Dom Post editorial on Pink Vests

An excellent Dominion Post editorial on tagging and pink vests:

She [Iona Pannett] has likened the pink vest strategy to Nazi Germany’s persecution of gay men, and says it will reinforce prejudice against gay and lesbian people. That is an argument that is both flawed and ill-judged.

It is flawed because it relies on people always associating the colour pink with homosexuality, and not, for example, the breast cancer awareness programme.

Indeed. Pink is associated more with being female than being gay I would suggest.

Ms Pannett also ignores the obvious difference between taggers and the victims of the Nazis. There is an easy way for taggers to avoid wearing a pink vest – stop tagging. In Nazi Germany there was no way for Jews to avoid a yellow star, or homosexuals a pink triangle, or Roma a brown triangle.

Absolutely. Anyone who conflates a punishment for a crime with a punishment for just being born Jewish or gay or a gypsy is seriously off the planet.

And it is ill-judged because it trivialises the horrors of Nazi Germany.

To put it mildly. 30 minutes of embarrassment is very different from genocide.

Likening the actions of those who make criminal offenders wear a pink vest, while they clean up their scribblings, to those of a regime that murdered millions because of what they were, diminishes the suffering of those millions and the evil of those who killed them.

Ms Pannett expresses much concern for the feelings of those who might make an association between pink vests and homosexuality but does not appear to see that any could be offended by her implicit linking of Constable Gommans and Heinrich Himmler.

An apology would be in order.