The Conversation: How the Nazis destroyed the first gay rights movement

In the 1920s, Berlin had nearly 100 gay and lesbian bars or cafes. Vienna had about a dozen gay cafes, clubs and bookstores. In Paris, certain quarters were renowned for open displays of gay and trans nightlife. Even Florence, Italy, had its own gay district, as did many smaller European cities. [...]

Partly driving this new era of tolerance were the doctors and scientists who started looking at homosexuality and “transvestism” (a word of that era that encompassed transgender people) as a natural characteristic with which some were born, and not a “derangement.” The story of Lili Elbe and the first modern sex change, made famous in the recent film “The Danish Girl,” reflected these trends.

For example, Berlin opened its Institute for Sexual Research in 1919, the place where the word “transsexual” was coined, and where people could receive counseling and other services. Its lead doctor, Magnus Hirschfeld, also consulted on the Lili Elbe sex change. [...]

When Nazi leader Adolph Hitler needed to justify arresting and murdering former political allies in 1934, he said they were gay. This fanned anti-gay zealotry by the Gestapo, which opened a special anti-gay branch. During the following year alone, the Gestapo arrested more than 8,500 gay men, quite possibly using a list of names and addresses seized at the Institute for Sexual Research. Not only was Paragraph 175 not erased, as a parliamentary committee had recommended just a few years before, it was amended to be more expansive and punitive. [...]

In those camps, gay men were marked with a pink triangle. In these places of horror, men with pink triangles were singled out for particular abuse. They were mechanically raped, castrated, favored for medical experiments and murdered for guards’ sadistic pleasure even when they were not sentenced for “liquidation.” One gay man attributed his survival to swapping his pink triangle for a red one – indicating he was merely a Communist. They were ostracized and tormented by their fellow inmates, too.

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The Atlantic: A Conservative Christian Battle Over Gender

Half a dozen episodes in, the women decided to take up the topic of gender—specifically, the “gender apartheid” they see in Christianity. According to Uwan, there is “this wall, a very visible wall, erected in the church between men and women.” Many Christian conferences address “race, racism, [and] racial reconciliation, trying to do justice in those spheres,” she said, “but yet completely ignore the toxic patriarchy that is so embedded within the church.” Joined by Tyler Burns and Jemar Tisby, two black Christian men who host another podcast called Pass the Mic, the group discussed churches where women aren’t allowed to greet at the door; pastors who minimize emotional language in worship; and men who avoid friendship with women for fear of violating biblical standards of purity.

When they got to the topic of ordination, things grew heated. “What does the word ‘ordain-able’ mean? It literally means, ‘possesses a penis,’” Higgins said. “It does not mean, ‘is currently in seminary, has graduated with an M.Div,” or master’s in divinity, “‘and has gone before a licensure committee.’” The focus on male ordination often blocks women out of other leadership roles, she argued. “No one will hear me unless maybe I design and develop a penis-shaped microphone. … Maybe we should have a line of penis microphones, because it is all that you need to have to pass out communion, to take up the offering.” [...]

One objection was about language. Several people echoed Pruitt’s concern that the episode ported in the “sociological” terms of “liberation theology.” A white pastor from Charleston, South Carolina, Jon Payne, spoke about the vocabulary issue on his church’s podcast with one of his black parishioners, Gabriel Williams. “If you listen to the podcast, there are certain terms that are repeatedly used, such as marginalization, oppressed, toxic patriarchy, majority culture, toxic masculinity, ‘in my context,’ oppression, etc.,” Williams said in the conversation. “Those are not words that are common to traditional Christian usage today.” In a follow-up email, Payne also called out the “coarse language” the Truth’s Table hosts used. “The conversation was filled with more heat than light,” he added. [...]

Still others took issue with what they perceived as an egalitarian theological orientation. “We’re a conservative, Bible-believing denomination. Therefore, we embrace biblical gender norms,” said Rick Phillips in an interview. The Greenville, South Carolina, pastor also blogged about the episode. “Things that were said in the podcast certainly created the impression … that ideas and positions that are really coming out of a secularized culture are now being given credence in the church.” Even the episode’s title, “Gender Apartheid,” was too strong, he said. “It implies that there is a maliciousness and an abusiveness to what I believe is a well-meant desire to positively live out in the church the teaching of the Bible on gender and relationships.”

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BBC4 Analysis: Constitutions at Work

Constitutions put controls on the people who run countries - but how are they created and how well do they work?

