American Evangelicals Enabled Uganda’s Death Penalty for Gays
Here’s the disgusting religious right story of the day, as the New York Times reports on a visit by three US evangelical leaders to Uganda that helped trigger the full scale persecution of homosexuals: 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.
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.”
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.”
These morons are now complaining that they feel “duped.”
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.”
What a shock — preaching hatred leads to hatred. Who could ever have guessed?
Just appalling. This is where the rhetoric of the religious right leads, and don’t fool yourself — there are many people on the right who support Uganda’s persecution of gays, and would like to see the US do the same thing. Just read through the comments at any right wing site that covers this story; for example, here’s a typical thread at Free Republic, the first one that popped up in a search for “Uganda,” about Republican Senators who are opposed to the Ugandan legislation: Republicans Condemn Uganda’s Anti-Gay Bill.
One of many similar comments:
This is simply cowardice and people stating things that they don’t really believe in order to be politically correct.
Bunch of wimps. These Republican cowards deserve to be gang raped by a horde of gay Hell’s Angels. And Uganda should be commended for taking a stand against the gay gestapo.
12 posted on December 22, 2009 6:15:58 PM PST by MGMSwordsman
It’s easy to find thousands of comments like this one at Free Republic, Fox Nation, Hot Air, etc.
Frank says: