German Nazism didn’t begin with invading Poland, gun bans, or even Kristallnacht — the infamous “Night of Broken Glass,” when Jewish homes, synagogues, and businesses were attacked and burned. It started the way fascism always begins.

It began with fear.

It began with government created chaos.

It began with moral panic. And it began — very specifically — with the targeting and erasure of queer people.

In fact, one of Hitler’s first acts of cultural violence was the destruction of the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin — a world-renowned center for trans healthcare, queer advocacy, and gender research. Books were burned. Archives destroyed. Lives upended.

And Christians? Many praised him for it. They saw it as a “return to order,” to morality, to godliness.They weren’t just silent — they were supportive.

Because fascism doesn’t begin with a full government clampdown on society it begins by creating an enemy of the people. It begins by demonizing difference.

The Reich’s Terrorizing of Queer People

In 1933, just weeks after Hitler took power (appointed as German Chancellor after being elected to office by a small margin and less than a majority vote) Nazi officers stormed the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin—a center of pioneering research on gender, sexuality, and what we now call trans healthcare. They destroyed its archives. They burned its books. They smashed its legacy. And they didn’t stop there.

Paragraph 175 of the German criminal code, which criminalized homosexuality, was expanded and weaponized. Thousands of queer people—especially gay men, but also trans people and those who didn’t fit the binary—were arrested, imprisoned, and eventually shipped to concentration camps. There, they were forced to wear upside-down pink triangles, marking them for torture, forced labor, and death.

This wasn’t incidental. It was strategic.

I didn’t learn this in school.

Not about the pink triangles. Not about the queer book burnings. Not about how one of the first acts of Nazi fascism was the targeting and erasure of queer people.

And if I didn’t learn it, I am certain most of my neighbors didn’t either.

Fascism builds its power by controlling bodies. By defining what kinds of love are acceptable. By painting those who live outside the lines as threats to the “moral order.”

And I’m telling you with all the urgency of a preacher on fire: the playbook hasn’t changed.

Today, we’re watching a coordinated attack on queer lives:

• Book bans targeting LGBTQ+ stories
• Laws criminalizing gender-affirming care for youth
• Political campaigns fear-mongering about drag queens and trans folks
• Propaganda suggesting that queerness itself is dangerous or immoral

It’s all part of the same strategy. Control. Shame. Erasure.

This isn’t about “safety.” It never was. It’s about power.

And if we don’t remember our history, we risk repeating it.

But here’s the part they never expected:

We survived.

Queer people have always survived—through underground networks, coded language, chosen family, and holy defiance. The pink triangle they used to shame us? We reclaimed it. Wore it in protest. Turned it into a symbol of sacred resistance.

So when they come for our stories, we tell them louder. When they come for our bodies, we wrap them in love. When they come for our children, we show up with our full selves and say, “Not this time.”

You don’t have to be queer to see the warning signs. You just have to be paying attention.

If they can erase us, they can erase you next.

The queer community and in fact our entire form of American society needs you and others to rise up and share their voice to stop this terrorizing of queer people.

Remember the poem: “First they came for the communist, and I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t a communist…

And remember pink triangles – meant to scare people back into hiding.

Now is the time. We speak. We bless what they tried to curse.

Because queer survival isn’t trivial. It’s prophecy.

And we’re still speaking.