We have always been the crone living at the edge of the village or the cave in the woods. Our natural realms are at the fringe. No matter how much our hopes are dashed, we must remind ourselves that this liminal domain is our space and from whence we draw much of our power. We are the hare in the verge and the rider of the hedge. Our innate stance is resistance.

The war against witches is often mischaracterized as a war on women. This simplification occludes and obscures the historical fact that eradication of supernatural evil frequently targeted gender transgression and sexual deviance. It was a conflict that focused on difference and turned neighbor against neighbor. The village healer could all too quickly become the evil conjurer sowing deprivation, stealing milk, and cursing livestock. The power to heal meant that the witch also had the power to harm. To deviate sexually was a conspiracy with the Devil. The sodomite became sorcerer. The infernal kiss was at the heart of the witches’s sabbath.

Buggery is a pact.

The arc of progress may bend toward justice, but it’s not a straight path. Progress is often contentious and fraught with danger. There have been and will continue to be aberrations along the way. Progress is a complex struggle; the ideals of justice and equity are not straightforawrd to achieve. History has born witness to numerous setbacks and deviations. The path toward justice is anything but linear. These aberrations serve as stark reminders of the fragility of progress.

The retrograde motion of progress is all too often ugly, even horrific. But like Mercury, it only appears to move backward at times. Though society’s trajectory may sometimes seem to regress, these periods can also provide crucial opportunities for reflection, reevaluation, and, ultimately, resistance. These dark times can inflict real trauma and leave scars. Yet, just as Mercury’s apparent backward motion is part of a larger, cyclical journey, so too is our struggle for progress an ongoing process.

It is essential to sustain hope, recognizing that every challenge faced is a step in the collective journey toward a more just society. Each setback may reveal hidden truths and strengthen resolve, fueling the drive for change. In this way, the path to justice—while at times fraught with obstacles—remains a vital and worthwhile pursuit, marked by both struggle and triumph. Throughout history, we have witnessed numerous setbacks and deviations from the desired course—instances where the momentum of positive change has stalled or even reversed, demonstrating that the path to justice is anything but a straight line.

Many people live in fear, and the myth of safety is often sold to them in an alluring package. Violent mobs are not as big a threat as those who transform fear into obedience. History has shown that dark magic is at work. The masses may be ignorant, but it is essential to remember that ignorance is not a lack of knowledge but a particular type of knowing. It is shaped and cultivated from the outside for a purpose.

The Weimar Republic was Germany’s first experiment at a liberal democratic government. Hitler attempted a violent coup in 1923. He failed and was sentenced to prison only to be democratically elected in 1936. National Socialism mobilized an unstable economy and rampant inflation coupled with the evocation of latent xenophobia and anti-semitism to deliver their victory. These aberrant deviations to progress’s arc are often viewed as eruptions of barbarism, as backward movement. The contrary is all too often true.

The worst episodes of the past century were products of modernity, not throwbacks to a dark, distant past. The mass deportation of millions of people only begins with defining the other—the enemy within. Fear is a critical first step that buys the complacency of the many. But it is only that, a first step. The expulsion of that number of people is administratively and mechanistically impossible. The architects of the Final Solution were administrators and bureaucrats—paper pushers—not demons. They leveraged the advancements of the Industrial Revolution and modernity to accomplish their delegated goal. Innovation seems like progress, but technology and technological advancements are neutral in and of themselves. How they are put to use defines their relativism.

With all the efficiency of the modern bureaucratic state, the administrators of the Third Reich utilized the industrial rail system and Henry Ford’s innovative assembly line. Exterminating a million individuals at the end of a rifle is impossible, but they proved it easy enough with the stroke of a pen.

Of course, the Nazis may have started with the Jews, but they did not stop there. The Night of the Long Knives, which took place from June 30 to July 2, 1934, targeted the SA (Sturmabteilung), the Nazi Party’s original paramilitary wing. This series of political extrajudicial executions allowed Hitler to consolidate his power and eliminate potential threats within the Nazi Party.

One of the main targets was Ernst Röhm, the leader of the SA, who was a close ally of Hitler but was seen as a threat due to his ambitions and the SA’s increasing power. Röhm’s known homosexuality was used as a pretext for his execution. During the purge, many SA leaders and other perceived opponents were arrested and executed. The purge also marked the beginning of systematic persecution of homosexuals by the Nazi regime, which intensified after Röhm’s death.

On May 6, 1933, Nazi-supporting youth looted the Magnus Hirschfeld Institute for Sexual Research, founded in 1919. A few days later, the entire contents of its library were burned. This event was part of a broader campaign by the Nazis to destroy “un-German” literature, which included works on homosexuality and gender. The destruction of the institute’s library resulted in the loss of invaluable research and documentation on LGBTQ+ issues.

Hirschfeld, who was both Jewish and gay, was targeted by the Nazis and forced into exile. His life’s work was largely destroyed, but his contributions to the field of sexology and LGBTQ+ rights remain.

During the Nazi regime, an estimated 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality. Of these, around 50,000 were convicted, and many were sent to concentration camps. The death toll among these prisoners is estimated to be between 5,000 and 15,000.

The tragic irony is that after World War II, the situation for homosexual men did not improve significantly. Many of those who had been imprisoned for homosexuality were not recognized as victims of Nazi persecution and were often forced to serve out their prison sentences. Reparations were generally denied, and the stigma and legal persecution continued for many years.

Many homosexuals who the Nazis had imprisoned were transferred to regular prisons after the regime fell. The persecution of homosexuals did not end with the fall of the Nazi regime. Paragraph 175, the law that criminalized homosexuality, remained in effect in West Germany until 1969.

It is important to not passively sit back and think this too shall pass. The sentiment that we have survived dark times before is less than helpful. Not all of us survived the Reagen era genocide of indifference. We lost a generation of gay men.

Even in challenge, the path remains ahead and not just behind. A dim light shows us the way forward, even in the darkest hour.

Resistance is not futile; it is essential.