I first listened to this story on Rachel Maddow’s show. I frequently listen to the podcast of her show, on my way to work the morning after the show has aired, and I thought as I listened, I can’t imagine that the Dutch are going to be very happy about this. What seemed too strange to be real, was that Sheehan would make such a claim when it could be so easily fact checked and confirmed. Or not confirmed as the case seems to be.

In so many, if not all attacks against LGBT rights, the far-right crazies resort to misinformation, half-truths, and outright lies to try and make their claims. Most are doing it as religious people, or in the promotion of their own religious ideas. And yet, lying is a sin.

I hope we haven’t seen the end to this story. I hope journalists dig deeper to find out what exactly the Dutch investigation did find, and how Sheehan got to the claim that he made, and if he outright lied, what can be the consequences for that? The only way to combat the misinformation and lies is to increase the amount and depth of the truth being told.

There are no real plausible reasons to support the second class citizenship of LGBTs in the US anymore.  It is time for the march for greater equality to continue to move forward.

At a U.S. congressional hearing on Thursday on allowing gay soldiers to serve openly in the military, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander John Sheehan said there was a causal link between having homosexuals in the Dutch forces and the Srebrenica massacre during the Bosnian war.

“The remarks were outrageous, wrong and beneath contempt,” Balkenende told a news conference.

via Dutch lash out at gay link in Srebrenica massacre | Reuters.

Here is another news story about this from the BBC News