Minnesota State Representative Arlon Lindner said: "I was a child during World War II, and I've read a lot about World War II. It's just been recently that anyone's come out with this idea that homosexuals were persecuted to this extent. There's been a lot of rewriting of history."

Lindner, who says he has doubts about the persecution of gays during the Holocaust, said if the Legislature doesn't pass his bill stripping gay people of protection under the state's Human Rights Act, Minnesota children may be subjected to a holocaust of their own, and America could become "another African continent."

African-Americans and other members of the House jumped to their feet to protest in reaction to Lindner's comments.

In the course of his service in the Legislature, Lindner has also said that Buddhism is a cult and called a Jewish colleague "irreligious."

In a statement issued Monday night, Gov. Pawlenty added to the criticism of the remarks.

"Rep. Lindner's statements about the Holocaust are troubling," Pawlenty said. "Since the liberation of Nazi concentration camps more than half a century ago, the atrocious scope of the Holocaust remains one of history's most vivid personifications of human evil. I oppose any efforts to rewrite history to exclude homosexuals or any other minority group that suffered as victims in the Holocaust."

At a news conference, Democrats called Lindner's comments outrageous, grotesque and revisionist.

Minneapolis Democrat Frank Horstein said: "Revisionism of this kind is on a par with those who believe the earth is flat and that the moon landing was fabricated on a sound stage in New Mexico."

"It is inconceivable to me that an esteemed member of the House … would deny the ultimate sacrifice that members of my community made at the hands of these butchers," said Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, who is gay.

At the news conference, Holocaust survivor Hinda Kirbort, 81, of Edina, called Lindner's comments "hate-mongering."

"Unlike Lindner, I did not learn about World War II or the Nazi Holocaust by reading books. I was in a concentration camp," said Kirbort, who witnessed people suspected of being gay persecuted at those camps.

The Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas on Monday invited Lindner to "join us and 150 teachers and students on the April 8 JCRC trip to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C." The museum is showing an exhibit entitled "Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933-1945."