I doubt that this "distancing" has anything to do with concern about the plight of sexual minorities in Africa. It is more likely that these right wing extremists are aware that they could lose money and end up in the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.Ten months ago, three American evangelicals trooped off to Uganda and, using the power of their words, helped convince officials there to create the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, that would make it illegal -- and punishable by death -- to be gay. If you hang in long enough while reading today's New York Times article on the matter, the reporter eventually gets around to naming them!
The three Americans who spoke at the conference -- Scott Lively, a missionary who has written several books against homosexuality, including "7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child"; Caleb Lee Brundidge, a self-described former gay man who leads "healing seminars"; and Don Schmierer, a board member of Exodus International, whose mission is "mobilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality" -- are now trying to distance themselves from the bill.At this point, that's sort of like the Velvet Underground attempting to distance themselves from "rock music."
But for his part, Don Schmierer says he feels "duped," and that he had "no idea some Ugandans were contemplating the death penalty for homosexuality" and that "some of the nicest people I have ever met are gay people."
Yes, surprise, surprise: you go off to Uganda to talk about how "the gay movement is an evil institution" and how they have an agenda of "defeat[ing] the marriage-based society" and somehow, people take this to mean that homosexuals should be killed or something. How terrible that things like this get misconstrued. Right, Scott Lively, who said this on his website?
On the positive side, my host and ministry partner in Kampala, Stephen Langa, was overjoyed with the results of our efforts and predicted confidently that the coming weeks would see significant improvement in the moral climate of the nation, and a massive increase in pro-family activism in every social sphere. He said that a respected observer of society in Kampala had told him that our campaign was like a nuclear bomb against the "gay" agenda in Uganda. I pray that this, and the predictions, are true.Today's Times article mentions the "nuclear bomb" comparison, but leaves out the perhaps important part where Lively "prays" that his campaign is like a massive explosion that kills tens of thousands of people in a disintegrating rain of atomic fire.
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Monday, January 4, 2010
Anti-Gay Evangelicals Attempt To Distance Themselves From Ugandan Anti-Gay Bill They Inspired
The Secret Political Reach Of 'The Family' : NPR
And some of the, really the core rhetoric of The Family is this idea that most of us misread the New Testament, that Christ's message - the bottom line of Christ's message wasn't really about love or mercy or justice or forgiveness. It was about power. So Doug Coe, the leader of the group, tries to illustrate this, for instance, by saying, sort of posing a puzzle: name three men in the 20th century who best understood that message of The New Testament. And most people are going to say someone like Martin Luther King, or Bonhoeffer; or maybe they're more conservative, they're going to say Billy Graham. And Coe likes to give in answer: Hitler, Stalin and Mao, which just makes your jaw drop. And he will say - he's quick to say these are evil men, but they understood power. And that message recurs again, and again, and again in The Family.
via npr.org
Rachel Maddow has been covering The Family's political influence, but I had somehow missed this NPR interview with Mr. Sharlet who went undercover to report on the The Family.Sunday, January 3, 2010
After Americans Visit, Uganda Weighs Death for Gays
KAMPALA, Uganda — Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived here in Uganda’s capital to give a series of talks.
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Marc Hofer for The New York TimesStosh Mugisha is going through a transition to become a man.
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Marc Hofer for The New York TimesDemonstrators carried banners denouncing homosexuality in December in Kampala, Uganda.
Marc Hofer for The New York TimesNikki Mawanda, 27, who was born female but lives as a “trans-man” in Uganda, described abuse by the police and others.
The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organizer, was “the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda” — and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family.Readers' Comments
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For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”
Now the three Americans are finding themselves on the defensive, saying they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that could lead to what came next: a bill to impose a death sentence for homosexual behavior.
One month after the conference, a previously unknown Ugandan politician, who boasts of having evangelical friends in the American government, introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, which threatens to hang homosexuals, and, as a result, has put Uganda on a collision course with Western nations.
Donor countries, including the United States, are demanding that Uganda’s government drop the proposed law, saying it violates human rights, though Uganda’s minister of ethics and integrity (who previously tried to ban miniskirts) recently said, “Homosexuals can forget about human rights.”
The Ugandan government, facing the prospect of losing millions in foreign aid, is now indicating that it will back down, slightly, and change the death penalty provision to life in prison for some homosexuals. But the battle is far from over.
Instead, Uganda seems to have become a far-flung front line in the American culture wars, with American groups on both sides, the Christian right and gay activists, pouring in support and money as they get involved in the broader debate over homosexuality in Africa.
“It’s a fight for their lives,” said Mai Kiang, a director at the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, a New York-based group that has channeled nearly $75,000 to Ugandan gay rights activists and expects that amount to grow.
The three Americans who spoke at the conference — Scott Lively, a missionary who has written several books against homosexuality, including “7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child”; Caleb Lee Brundidge, a self-described former gay man who leads “healing seminars”; and Don Schmierer, a board member of Exodus International, whose mission is “mobilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality” — are now trying to distance themselves from the bill.
“I feel duped,” Mr. Schmierer said, arguing that he had been invited to speak on “parenting skills” for families with gay children. He acknowledged telling audiences how homosexuals could be converted into heterosexuals, but he said he had no idea some Ugandans were contemplating the death penalty for homosexuality.
“That’s horrible, absolutely horrible,” he said. “Some of the nicest people I have ever met are gay people.”
