Thread by @LarryTaunton

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THE GAY-ING OF HISTORY:🧵

I started Netflix’s new series “Transatlantic.” Contrary to what you might think, it’s not the story of a transgender love boat, though I’m sure Netflix is working on that.

It’s about Varian Fry’s heroic efforts to evacuate Jews from Hitler’s…

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…Europe.

Transatlantic is an elegant, expensive period piece full of lush French vineyards and charming villas. There’s even time for romance.

In some ways, the series forges new territory, injecting some levity into an otherwise heavy topic. This isn’t Schindler’s List.

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Distance from the actual events affords filmmakers some creative license, and to this extent I do not object.

They don’t make light of the Holocaust nor of the war itself. Instead, they’ve almost given this topic its own version of “The Great Escape,” making the victims…

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…heroes.

Almost.

Creative license can go too far, perverting history and its heroes, and that’s what Netflix has done here.

Bowing—or should I say ‘bending over’?—in #Budweiser fashion to the gay times in which we live, Netflix made Varian Fry a homosexual.

While…

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…many other characters in this series are fictitious, Varian Fry, an American, was as real to WW2 as Winston Churchill or Ernie Pyle. But it seems that the homosexual lobby decided WW2 needed some gay heroes, and since it is well-known that Ike and FDR liked the ladies, a…

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…lesser known figure was chosen to carry the gay banner forward.

Only it never happened.

Not only was Fry not a homosexual, he was a twice-married father of three. The book upon which Transatlantic is based established the gay legend for Fry.

Predictably, The New York…

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…Times brushed off this historical inconvenience as trivial.

History is full of inconveniences for those wishing to rewrite it. For example, did you know that many of the early Nazis were notorious homosexuals? William Shirer (see excerpt from “The Rise & Fall of the…

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…Third Reich” below) and others made this connection long ago. I’m waiting for that Netflix series.

There’s a moral obligation on those who would tell the stories of history’s heroes and victims that they do it with care and integrity.

So, let it be hereby known that…

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…Robert the Bruce was the real “Braveheart,” not William Wallace;

80% of men on the Titanic died while only 25% of women perished (and neither Jack nor Rose were among them)—

—and Varian Fry was a hero and he was not, according to both wives and his biographer, gay.