In times like these: I wear a pink triangle

Asking me a question about anything (literally anything) might lead to a conversation about Aristotle or Hitler or Mindy Kaling.

This piece is part of a series addressed to family and friends, looking at current political and social issues from the perspective of my studies and experiences. You can read the last part of this series here.

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Dear Friends and Family,

This weird story will probably not be surprising to you...

I was walking the long fluorescent hallway by one of the labs at work, and I ran into a coworker. "I didn't know you were going to be here!" she said as she went in for a hug.

"Yeah, it was kind of a last minute trip,” I said. “I'm just here for workshops.”

As we separated from the hug, I saw her look down at my necklace.

"Oh," she said. "I like your necklace. Does the triangle have some significance?"

I'd recently started wearing a small rose gold cross and a matching triangle on a thin chain around my neck. Obviously she knew what the cross was about.

"Yeah," I said. "So in Nazi Germany..."

It might be shocking to most people that a casual question about a necklace at work would lead to a discussion of Nazis. But if you know me, you know that asking me a question about anything (literally anything) might lead to a conversation about Aristotle or Hitler or Mindy Kaling (and how she studied Latin in college). Talk to me at your own risk.

The pink triangle

"So in Nazi Germany," I said, "prisoners in concentration camps had to wear symbols that had different meanings. The gold Star of David was if you were Jewish. Those identified as ‘criminals’ were forced to wear inverted green triangles. An upside down pink triangle identified men accused of homosexuality. But over time, the queer community has taken what was once a symbol used to shame us and we now use it as a sign of our liberation."

Historical symbology is not an area of competency for most people today. Even the CEO of Bishop Barron's Word on Fire got this area wrong when he wrote of Maximilian Kolbe, "To reinforce his indignity, he was made to wear the symbol of a pink triangle, which the Nazis used to identify prisoners who were homosexuals." This was not exactly correct. Kolble was actually made to wear a red triangle, identifying him as a political prisoner. But Father Steve Grunow's mistake underscores something that has endured from Nazi times into our own: to be labeled homosexual is seen by many as a particularly bad indignity.

Recently, the symbol of the upside down pink triangle made news because of its promotion by President Trump. In a March 9 social media post, Trump shared an opinion piece highlighting his shift in focus on "lethality" for the U.S. military, including his efforts to eradicate transgender people from the military. The feature image for the article included a computer screen featuring the pink triangle, with a red "no" symbol over it.

In effect, the Trump administration was promoting a Nazi symbol invented to oppress homosexuals in Nazi concentration camps, as part of his efforts to eradicate transgender people from the military. Trump likely didn’t realize what he was doing. But never before has a U.S. President been so careless in his public resurrection of Nazi weaponry.

Our changing world

This comes after a series of Trump leaders and supporters (including Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, Eduardo Verastegui, and Calvin Robinson) received criticism for appearing to promote the Nazi salute, and as leaders of neo-Nazi organizations are sharing that they see the present administration as an opportunity to advance their agendas, and after the White Nationalist group Proud Boys held a march in Washington, D.C. to celebrate Trump's inauguration. When leaders in Trump's circles, intentionally or not, seem to present the Nazi salute or promote Nazi symbols in attacks on the LGBTQ community, neo-Nazi and White Supremacist groups see this as a subtle message that they should prepare for their moment (many openly use the Nazi salute, believing they are supported in doing so by our President). Neo-Nazis are experiencing a thrill and a feeling of governmental support that they haven’t felt in decades. We know this because such groups are saying it.

I feel a certain amount of fear. I think about the man who entered an El Paso Walmart in 2019 and killed 23 people, responding to the rhetoric that the United States was experiencing a "Hispanic invasion." I know that if he would have seen me, he would have tried to kill me. I think about the fact that I went to a gay club to go dancing last night, and how such clubs have been targets of mass shooters who want to kill people like me. (Generally, LGBTQ people are twice as likely to be victims of gun violence.) I think about a lesbian couple who had taken their daughter to eat at a Surprise In-N-Out recently, and how a self-proclaimed Christian woman started yelling at the couple, that they were "trafficking" their daughter simply because they were gay, how their daughter is crying in a video capturing the confrontation, and I worry this could happen to me if I adopted a child. I had the same worry after a man started yelling at a gay couple on an Amtrak train in California, screaming at their children, “They're not your parents, they're pedophiles.” It reminds me of a male law school classmate who, when I was helping him home from the bar because he was too drunk to get home by himself, randomly told me, “If you try anything, I’ll beat the shit out of you.” When I hear politicians refer to trans people or immigrants or others as predators simply on account of their identity, it feels all too familiar. We are not predators. We are people.

