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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsUgandan anti-gay agitation "Made in the USA" -- by US evangelicals and missionaries
Last March (2009), 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. 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.
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...”
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...
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 ... 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...)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/world/africa/04uganda.html?_r=0
Family Research Council chief praises Ugandan president for supporting criminalization of homosexuality
Family Research Council head Tony Perkins sent out this tweet Monday praising Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni after he embraced criminalization of homosexuality. Museveni was once a highly regarded resistance fighter turned statesman, but now appears to be another president for life.
The Ugandan government, reacting to State Department objections, contends the bill no longer imposes the death penalty. The speaker of the Ugandan parliament said the bill has been revived as a “Christmas present” to the Ugandan people.
The bill would allow the government to jail gays and lesbians, including life imprisonment. The Human Rights Campaign contends it has yet to see evidence that the death penalty clause in fact has been dropped.
Here’s Perkins: “American liberals are upset that Ugandan Pres is leading his nation in repentance–afraid of a modern example of a nation prospered by God?”
http://blog.timesunion.com/politicssource/family-research-council-chief-praises-uganda-anti-gay-push/3291/
Lawsuit Filed Against U.S. Missionary Who Cultivated Anti-Gay Sentiment In Uganda
Lively has cultivated homophobic sentiment by giving impassioned sermons against the LGBT community in the East African nation, and even advised Ugandan lawmakers on how to get the “Death to Gays” bill passed when it first came up in 2009.
The suit is being filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of Sexual Minorities Uganda, a non-profit umbrella organization for LGBT advocacy groups in Uganda.
Full story here: http://www.queerty.com/lawsuit-filed-against-u-s-missionary-who-cultivated-anti-gay-sentiment-in-uganda-20120316/#ixzz2F0xW44tz
Evangelicals Implicated When Ugandan Gay Rights Activist Was Beaten to Death
David Kato, the activist, was one of the most visible defenders of gay rights in a country so homophobic that government leaders have proposed to execute gay people...Gay activists said Mr. Kato was singled out for his outspoken defense of gay rights. "David's death is a result of the hatred planted in Uganda by U.S. Evangelicals in 2009," said Val Kalende, the chairperson of one of Uganda's gay rights groups, in a statement...
Mrs. Kalende was referring to visits in March 2009 by a group of American evangelicals who held anti-gay rallies and church leaders who authored the anti-gay bill, which is still pending, attended those meetings and said that they had worked with the Americans on their bill...
As for the moral authority of the North American Evangelicals, one of their leading organizations and the organizers of the annual presidential prayer breakfast, the Family (or the Fellowship)... The story of the Ugandan legislation to kill gays for being gay was intertwined with the Family and also with representatives of the wider "respectable" American Evangelical community. For years Evangelical leaders have jockeyed for good tables at the Family-run "prayer breakfast..."After the Family was reported to be hock deep in the Uganda scandal, Evangelical leaders still turned up in droves anyway!
They did this even though David Bahati, the man behind the kill-the-gays legislation, was deeply involved in the Family's work in Uganda at that time, and a minister in the government of Uganda and was also helping to organize the Family's National Prayer Breakfast...
Full story here: http://www.queerty.com/lawsuit-filed-against-u-s-missionary-who-cultivated-anti-gay-sentiment-in-uganda-20120316/#ixzz2F0xNloH1
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WCGreen
(45,558 posts)Bigotry is now an exported commodity.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)government-connected, and the first anti-gay bill. Linked to "The Family/Fellowship".
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...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...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/world/africa/04uganda.html?_r=0
As for the moral authority of the North American Evangelicals, one of their leading organizations and the organizers of the annual presidential prayer breakfast, the Family (or the Fellowship)... The story of the Ugandan legislation to kill gays for being gay was intertwined with the Family and also with representatives of the wider "respectable" American Evangelical community...After the Family was reported to be hock deep in the Uganda scandal, Evangelical leaders still turned up in droves anyway!
They did this even though David Bahati, the man behind the kill-the-gays legislation, was deeply involved in the Family's work in Uganda at that time, and a minister in the government of Uganda and was also helping to organize the Family's National Prayer Breakfast...
