Backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. government aid and millions more from U.S. evangelical churches, the nation of Uganda is waging direct attack against the human rights of gay and lesbian people elsewhere across Africa.

Uganda’s New Vision reported on July 22 (via allAfrica.com) that “Uganda has opposed the pending recognition of a South African gay rights group, Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL), as an official observer at all African Union conferences, and to contribute to the NGO’s forum.”

The article quotes Ugandan ambassador Rosette Nyirinkindi as saying equal application of human rights to all is “alien to our culture and values. We shall continue to resist and fight them because common sense dictates against them. They are outlawed in Uganda and most African countries.”

In 2009, the United States committed nearly $300 million in supposed federal anti-AIDS funding in Uganda. At least $5 million of that was to be dispensed for military ventures through the U.S. Department of Defense; millions more in military aid were budgeted through other channels. Meanwhile, tens of millions of dollars annually from the federal anti-AIDS budget are being laundered through conservative Catholic and evangelical organizations that promote antigay, abstinence-only education programs which have resulted in a resurgence of HIV/AIDS in Uganda since 2004.

RH Reality Check criticized U.S. funding for anti-scientific, abstinence-only programs in an article today. The article blasts the government’s token efforts at “comprehensive” prevention:

If you give condoms only to groups thought of by society as “promiscuous,” what do you think will happen to a woman who insists on condom use with her husband that she suspects of cheating? If you do not provide information about using female and male condoms to young people, even if they successfully delay sex for years, how do you expect them to know how to use them once they start having sex?

“Comprehensive prevention” is not a country-level concept—it is an individual-level concept. Everyone has the right to, and the need for, full information about how to be healthy. That’s the only way it makes sense.

Each and every person served by PEPFAR prevention programs should receive full information about how to use condoms, and should have access to female and male condoms. Instead of pouring scarce resources in programs we know don’t work, we have got to start only funding true comprehensive prevention.

Millions of dollars that are not being spent on true comprehensive prevention are instead being invested in antigay evangelical campaigns to stigmatize and criminalize same-sex orientation.

Related:

• The head of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, Eric Goosby, defends the Obama administration’s dismal handling of international HIV/AIDS relief.
• Archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu asks Obama to reconsider his commitment.

So typical. From a slanted article at OneNewsNow:

A United Nations Aids [sic] agency complains that homosexuals, drug users and prostitute [sic] don’t seek help because of laws that criminalize their practices.

Michel Sidibe of UNAIDS is quoted as saying it is unacceptable that 85 countries still make homosexual conduct illegal, but Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH), does not accept that thinking.

“They’ve got everything backwards,” he contends. “Rather than have a campaign — for example an anti-sodomy campaign, an anti-prostitution campaign, an anti-drug abuse campaign that targets the bad behaviors themselves — instead they target countries that are trying to implement conservative policies that target homosexuality.”

In compatibility with his logic, Sidibe suggests that laws against the immoral behavior be changed.

“Mr. Sidibe is just completely confused,” LaBarbera notes. “He says that in states where there are not repressive laws, HIV is contained. Then he goes on to express shock that more than 50 percent of infections in the United States are among homosexuals. So he contradicts himself.”

Peter: stick to leather porn. The grown-ups who are experts on AIDS prevention will handle the grown-up issue of AIDS prevention.

Thx!

Tuesday night’ County Commissioner’ meeting erupted after Mecklenberg (Charlotte, N.C.) Commissioner Bill James used a gay slur when referring to another commissioner’ son, who died of AIDS. Wednesday afternoon, Commissioner Vilma Leake was still too shaken to repeat the words James said to her at the meeting.

The incident occurred after Leake had made a passionate plea for same-sex partner benefits, telling commissioners that her own son had lived a homosexual lifestyle and died of AIDS.Moments after she finished speaking, James leaned over to her and said something.

Eyewitness News has learned that he said he didn’t know her son was, in his words, “a homo.”

Leake shot back as Commission Chairman Jennifer Roberts began to speak. Wednesday morning, James stood by his comment. In a statement, he said, “Since she didn’t define what lifestyle she was referring to, I asked her…response to me was to threaten violence.” James said using the slang term for homosexual was not necessarily a putdown and called Leake a religious hypocrite, using her son’ lifestyle to vote for benefits that will cost tax dollars. Leake said she does not plan to let the comment go.

Well, there you go. James is what passes for a compassionate fundamentalist these days. It is nice to feel such love, support and understanding. Isn’t it time moderate Christians take back this religion

Bilgrimage offers a heartbreaking, first-hand account of an ex-gay nightmare: a Christian family virtually destroyed by the false promise of ex-gay cures and ex-gay myths about sexual orientation.

A friend recently discovered that his ex-partner of 20 years, who left to become ex-gay, had died a year earlier.

The ex-partner and his sister were raised by abusive preacher parents who battered, permanently scarred, and publicly humiliated the sister — not just for “fornicating,” but for doing it with a black man. When the ex-partner initially came out to the preacher parents, the father demanded surgery to remove the clitoris that (he knew for a fact) grows in gay men’s throats.

After leaving the friend to become ex-gay, the partner entered a doomed second marriage to his ex-wife. Since ex-gay programs and prayers don’t work, eventually the remarriage failed.

After that, ex-gay exorcism killed him. (Read More)

During the course of 2008, critics of the ex-gay movement have pointed to at least three prominent ex-gay activists whose web pages or recent statements spread unhealthy myths and ignorance about the human health disaster of HIV/AIDS.

(Read More)

Focus on the Family Promotes Culture of Death, Says TWO

NEW YORK — TruthWinsOut.org (TWO) condemned Focus on the Family today for distorting Centers for Disease Control (CDC) statistics on HIV and encouraging the very sexual behavior that spreads the disease. By doing so, Focus on the Family is promoting a culture of death and encouraging sexually active people to act recklessly and irresponsibly, says TWO.