In ordinary times constitutional debate often seems an abstract business without very much relevance to the way we live our lives. But political turmoil can operate like an X-ray, lighting up the bones around which the body politic is formed.

Drawing on recent political events, Edward Stourton explores the effectiveness of the constitutions of the United Kingdom, the USA and France and asks are they doing what they were meant to do?

CONTRIBUTORS
Lord Peter Hennessy, Professor of Contemporary British History, Queen Mary University of London
Alison Young, Professor of Public Law, University of Oxford
Professor Tom Ginsburg, University of Chicago Law School
Sophie Boyron, Senior Lecturer, University of Birmingham Law School
David S Bell, Professor of French Government and Politics, University of Leeds

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Haaretz: By Sidestepping Jewish Victims of Holocaust, Trump Helps Polish Government Rewrite History

Trump’s Poland is a nation of fighters for freedom and justice who fell victim to the dictatorial conquests that ruined the land – but which survived thanks to its devotion to the values of liberty and its love of life. In Trump’s Poland, there is no trace of the Poles who persecuted, betrayed and murdered thousands of Jews in all over the country, before, during and after the Nazi occupation. No trace remains of the deep-rooted anti-Semitism and venomous hatred of Jews, which they suffered throughout the period of Jewish-Polish existence even before the Nazis destroyed it. [...]

In Trump’s Poland, the Poles were and remain the ultimate victims – of the Nazis and the Russians. But there is no mention of the Polish Jews, who were often forced to hide not only from the Nazis but from their Polish neighbors as well. It is therefore not surprising that Trump chose to deliver his main speech at the Warsaw Uprising Monument, which marks the 1944 Polish uprising that ended with the murder of 200,000 Poles by the Germans and the destruction of Warsaw, but skipped a visit to the famous monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the 1943 Jewish revolt which the Polish underground failed to join.

The fact that he chose to skip a visit to the monument (although his daughter Ivanka did visit it) – despite it being barely a mile away from the monument where he spoke – infuriated the local Jewish community. In a protest declaration, they wrote that Trump is the first U.S. president since the fall of communism in 1989 who neglected to visit it. As far as they’re concerned, it’s as though Trump decided to skip a visit to Yad Vashem during his visit to Israel. [...]

The last two statements, referring to “Polish pride” and “great heroes,” are very true when it comes to the thousands of Polish Righteous of the Nations, who risked their lives and saved Jews in the Holocaust, like the Ulma family from the town of Markowa, all of whom, including their six children, were murdered along with Jews they were hiding from the Nazis in their house. But these statements are not at all true when it comes to thousands of other Poles, whose behavior towards their Jewish neighbors during World War II was the exact opposite of “great heroism.”

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The Conversation: How Angela Merkel has become – and remains – one of the world’s most successful political leaders

Internationally, she is renowned as the leader of Europe who seemingly single-handedly rehabilitated Germany’s international reputation by welcoming refugees with the catchphrase “we can do it”. With electoral pressure building, however, she publicly distanced herself from this stance as the CDU/CSU party faithful sent back the message that they were not so sure.

Now, by accepting their demand for a Bundestag vote, she has outflanked Martin Schulz’s Social Democrats by securing the passage of marriage equality as one of her government’s achievements, despite openly voting against it herself. The issue has been effectively neutralised.

Before marriage equality had arisen as an issue, Merkel had also done the same with immigration and the hot-button issue of asylum seekers. As one report put it, Merkel’s “summer of welcome” that saw asylum seekers march across Europe to reach the safe-haven of Germany has been followed by a long winter of conservative base-pleasing changes to the country’s political asylum laws. These have made it much tougher to successfully claim refugee status and much easier for unsuccessful asylum seekers to be deported to countries such as Afghanistan. [...]

When called on by the press to explain her vote, Merkel again avoided emotive discussion or the appearance of deeply felt conviction. She said simply that the measure did not, to her mind, conform to Article Six of Germany’s constitutional protection of marriage. [...]

With recent polls placing the CDU vote at 40%, and the SPD languishing on 23% (with the AfD slumping to 7%), Merkel is looking comfortable. Barring the unforeseen, Merkel seems likely to win her fourth election victory looking like a centrist, in coalition with social democrats, but governing as a conservative.

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The Guardian: Here is Britain’s new place in the world – on the sidelines

To say this is not to fall for the notion that Brexit suddenly makes Britain insignificant, relegated to the second division, a quaint offshore island of little consequence. That’s not true. Britain remains in the top 10 of most global rankings, and the top half dozen of those that confer most weight – economic, military, education, stability, soft power. Beware the easy myth of terminal decline. [...]

