It’s a big old rainbow world out there, at least in many privileged parts of the globe, with marriage equality enshrined, and tolerance for the LGBT community giving way to almost enthusiastic acceptance. In fact, to be overtly homophobic these days puts you on the wrong side of just about any social, political or professional ledger.

Cue the feathers and finery of another Pride festival, celebrating these halcyon times, in which, as the completely neutral joke goes, the love that dares not speak its name has morphed into the love that “just won’t shut up.”

Even Rob Ford, our formerly Pride-shy mayor, who may have uttered a homophobic slur on a video that may no longer exist, did his civic duty for the first time this week, unfurling the rainbow flag, proclaiming Pride week. Admittedly this was after he voted against funding for Pride, and before apparently heading to his cottage in lieu of the parade, but he was wisely welcomed all the same.

For those who feel compelled to question why straights can’t get their own parade, I say, go ahead, organize one, although I, proudly straight, will hope for a cottage invite that boring weekend.

You know you’re living in a different society when Exodus International, a formerly large, American, Christian-based group that since the 1970s has promoted a “cure” for homosexuality, not only recently announced it was disbanding, but humbly offered an apology to all it had hurt.

What a perfect and necessary time then, for a piece of relatively overlooked homosexual history to be examined. In his new book Branded by the Pink Triangle, primarily aimed at young adult readers(12 to 18) Toronto author Ken Setterington offers a short, sombre and affecting look at how the Nazis viciously sought out, stigmatized (by making them wear a pink triangle) incarcerated and worked to death men they identified as gay.

As he launched his book at an event in the gay village last month (complete with whimsical pink triangle cupcakes) Setterington, formerly the first Children’s and Youth Advocate for the Toronto Public Library and one of the country’s most respected experts on children’s literature, did something important.

He gave this piece of history its due without trying to pretty it up with inspirational stories. The truth is, gay men who had been enslaved, tortured, and hung from poles by their wrists for hours in concentration camps remained persecuted even by their liberators. In fact, one gay survivor, Pierre Seel, a young Catholic Frenchman, originally bleakly called his memoir Liberation Was for Others.

As Setterington recounts, the German criminal code enacted “Paragraph 175” in the 1800s, criminalizing sexual acts between men.

But it was largely overlooked, especially in pre-war Berlin, which was a mecca for gays who moved freely in the city, and had their own fabulous clubs and culture in what was then one of the most sexually tolerant societies in the world.

All that changed with the rise of Hitler, who saw gay men (not so much women) as one of the first threats to his vision of Aryan paradise even before he settled on Jews as his primary scapegoats. Hitler banned all homosexual rights organizations, purged his own upper echelons of known homosexuals, and brought back Paragraph 175 with a vengeance.

Thousands of gay men were rounded up — one discreet kiss between young men could ruin or end their lives — and the number arrested increased exponentially between 1935 and 1938.

Setterington’s slim book, which should be in schools, synagogues and human rights museums everywhere, speaks volumes about a time that few LGBT youths today, contemplating who to take to the prom or the parade, would have knowledge about. There are monuments scattered around the world to the homosexual victims of the Nazis. One of the most moving is the Gay and Lesbian Memorial Park in Sydney, Australia, across from the Jewish Museum, spearheaded by a woman named Kitty Fischer who at 16, had been fished out of a stinking pile of human waste by a gay prisoner, who fed her baked potatoes and helped her stay alive.

Its inscription reads in part, to “all those who have refused the roles others have expected us to play.”

Setterington reminds readers that in 76 countries, homosexuality is still illegal, sometimes fatally so.

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So by all means cue the feathers and finery. But as Setterington, 58, who was once a relatively privileged but still fearful and secretive gay youth himself, says,

“Gay youth need to know that they have a history too.” We all need to know that history.