By Mark Salzwedel
Minorities have often been used as a target of fear-mongering, and with homosexuals comprising only five to ten percent of the population worldwide, they were easy targets, often used as props in various quests for power. With a minority status that could be hidden, camouflaged, or misdirected however, gay, bi, and transgender individuals could often avoid discrimination if they were extremely careful. But that also meant that the LGBT threat was perceived as insidious, possibly much worse or much closer at hand than common, decent people could imagine. That meant that leaders could ramp up paranoia and promise to take that fear away, if they got what they wanted.
In more primitive cultures the difference of LGBT individuals sometimes led to a sort of reverence, as with some Native American tribes like the Zuni, where “two-spirit” people were thought…..Read More