Sulu, Sit Down and Shut Up!

I admit it–I grew up loving Star Trek.  As a child, I would sit with my older brother and gleefully watch Kirk, Spock, and McCoy outsmart the villains of the week.  As I got a little older and watched the reruns of the series (which originally broadcast from 1966-1969), I recognized how the show demonstrated the best of science fiction: subtly teaching values of tolerance and respect for everyone.  And who can forget the first inter-racial kiss on network television between the beautiful Nichelle Nichols and William Shatner, the classic pro-American values of liberty and freedom, and the sexy femme fatales who would succumb to Kirk’s charms?

But George Takei, the actor whose only serious claim to fame is that he played Lt. Sulu in the original series and for the subsequent fifty years (he has lived off that one role his entire life), needs to learn that being an actor in a sci-fi series does not qualify him to make comments about the Holocaust, the most horrific event in human history.

I appreciate that as blessed as he was with the role of Sulu, Mr. Takei has had many challenges in his personal life. Forced to live as a boy in a Japanese internment camp during World War II was undoubtedly horrible. Being an in-the-closet gay man for the first 68 years of his life could not have been easy. Having a life where he was only recognized for being on a sci-fi series must have been tough on his psyche, and I understand why he would want to “re-brand” himself in 2005 as a gay rights activist as a simple coping mechanism for a lack of a sense of self.

Related: Why George Takei Is an Idiot

But none of that justifies his ignorance, arrogance, and outright stupidity in comparing the issue of mutilating children with gender transition surgery to the horrors of the Holocaust.

I was never a fan of how he demonstrated the epitome of overacting and being a caricature.  But his recent article in the Daily Beast is offensive and disgusting.

Takei uses his semi-fame (does anyone care about him other than committed Trekkies?) to totally defame the memory of every victim and survivor of Hitler’s Holocaust. He equates the laws protecting children from gender mutilation to the laws that condemned over six million Jews to death. For a man who has supposedly personally experienced prejudicial hatred, this is especially despicable.

While gender transition surgery is a choice, the Jews were given no choice.  They were systematically rounded up and killed by the efficient Nazi machine.  The Holocaust is the only time in recorded human history when people were killed for no benefit: the Nazis did not get land, property, or any benefit from their attempted purge of the Jewish people.  In fact, the concentration camps were a financial drain on the Nazis that led to the financial ruin of the Nazi regime.  

Six million died, and Takei compares it to protecting children.  Disgusting.

Takei is not promoting the right for gays to be married. He’s not standing up for people to be free from discrimination because of their sexuality. He is just using his semi-fame to attack laws that protect children from influential groomers who desire the destruction of society as it has been understood throughout the history of mankind.

There is an extremely small percentage of people who have genuine gender dysphoria, and we need to be compassionate and caring for that small group. But a child who doesn’t even know what sexuality really is needs to be protected from life-altering surgery.  No law is even suggesting that grown adults should be prohibited from having a transition surgery.  Instead, each of the proposed laws that Takei takes issue with is exclusively for the protection of minors.  No law is proposing to discriminate against adults of any sexual proclivity.  Each law has one goal and one goal only:  to protect children from mutilating themselves when their brains and bodies aren’t even fully developed.

To compare protecting children with the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps speaks volumes about Takei’s ignorance and arrogance.  Like the worst of leftist extremists, this actor believes he should be able to foist his values upon everyone else.

I suggest that Mr. Takei take a visit to Yad VaShem in Israel, and maybe he will realize how offensive, disgusting, and ignorant his views are.  Maybe he’ll start to understand the real evils of the Holocaust.  Thank God nothing compares to the horror and tragedy of the Holocaust, and shame on anyone who compares any leader, law, or government to the evil of Hitler, the Nazi regime, and the Holocaust.

Mr. Sulu: sit down, shut up, get educated, and quit being a mouthpiece for mutilation.  Your words only show that you should have been canceled back in 1969.