I had written previously how the Trump administration has removed anti-discrimination protections that the Biden administration had established for people like me. This has continued. Historically, the Department of Homeland Security has prohibited its personnel from surveilling people solely on account of their "race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, country of birth, nationality, or disability." Under the Trump administration, DHS has removed sexual orientation and gender identity, so that now I can be the subject of government surveillance for no other reason than the fact that I am gay.

These actions demonstrate that the Trump administration sees gay people like me as a greater threat to the United States, simply because of our sexual orientation. This is just the beginning. I worry about what's coming as this presidency unfolds. I've already lost rights. What more will be taken from me? Who else will be emboldened to attack people like me?

Revisiting history

The Trump administration is also reviving historical language that had targeted LGBTQ people in the past. In his January 27 Executive Order seeking to eradicate transgender people from the military, the Trump administration wrote that a transgender identity "conflicts with a soldier's commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one's personal life."

This sort of rhetoric is not new. Under the Nazi regime, Heinrich Himmler in 1936 established the Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion. Himmler argued that "Anyone who thinks of homosexual 'love' is our enemy." He emphasized homosexuality was a threat to the German birth rate, and thus that homosexuals were inherently a threat to the fate of the German people. We all know that these ideals played into the mass eugenics movement in Nazi Germany. What many people don’t know is that the Nazi movement drew at least part of its inspiration regarding racism and eugenics from the United States. And much of the technology at the center of the scale of Nazi atrocities was supplied by the US-based company IBM.

As the Nazi regime was pursuing its purge of homosexual citizens, public universities in the United States were engaging at that time in “purges” of students and faculty believed to be homosexual. The University of Wisconsin went so far as to send letters to prospective employers to prevent these “perverted” students from finding jobs. A prominent member of the medical school argued that “true” homosexuals were a danger to other students and should be “discouraged from continuing their university careers” because they could “contribut[e] to the delinquency of others.” Just as the Trump administration is arguing today regarding trans people, that faculty member argued that homosexuals were either degenerate or mentally ill. Around this time, the U.S. State Department established policies which labeled those engaged in "sexual perversion" such as homosexual activity as "disloyal" persons, leading to the denial of jobs in the government due to allegations of homosexuality. This led to purges of homosexuals from the State Department and from the federal workforce generally. From the 1940s through the 1960s, thousands of gay employees were fired or forced to resign from the federal workforce, not unlike what President Trump is attempting to initiate with trans people in the military today.

Others moves give reason to worry. Under the direction of the Trump administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently issued letters to major U.S. law firms, seeking information on their employees. This information includes lawyers who received promotions, identifying those who were members of “affinity groups” (such as groups for LGBTQ+ employees) or who had been participants in diversity-related programs. The letter claims this information is being gathered so that the EEOC can determine whether unlawfully discriminatory hiring has taken place. However, these lists could be used to identify and target LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and others groups of employees and those who support them. Given the end of the DHS ban on surveilling LGBTQ+ people solely on account of their sexual orientation or gender identity, this list could then be used to enable such surveillance. These are chilling developments for the present administration, and again harken back to past authoritarian governments seeking similar kinds of information to target particular members of society.

I realize the fact I have the career that I do is largely because of luck, because of the historical moment I was born into. In the past this country has done to people like me what the Trump administration is attempting to do to my trans friends and colleagues: convincing the country that we are less worthy of work, of service, of support, simply because of the ways in which we experience the world. The trans members of our community are not being attacked because studies have found them less honorable, because the military has provided evidence of untruthfulness of its trans members, or because these trans veterans have been evaluated and found to be less disciplined. It doesn't matter if my trans friends and colleagues are more honorable, truthful, and disciplined than their peers in every measurable way. Under the Trump administration, no evidence of the kind seems to be necessary.