Britain has nevertheless lost influence and will continue to do so because of Brexit. Boris Johnson went on the Today programme earlier today, partly to talk up Britain’s relationship with Trump, but also to claim that Britain’s long embrace of the US makes us the ally that can shift Trump’s America “into a better place” on issues such as Nato, climate change and the Iran nuclear accord.

To put it at its mildest, it was ironic that Johnson could make that tendentious claim on the day when Sir John Chilcot raised fresh criticisms of Tony Blair’s Iraq policy and Trump delivered a highly nationalistic speech in Warsaw. Blair too thought that Britain could shift the US into a better place – or at least that was what he said he thought. But as Chilcot said, the amount of effective influence exerted by Britain on America in 2003 was “very slight and short-lived”. Things do not change.

And it was doubly ironic that Johnson should make the influence claim on a day when one of his most recent predecessors as Conservative foreign secretary was knocking it down. Shortly after Johnson’s BBC interview, William Hague told a House of Lords committee that Britain’s influence over America and in world affairs more generally was being significantly weakened by leaving the EU. Hague made three strong points. Britain’s global clout has been amplified by EU membership. Britain’s self-image as a bridge with America mattered because it was a bridge that reached to Europe. And Britain’s role in Europe helped to prevent fragmentation within the Nato alliance. That influence will now inescapably diminish.

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The Guardian: Chinese and Indian troops face off in Bhutan border dispute

The current standoff began on 16 June when a column of Chinese troops accompanied by construction vehicles and road-building equipment began moving south into what Bhutan considers its territory.

Bhutan, a small Himalayan kingdom with close military and economic ties to India, requested assistance from Delhi, which sent forces to resist the Chinese advance.

To avoid escalation, frontline troops in the area do not generally carry weapons, and the Chinese and Indian troops reportedly clashed by “jostling”: bumping chests, without punching or kicking, in order to force the other side backwards. [...]

In support of its claim, China points to an 1890 treaty signed with the British Raj, and seemingly endorsed by India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, in a letter to his Chinese counterpart. India says the letter does not accurately capture Nehru’s position and that China cannot unilaterally alter the territorial status quo. [...]

India was especially sensitive to China’s encroachment near its Bhutanese border, he said, because it brought Chinese troops uncomfortably close to a section of Indian territory called the “chicken’s neck”, a thin corridor which, if broached, could cut Delhi off from its northeastern states.

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Reuters: Britain's finance industry faces 'tipping point' over Brexit

Britain will lose its status as Europe's top financial centre unless it keeps borders open to specialist staff, improves infrastructure and expands links with emerging economies, TheCityUK said in a report published on Thursday. [...]

Although companies may begin by initially shifting a small number of jobs to Europe this may begin to accelerate when property leases expire, they carry out business reviews, or when the cost of capital becomes uneconomical.

"Shifts out of the UK may gradually erode the 'cluster effect' of the financial ecosystem, with the threat of a tipping point in the ecosystem being reached," the group said in a 83-page document outlining how the industry can thrive over the next decade. [...]

Brexit has already made it harder to attract people to Britain and the government is introducing policies making immigration more restrictive and expensive, the report said.

It said the cost of hiring an employee on a five-year visa has risen by 250 percent to 7,000 pounds over the last year and the minimum salary a business may recruit staff for a visa has risen by almost half since 2015.

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BBC: Saudi Arabia has 'clear link' to UK extremism, report says

The Henry Jackson Society said there was a "clear and growing link" between Islamist organisations in receipt of overseas funds, hate preachers and Jihadist groups promoting violence.

The foreign affairs think tank called for a public inquiry into the role of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations. [...]

The Home Office report into the existence and influence of Jihadist organisations, commissioned by former Prime Minister David Cameron in 2015, has reportedly yet to be completed amid questions as to whether it will ever be published.

Critics have suggested it could make uncomfortable reading for the government, which has close and longstanding diplomatic, security and economic links with the Gulf, particularly Saudi Arabia.

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner said he understood the report was "largely finished and sitting on Theresa May's desk", but there was probably a reluctance to publish it because of "embarrassing" content. [...]

Saudi Arabia also has a much-criticised human rights record. This has prompted calls from some, including Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, for an arms embargo on Saudi Arabia.

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