No, really.

[theweaselking]

Historically pro-Nazi group, currently led by member of Hitler Youth, argues that it can't condone gay kids because they are "like Nazis"

No, really. They don't see this at all as hypocritical, let alone stupid.

Comments

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

This made me laugh out loud.

[cuddlycthulhu.livejournal.com]

Excellently well done, sir.

[salient-green.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming the "Historically pro-Nazi group" you're referring to is the Catholic church, and the Hitler Youth member is Pope Benedict.

I'd like cites on both, please.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

The Hitler Youth thing is very well known; it was widely publicised at the time of his election, IIRC. See e.g. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11141340

For Pius XII's part in WWII, see e.g. http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/99oct/9910pope.htm

[salient-green.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[doug-palmer.livejournal.com]

At the age of 14 [1943], he joined the Hitler Youth, as was required of young Germans of the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Youth also provides a little more context.

Unless there's actual evidence that he was involved in something more than just membership, this just looks petty.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/worldview/090209/analysis-the-pope-and-hitler-youth

Berger, now 81, was ordained a Catholic priest alongside Joseph Ratzinger and his brother, Georg, in 1951 in the beautiful church in the center of the town where they all grew up together. But there was something that set their two families apart.

Berger's family sympathized with the Catholic resistance to Nazism in the town. Rupert was the same age as Joseph Ratzinger and at 14 years old he refused to join Hitler Youth. His family suffered as a result. He told me in an interview in 2005 that his father was sent to Dachau. He returned after the war and became the mayor.

Ratzinger's father was a policeman. The family was never affiliated with the Nazi party. But the Ratzingers chose to go with the vast majority of Germany and acquiesce to the regulations requiring 14 year olds to join Hitler Youth. They wanted to survive and allow their two sons to focus on academics in the seminary. So Ratzinger and his brother joined at 14 and went through with the parades and the salutes to the Fuehrer. Ratzinger also served briefly with a German army anti-aircraft unit just before the end of the war.

When I interviewed Berger in April 2005, just after Ratzinger had been elevated to the papacy, he spoke well of Ratzinger's intellect and discipline as a young man. But he said he couldn't understand why Ratzinger had insisted for so long in so many public statements that no one had a choice but to join Hitler Youth.

''It was a hard time to live, and there were hard choices to make," Berger said.

It's certainly not on the same level as volunteering for the Waffen-SS (and IIRC, he didn't show up to a lot of Hitlerjugend meetings), but he did have a choice to make and he chose the soft option. This is a faith that reveres martyrs and teaches that Catholics should be willing to risk death for their beliefs; quite a few did exactly that in WWII, but not Ratzinger.

There's a separate question there about how culpable a man should be for his actions as a child. A lot of people make bad choices in their youth, and some of them end up learning from the experience and becoming better people afterwards (the Catholic church draws heavily on the power of guilt as a motivator). But I'd be a lot more comfortable with Ratzinger's record if he'd found the courage to say "yes, I joined the HJ, I had a choice and I took the soft option, and I regret it" rather than giving the impression that there was no choice.

In the end, though, Ratzinger has enough of a track record as an adult that I don't really need to look at his youth to make my judgements - I only posted a link here because somebody asked.

[doug-palmer.livejournal.com]

Apologies. I didn't mean the "petty" reference to refer to yourself. More the guilt by association in the headline. (There's no quote of "like Nazis" in the article, either, but there you go.)

As for Hitler Youth membership. While I admire anyone who stood up against the Nazis and suffered as a consequence, I'm not going to condemn anyone who chose not to go to Dachau. Or send their family members there, although it sounds like Berger's father would have ended up there with or without Berger.

As you said, there's a question as to how culpable someone is for their actions as a child. I'd add that a lot depends on the level of family support available. Martyring yourself is one thing. Martyring your family is another, unless you're all in it together.

I don't like it when libertarians imply that you have a choice to starve, rather than take their precious property. In a similar manner, although there's a theoretical choice about joining the HJ, it doesn't look like much of a choice to me. Calling it a soft option is not something I'd care to do without considerably more moral authority than I have at the moment. (Berger, who does have that authority, chooses not to.)

All that said, watching the Catholic Church tie itself in knots over various issues isn't exactly edifying. And a lot of that can be laid at the door of Benedict XVI.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Apparently you didn't read the article.

"'We don’t have Nazi groups either,' rationalizes board chair Alice Anne LeMay. 'Gay-straight alliances are banned'"

There's a DIRECT and EXPLICIT equivalence drawn between a support group to prevent abuse of gay people, and Nazis.

[doug-palmer.livejournal.com]

Apparently I did read the article. Enough to notice that the phrase in quotes doesn't appear in the article. Putting something in quotes means that it's a direct quotation, not a paraphrase.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Does_a_paraphrase_have_quotation_marks
http://grammar.about.com/od/punctuationandmechanics/tp/quotemarks.htm
And, what I have to hand in paper: AGPS Manual of Style, 6th ed, p113

Why do I think this is important? Well, the full paragraph that you quoted reads:

“We don’t have Nazi groups either,” rationalizes board chair Alice Anne LeMay. “Gay-straight alliances are banned because they are not within the teachings of the Catholic Church.”

I don't agree with that sentiment. At all. But it's clear to me that, with the complete context, that's an indirect and implicit comparison: two groups that are not within the teachings of the Catholic Church. I think that someone would have to be a complete numbskull to put the two groups in the same sentence. But even complete numbskulls deserve to be accurately and fairly quoted.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

Calling it a soft option is not something I'd care to do without considerably more moral authority than I have at the moment.

To me it depends a lot on who we're talking about. Somebody who accepts a position as moral leader to hundreds of millions of people should be held to a very high standard of behaviour (not that I have any illusions about how often this actually happens...)

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Google it.

(drive-by responses get drive-by answers. Engage, or deal.)