How about this for a rarity?? Right wing talk show host Glenn Beck supported the right for that gay Iranian teenager to get asylum and wondered why he didn't get it (as of the date of the show, Thursday, March 13th) comparing it to a situation in the late 30's with a ship full of Jews trying to get asylum and several countries wouldn't. Below is part of the transcript of that show. I never would of thought even once a right winger would be supporting a gay person (even allowing the guest that he had on to give the e-mail address of a gay muslim House of Lords member in the UK):
All right. I want to take a hard turn here and tell you a quick story. Back in 1939, there was a large cruise ship. It set sail across the Atlantic. On board, 936 asylum seekers.
After many, many days at sea, the ship finally reached Cuba, where it anchored, and it was sitting there in the harbor. It was waiting clearance to unload the people. Well, the clearance never came. Ship turned away from Cuba.
Next, the ship tried to get permission to enter the United States, come here. Nope. Canada, no. Went away.
Running low on food and water and unable to find any country to take them, the ship sailed back across the Atlantic, where its passengers were finally accepted into four different European countries.
The ship was the S.S. St. Louis. The passengers were German Jews, trying to escape Hitler`s impending Holocaust, the Holocaust that everybody knew was coming, no matter what the history book tells you now. Read "Mein Kampf."
Who knows how many of those Jews eventually ended up dead in one of Hitler`s death camps, because not one country, including our own, would stand up and give them shelter.
Unfortunately, "The Real Story" tonight is, the S.S. St. Louis sails again. But this time, it`s not Jews looking to escape certain death. It`s just one; one gay teenager from Iran.
This guy, while he was in Britain on a student visa, his boyfriend was executed in Iran after publicly admitting their homosexual relationship. Fearing that he, too, would be killed if he returned to Iran, he asked the British government for asylum. They said no. Why? Well, they don`t call it Londonistan for nothing. You do the math.
From there, he went to the Netherlands, a place where hookers and pot are OK, but somebody looking for asylum, who`s facing execution because of their sexual orientation, not so much. Why? Well, the Netherlands, this is where Van Gogh was assassinated by a radical Muslim over a movie script and then I think the cartoon thing, as well. Once again, do the math.
And that leaves this teenager nowhere, a man without a country. The Netherlands is shipping him back to Britain. Britain might ship him back to Iran. And then what? A public stoning? Maybe a nice, warm acid bath?
Maybe it`s time we update the great post-World War II poem. First they came for the Jews, and I didn`t speak up, because I wasn`t a Jew. Then they came for the homosexuals. And I didn`t speak up, because I wasn`t a homosexual. Then they came for me. And by then, there was no one left to speak up for me.
Who will speak up now and take this modern-day German Jew in?
