For some reason I can’t get the murder at the Holocaust Museum out of my system. Killing in a place of learning is so out of bounds that it makes me reconsider my death penalty stance (even in this case I’m against it). However, now that the crime has become a political football, I would like to head to the hills with my books and Billie Holiday records and talk to no one.

People on either side of the aisle are now going through political contortions to describe James W. von Brunn as either a righty or lefty. Meh. Meh. Meh. One more time for emphasis. Meh.

One of the reasons American political culture is a tad bit crappy is our consistent attempt to score political points for our side, no matter the incident. Instead of simply describing him for what he is, a racist nut job, in a time of spin and the 24 hour news cycle, we pin von Brunn on our political opponents. Can’t get that talking head gig but simply saying he represents the crazy few. That’s not edgy enough!

This political hatchet game is useless but we play because it’s hard to believe that people on the other side of the debate are actually fair minded, and come to their political conclusions with the same passion and thought. Much better to act like your political opponent is beyond the pale and stew in some self righteous juice, preaching to a choir that simmers in the same broth.

We’ve forgotten there is such a thing as honest disagreement on the important issues of the day. Does it mean we should keep silent and not argue our points. No. No. It does mean a case of murder should not be turned into some stinking talking point so a pol you like wins the next election.

It would be easy (and wrong) to make some political hay out of yesterday’s shooting at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. Some 88-year-year old Nazi takes a rifle intent on mayhem, killed a guard, and was shot himself.

James W. von Brunn decided to enter a museum, a place of learning, because he didn’t like the lessons being taught. Like any coward unable to counter an argument with words, he attempted to end the conversation with a final statement of death. Those who hate are inarticulate (please pay attention you few knot heads who come here to leave racial crap of all kinds) and fearful, yearning for a world that never was and never will be. From all reports von Brunn spent a lifetime searching for racial purity, the gold of a fool.

But enough. No sermon. The actions of the deranged do not keep us off the path we are on. What happened yesterday is a tragedy and we all hear chatter that is essentially out of bounds and nutty (from the left and the right); however, the history of minority life in this country is to keep an eye on the real (the von Brunns of the world) and the what will be. By keeping our eyes on the prize, and those who would gladly take it away, we frustrate and hinder the fools of the dark.

Under Paragraph 175 of the German penal code which banned sexual intimacy between members of the same gender, an untold number of gays and lesbians were rounded up by the Nazis and sent to concentration camps where they were subjected to medical experiments including lobotomies, and forced to work in labor camps.

Estimates of gays and lesbians persecuted by the Nazis range from several thousand to a quarter million. A large number of those interred were sent on to the gas chambers.

“The murder of six million Jews and countless Roma, Poles and other Eastern Europeans, gay men and lesbians, trade unionists, disabled people and political and religious opponents of the Nazis was not a sudden and frenzied explosion of hate, but a horror that had been methodically and carefully planned,” said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in a statement Tuesday.

“Hatred may begin with small acts of prejudice or bigotry – but it rarely ends with them. That is why we all have an obligation to stand up to hatred.”

Monuments to gays murdered during the Holocaust are in Berlin Copenhagen and Amsterdam in Europe, San Francisco and Sydney. A monument is planned in Tel Aviv, Israel.

In Jerusalem, the Yad Vashem Museum on the Holocaust features a small exhibit dedicated to gay and lesbian victims of the Nazis.

The American Holocaust Museum in Washington also has an exhibit dedicated to gays and lesbians.

Yet there remain Holocaust deniers.

Four years ago, the United Nations designated Jan. 27 International Holocaust Remembrance Day in part to counteract “Holocaust deniers” like Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In 2003, Minnesota state Rep. Arlon Lindner (R) during debate on two bills he had brought forward to repeal gay rights laws in the state, said gays were lying when they cited thousands of homosexuals who were exterminated or sent to concentration camps by the Nazis.  

“It never happened,” Lindner told the House. 

“I was a child during World War II, and I’ve read a lot about World War II,” he said. “It’s just been recently that anyone’s come out with this idea that homosexuals were persecuted to this extent. There’s been a lot of rewriting of history.”

The remarks shocked the legislature, but attempts to censure him failed.

Berlin police say a window on the outside of the memorial has been broken, probably with a stone.

The window allows visitors to see inside the concrete memorial and view a video of a same-sex couple kissing

The memorial in Berlin’s Tiergarten park was inaugurated in May and suffered similar damage to the same window in August.

A protest held after that attack to denounce intolerance and homophobia drew more than 100 people including Berlin’s openly gay mayor, Klaus Wowereit.

It made sense to me that a group who took pains to remember their own exclusion and suffering at many times since the days in the desert would worry about the same prejudice against others.

No wonder I am proud to be Jewish.

But on Friday, the GOP in Pennsylvania sent out a letter to Jewish voters encouraging them to vote for McCain because an Obama presidency would threaten the existence of Israel.

They likened the vote next week to the mistake many families (including some of my own) made when they didn’t flee Germany in the 1930s.

This kind of scare tactic is nothing new, but it never fails to infuriate me.

There is a perception that American Jews choose their candidate based on Israeli foreign policy issues and nothing else. Now no doubt Israel is one important issue, but to relegate a people to that kind of over-simplistic knee jerk voting is its own kind of discrimination.

To equate Barack Obama (a candidate who supports Israel) with Hitler presupposes that Jewish voters are just plain stupid.

If we want to talk about similarities between this election and past historical wrongs we could intelligently discuss book censorship (Palin supported it, so did the Nazi party) or the relegation of a group of people to second class (gay people who can’t marry and can’t adopt know something about that).

We could expect Jewish voters to care about these kinds of injustices and vote for a candidate who promotes equality and free speech rather than hindering it.

But let’s also keep in mind that blanket comparisons to the Holocaust are not useful because they are too general and not powerful because they ridiculously characterize the great tragedy of that time as equivalent to a difference in foreign policy experience between two candidates who have promised to protect and support Israel.

Jewish voters are not dumb, knee-jerk or simplistic in their political analysis.

They won’t fall for that kind of ploy.