Know your heroes

All our heroes are human, and need to be challenged where they fall short. Did you know, for example, that:

The Dalai Lama presented Chairman Mao Tse Tung with a bouquet of poems that lavishly praised the Chinese leader as the "timely rain to nourish the land"?

Mahatma Gandhi blocked the marriage of his son and disowned him, commenting, "How can I, who has always advocated renunciation of sex, encourage you to gratify it?"
(The son subsequently became a homeless alcoholic.)

Gandhi commented about Hitler, "I do not consider Hitler to be as bad as he is depicted. He is showing an ability that is amazing and seems to be gaining his victories without much bloodshed?"

I don't want to spoil the test below any further, so my last example is of Martin Luther King Jr not sticking up for Bayard Rustin, who was the architect of the March on Washington. Rustin was gay, and had convictions for sodomy.

http://www.politicalcompass.org/iconochasms