In arguments defending their position, lawyers fighting for the ban on trans military members recently admitted they hadn’t read the studies they cited supporting the ban, and they were criticized for “cherry picking” sentences that, when read in context, did not actually support their position. This administration has simply identified a group of people and deemed them unworthy because of how they experience the world and themselves. It is perhaps the lawyers of the Trump administration who are behaving in ways that are dishonorable, untruthful, and undisciplined.

The fact I am not included as a target of their prejudice is merely a matter of luck. Or maybe this prejudice coming for me too, as the other moves by the Trump administration I have listed here seem to suggest. I'm here defending my trans friends and colleagues partly because I love them, and partly because I worry I could be next.

In a later post, I'll write about the racist comments I've received on dating apps, how social media trolls have said publicly that I should be in prison because of my views, how shortly after the 2024 presidential election someone messaged me anonymously and said they hoped I died of AIDS. This is increasingly becoming the experience of many Americans, even while we are told America is being made "great again." Great for who? Certainly not for me, for people like me who are experiencing these things more and more. In a great country, I wouldn't have this fear. I wouldn't experience this hate.

Liberation and the fine print

History has not been kind to LGBTQ people. Hard-fought wins for people like me can often prove fragile. Prior to the rise of the Nazi party, Berlin was known as the "gay capital of the world," a place of increasing acceptance for people like me. The rise of Nazism demonstrates how quickly that safety can fall apart, how a great country can become the handmaid of atrocity. By 1935, the Nazi regime had updated the German penal code to criminalize virtually any kind of male same-sex intimacy and included harsher sentences for them. Because I have engaged in sexual activity with another man, if I had lived in Nazi Germany, I could have been arrested under that code. My country would then have sought to subject me to torture, castration, sexual abuse, medical experimentation, and other abuses. I would have been sent to a concentration camp.

In 1945, if I had survived, I would have been liberated from the concentration camp. And then do you know what would have happened? Those Nazi amendments to the German legal code remained in effect. Between 1945 and 1969, about 100,000 gay men were arrested under that code, including a number of Holocaust survivors. I would have suffered the torture of the concentration camp, only to be released and then sent back to prison. While many experienced the ending of concentration camps as liberation, LGBTQ people experienced it as a reminder to read liberation’s fine print.

I'm writing this because I want you to know these stories, know this history. I cannot undo the horrific injustice upon injustice they experienced. But I can honor those people by ensuring what they endured is not forgotten, by speaking across time how their experiences matter to me, by being proud that I am one of them, that their history is my history, by listening to their experiences as a warning of what the world can become if we sit by and do nothing.

This is why I’ve worn that triangle alongside that cross around my neck. It matters to me that this all has happened. It matters to me that this could happen again. It matters to me that my country is reviving the malicious use of symbolism and rhetoric of that time, that Trump’s social media post involves a re-use of Nazi symbols for the same kinds of ends: to eradicate trans people from society as far as possible, just as one country had used them to seek to eradicate people like me. It matters to me that in the United States I am legally less protected than I was at the start of this year. It matters to me that those who want to revive Nazi values are seeing themselves as victorious during this time in my country. It matters to me that people like me are afraid.

But most of all, it matters to me that I look this fear in the face, that I say what it is, and that I refuse to be controlled by it.

My invitation is for you to reflect on this, to consider why my experience of this time might be different from yours, how my trans friends are worthy of love and dignity and openness as I am, how they may be just as (or even more) honorable and truthful and disciplined than I am. I think about the immense courage it took for many of them to be truthful about their experiences as transgender, and how our world can benefit from spreading such courage to speak the truths we may fear the most.

With love,

Chris

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If you read this and feel inspired to do something, here are some ideas…

• Learn more about these and related topics. Some book recommendations include Hidden Mercy by Michael O’Loughlin (on Catholicism and the AIDS crisis in the United States), The Lavender Scare by David Johnson (I haven’t read yet, but it’s been recommended), IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black (I just started and it’s really good), Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump by Jennifer Mercieca, Gender Identity and Faith (a really interesting book for medical and mental health professionals by a Catholic psychologist), and War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race by Edwin Black.

• Reach out to your elected officials and tell them that you care about these issues.

• Learn how to talk about and engage with issues when they arise. I personally have benefited a lot from Bystander Intervention Training.

• Find ways to get more holistic views on the news. To explore the ways in which different outlets cover the news, I recommend Tangle News or All Sides.