Mr. Lively and Mr. Brundidge have made similar remarks in interviews or statements issued by their organizations. But the Ugandan organizers of the conference admit helping draft the bill, and Mr. Lively has acknowledged meeting with Ugandan lawmakers to discuss it. He even wrote on his blog in March that someone had likened their campaign to “a nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda.” Later, when confronted with criticism, Mr. Lively said he was very disappointed that the legislation was so harsh.
Human rights advocates in Uganda say the visit by the three Americans helped set in motion what could be a very dangerous cycle. Gay Ugandans already describe a world of beatings, blackmail, death threats like “Die Sodomite!” scrawled on their homes, constant harassment and even so-called correctional rape.
“Now we really have to go undercover,” said Stosh Mugisha, a gay rights activist who said she was pinned down in a guava orchard and raped by a farmhand who wanted to cure her of her attraction to girls. She said that she was impregnated and infected with H.I.V., but that her grandmother’s reaction was simply, “ ‘You are too stubborn.’ ”
Despite such attacks, many gay men and lesbians here said things had been getting better for them before the bill, at least enough to hold news conferences and publicly advocate for their rights. Now they worry that the bill could encourage lynchings. Already, mobs beat people to death for infractions as minor as stealing shoes.
“What these people have done is set the fire they can’t quench,” said the Rev. Kapya Kaoma, a Zambian who went undercover for six months to chronicle the relationship between the African anti-homosexual movement and American evangelicals.
Mr. Kaoma was at the conference and said that the three Americans “underestimated the homophobia in Uganda” and “what it means to Africans when you speak about a certain group trying to destroy their children and their families.”
“When you speak like that,” he said, “Africans will fight to the death.”
Uganda is an exceptionally lush, mostly rural country where conservative Christian groups wield enormous influence. This is, after all, the land of proposed virginity scholarships, songs about Jesus playing in the airport, “Uganda is Blessed” bumper stickers on Parliament office doors and a suggestion by the president’s wife that a virginity census could be a way to fight AIDS.
During the Bush administration, American officials praised Uganda’s family-values policies and steered millions of dollars into abstinence programs.
Uganda has also become a magnet for American evangelical groups. Some of the best known Christian personalities have recently passed through here, often bringing with them anti-homosexuality messages, including the Rev. Rick Warren, who visited in 2008 and has compared homosexuality to pedophilia. (Mr. Warren recently condemned the anti-homosexuality bill, seeking to correct what he called “lies and errors and false reports” that he played a role in it.)
Many Africans view homosexuality as an immoral Western import, and the continent is full of harsh homophobic laws. In northern Nigeria, gay men can face death by stoning. Beyond Africa, a handful of Muslim countries, like Iran and Yemen, also have the death penalty for homosexuals. But many Ugandans said they thought that was going too far. A few even spoke out in support of gay people.
“I can defend them,” said Haj Medih, a Muslim taxi driver with many homosexual customers. “But I fear the what? The police, the government. They can arrest you and put you in the safe house, and for me, I don’t have any lawyer who can help me.”
Next Article in World (4 of 21) » A version of this article appeared in print on January 4, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.
via nytimes.com
"Gug," http://gayuganda.blogspot.com, has been blogging daily about this developing human rights crisis.FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Is Rasmussen Reports Biased?
If you're running a news organization and you tend to cite Rasmussen's polls disproportionately, it probably means that you are biased -- it does not necessarily mean that Rasmussen is biased.Shorter version: Rasmussen frames their questions with a conservative perspective. Faux News cites Rasmussen because it's more favorable to its Republican agenda than other polls.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Because discrimination is more important to him than anything else
Archbishop Wuerl is having a hissy fit. If voters approve gay marriage he will end the Catholic Churches social services in D.C. Since opposing gay marriage matters more to him than doing any sort of good in the world, I hope that he loses all public funding and becomes irrelevant.
The word must have got out
Via James Hipps at GayAgenda.com, the bad news for Rick Warren just keeps coming. One hopes that his current financial troubles are a consequence of his influence in spreading homophobia throughout Africa and his tepid response to the anti-homosexuality bill in Uganda. (He never did appear on Rachel Maddow to take a more prominent position against what is happening because of his influence there, did he?)
Hipps also reports that James Dobson's Focus on the Family has been laying off employees in droves but still finds $4 million to drop on a Super Bowl ad.
It's indeed a mystery to me how these tax-exempt "religious organizations" and megachurches can influence public policy and still remain tax-exempt.
Hipps also reports that James Dobson's Focus on the Family has been laying off employees in droves but still finds $4 million to drop on a Super Bowl ad.
It's indeed a mystery to me how these tax-exempt "religious organizations" and megachurches can influence public policy and still remain tax-exempt.
Hate is NOT OK in Oklahoma
Oklahoma Senator Steve Russell must really hate gays. More likely he is just pandering to his religious right voters. This blatant homophobia reminds me of Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty going out of his way to say he regretted voting for LBGT rights as a legislator. However homophobic Steve Russell may be, he will not be successful in exempting Oklahoma from federal law.
The changed media landscape
I have mixed feelings about the folding of numerous magazines and print publications last year. On the one hand, it's probably more environmentally friendly to read news online, if your online news consumption is around 30 minutes (mine isn't); on the other hand, it may be more difficult for good journalists to remain profitable. There's the danger of losing a diversity of viewpoints, which makes supporting quality journalists and journalism all the more important.
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