speculative unqualified usage that appears at first puzzling. However, a series of remarkably similar claims can be found currently in the unqualified and sweeping statements of a small but a well-funded political organisation called SPUC e.g. that schools are wrongfully under increasing pressure to protect children from homophobic bullying.[2] More explicitly Antonia Tully (Safer Schools – Society for the Protection of Unborn Children) during a recent BBC radio debate made the similar unsubstantiated sweeping assertion to Gasper about ‘schools being under increasing pressure’ to talk about LGBT issues; in this context re:- protecting children from homophobic abuse.[3]
This apparent attempt to make respectable an apparent diatribe against sexual diversity and human rights takes Gasper into making even more remarkable assertions. Jewish elected officials and the state of Israel appear to become willing proxies for an international conspiracy of ‘LGBT militants’.     
Gasper, warming to the theme, still in paragraph two, then makes further extraordinary claims about how “LGBT militants are to be found behaving very assertively in Holocaust Memorial events”. This time she provides as ‘supporting evidence’ the newspaper report of the installation in an Israeli park of a memorial to homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis.[4]
Gasper’s contempt for LGBT people and their campaigns is well recorded but her claims to have sound empirical evidence are specious and the notion that her rants take us into the arena of sound academic debate are ludicrous.
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