"The Word Is Pogrom"

When I was "but a boy," one of my favorite shows, game shows, to watch with my Grandmother was "Password," in which one contestant knew the "word" that the other person had to guess from all kinds of clues. And the secret voice that spoke over the air that we the audience heard was "And the word is..." with the word mentioned that the contestants had to guess.

In our household last night, the word was "Pogrom," a word that my son learned and discussed in high school yesterday among vocab words.

And the context in which it was applied was "Uganda." We watched and listened to the Rachel Maddow show last night, and her interview with a member of the evangelical group, "The Family" on C. St. in D.C., and their support of the Ugandan government, who just crafted this bill to kill gays. Though the Family is now trying to tamper this down, nonetheless, my high school son looked at me adn said 'That is a pogrom: killing gays as an minority group simply because of who they are. Didn't they learn anything from the Holocaust?"

That a government would go out of their way to kill gays because they are gays is liking killing Jews simply because they are Jews, or Cambodians for being Cambodian, or in Rwanda, or in Darfus, or in...

Uganda.

Our children are learning.

Let's help them learn today's word: "Pogrom".

B