Full story here: http://www.queerty.com/lawsuit-filed-against-u-s-missionary-who-cultivated-anti-gay-sentiment-in-uganda-20120316/#ixzz2F0xNloH1
The Fellowship, also known as the Family,[1][2][3] is a U.S.-based religious and political organization founded in 1935 by Abraham Vereide...The organization has been described as one of the most politically well-connected ministries in the United States. The Fellowship shuns publicity and its members share a vow of secrecy...Although the organization is secretive, it holds one regular public event each year, the National Prayer Breakfast held in Washington, D.C. Every sitting United States president since President Dwight D. Eisenhower, up to President Barack Obama, has participated in at least one National Prayer Breakfast during his term.[7][8][9][10]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fellowship_%28Christian_organization%29
Why are US Evangelicals So Into Uganda?
Anyone who hasn’t been under a social media rock for the past week is aware of the Kony 2012 video and viral marketing campaign started by Invisible Children. The goal is to convince US policymakers to intervene in the ongoing crisis in Central Africa by providing more US military advisers, more military aid to the Ugandan People’s Defense Force (UPDF), and more diplomatic pressure on Central African heads of state.
There’s been a wave of criticism since the whole thing began. Among the best critiques I’ve read are Bruce Wilson’s piece at AlterNet and Neil Anderson’s piece at Demand Nothing, both of which highlight Invisible Children’s financial connections with the National Christian Foundation, the Fellowship Foundation—aka, the Family, the International Foundation, the Wilberforce Foundation, C Street, etc—and several other Evangelical Christian groups. (Boing Boing has a nice roundup here, along with a much longer roundup of African voices responding to the Kony 2012 campaign...)
On the other hand, it could be that the president of Uganda—who’s held that office for almost as long as I’ve been alive—is a member of the Family and apparently quite a devout evangelical Christian. On the Family’s end it could also be his willingness to deport dissidents and burn down villages for Western corporate interests—something that’s surely attractive to deep-pocketed evangelical donors.
Those are pretty audacious accusations, and they could be completely wrong. But something just feels off about the thing, and I’ve learned to trust that instinct. Where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire..
http://www.thereligiousleft.org/2012/03/why-are-evangelicals-so-into-uganda.html
Over at Alternet, Bruce Wilson digs in to the sources of funding for the group behind "Kony 2012," and discovers 990 IRS tax forms and yearly financial disclosure reports from the nonprofit and its major donors... The documents show that Invisible Children, Inc. received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the biggest financial backers of California’s anti-same-sex marriage Proposition 8, with links to James Dobson, The Family (see Jeff Sharlet's excellent book on the subject), and ideologically similar Christian Right entities.
(...) What does Invisible Children share in common with James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council... or the Fellowship Foundation — one of the nonprofit entities of the Washington-based evangelical organization also known as “The Family” whose leader Doug Coe has been captured on video celebrating the dedication inspired by Hitler, Lenin, and Mao ?
What does IC have in common with the ministry of California evangelist Ed Silvoso, who works directly with leading Ugandan author and promoter of the Anti Homosexuality Bill (also called the “kill the gays bill”) Julius Oyet — who claims that “even animals are wiser than homosexuals”?
The answer? — all of these ministries... received at least $100,000 in 2008 from what has emerged in the last decade as the biggest funder of the hard, antigay, creationist Christian right: the National Christian Foundation.
http://boingboing.net/2012/03/12/kony-2012-invisible-children.html
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)
xchrom
(108,903 posts)
LisaLynne
(14,554 posts)HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)it in the us.
LisaLynne
(14,554 posts)This seems pretty major to me. I mean, yeah, I know why the MSM doesn't want to touch it, but it's really something that needs to be examined. There has been a tradition among religious missionaries of trying to impose their crap on the people of Africa (specifically thinking of the anti-birth control gang that fought against natural, traditional forms of birth control because, hey, birth control is wrong).
I don't know why it doesn't seem to spark more outrage. And you can't tell me that those people wouldn't want to see those laws enacted here.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)LisaLynne
(14,554 posts)
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)byeya
(2,842 posts)These are among the foulest of Americans, and as much as it's nice to have them out of the country, we shouldn't be encouraging them to pimp their imaginary friends and RW politics in other countries.
I remember not too long ago, Russia wanted to keep the Morman missionaries out and the administration at that time kicked up a fuss. I am surprised the goverment didn't vigorously object to Germany's banning of Scientologists.