Last week, the United States acknowledged it had underreported new cases of HIV. It revised the statistics from approximately 40,000 new infections in 2006, to 56,000 – a 40 percent increase. Focus on the Family spokesperson Jeff Johnston shamelessly exploited the revised data to oppose safer-sex practices, which would have prevented nearly all of the reported infections. Instead, he implied that gay men should marry women they did not find sexually attractive:

“Outside of a faithful marriage between a man and a woman, there is no ‘afe sex,’” said Johnston. “It is irresponsible to teach people that you can have ‘afe sex’ or ‘afer sex’ outside of marriage.”

“It is undeniable that safe sex works and has saved the lives of millions of people,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. “Contrary to Focus on the Family’ death-promoting dogma, there is no HIV crisis for gay or straight men who practice the very safe sex techniques that they have irresponsibly dismissed. Furthermore, how is a gay man in a relationship any more at risk than a heterosexual man in a relationship? Focus on the Family’ propaganda defies science, logic and common sense.”

It is also odd that Focus on the Family presumes that marriage is a panacea that makes teaching safe sex unnecessary. Mike Trout, the longtime co-host on Focus on the Family’ radio program, said on Oct. 17, 2000 that he had an inappropriate relationship with a woman other than his wife.

“Right wingers should learn about condoms too, so when they cheat on their spouses, they do so safely and not bring STD’ into the home,” said Besen. “This is particularly true in Bible Belt states which have the highest divorce rates in the nation. It is never helpful to promote ignorance over education — and that is precisely the sex education paradigm embraced by Focus on the Family.”
(Read More)

Anthony Falzarano – the founder of Parents and Friends of ‘Ex-Gays’ (PFOX) – was a leading “ex-gay” spokesperson in the late 90′s. His media-friendly story was quite unique, in that he claims he was Roy Cohn’s rent boy and partied each night like it was 1999.

Falzarano’s entry into the ex-gay scene in the early 80′s has always been a little murky. In one version of his tale, God told Falzarano to go straight before the AIDS crises hit. In another version, after many of his friends had passed away, God told him to become ex-gay. In yet a third version, one of his sexual conquests felt guilty after their encounter and introduced him to Christ. Obviously, these colorful versions are contradictions and they can’t all be true.

If there is one thing about Falzarano – he is not opposed to telling a good story, the facts be damned. So, his fictional book, “Such Were Some of You: One Man’s Walk Out of the Gay Lifestyle,” is sure to be entertaining and certainly much better than Exodus’ Alan Chambers depressingly trite tome, “God’s Grace and the Homosexual Next Door.”

Falzarano holds to the empty and unsupported belief that homosexuality is caused by a young person being molested – and he pulls bogus figures out of thin air to bolster his case. Indeed, he is known to invent new percentages on the number of gay people molested from one interview to the next. The man has no scruples and honesty is just an inconvenience in his bizarre universe.

He is also a proponent of spiritual warfare, once telling CBS News, “AIDS comes from the devil, directly from Satan. He uses homosexuals as pawns and then he kills them.” Another time, he called hate crime victim Matthew Shepard a “predator to heterosexual men.” (Read More)

Sporting a fog machine for its smoke and mirrors routine and an extravagant stage that would make The Rolling Stones blush, the “ex-gay” group Exodus International held its glitzy annual conference in Asheville, North Carolina. I was in town all week to partner with regional and state organizations to oppose the meeting and its dizzying array of distortions.

A dark cloud hovered over the Exodus event, with violent hate crimes unsettling the local GLBT community. At the very moment ex-gay televangelists were railing against homosexuals in the foothills, news broke of an 18-year old boy in Anderson, South Carolina whose father, “yelled, cursed, swung a baseball bat, prayed and tried to cast the demon of homosexuality out of him.”

In nearby Greenville, South Carolina, Stephen Moller, an anti-gay thug who murdered 20-year-old Sean William Kennedy outside a gay bar, just learned that he would spend approximately 10 months in jail for his ferocious crime. In this gross miscarriage of justice, the message was sent that murdering gay people was tacitly acceptable, if not encouraged. While in town, I spoke to Sean’s grieving mother, Elke Kennedy, who rightfully called the sentence, “a joke and a slap on the wrist.”

Meanwhile, on the opening day of the Exodus conference, an anti-bullying bill was stalled in the North Carolina legislature. Into this backdrop of brutality stepped the ex-gay activists Alan Chambers and Randy Thomas, who were determined to show the progressive residents of Asheville that Exodus did not stigmatize gay and lesbian people. Unfortunately, they kept tripping over reality and revealing the true nature of their duplicitous, deceptive and depraved ministry.

For a week, western North Carolinians were dazzled with disingenuousness. The audacity of the lies was breathtaking and the sheer nerve was mind numbing. By the end of the conference, everyone who had paid attention learned that Exodus leaders are shameless charlatans who lack even a modicum of morality. (Read More)

Pam Spaulding – from the award-wining blog Pam’s House Blend – has revealed that Obama’s faith-based initiative plan will bar reparative therapy, proselytizing.

A source with Senator Obama’s campaign has now confirmed to Pam’s House Blend that under no circumstances will funds from the program will be granted to FBOs for proselytizing or reparative therapy. Under the Obama plan, MCC congregations, LGBT-welcoming Methodist and Unitarian congregations, and other affirming churches will have access to funds to do much-needed work in communities large and small of great importance — HIV/AIDS education, for instance, relief efforts, etc.

By Wayne Besen

“What is it about gay sex that makes U.S. health officials want to play Chicken Little with AIDS prevention and public safety?” Tony Valenzuela writes in the latest Poz magazine, where he criticizes, “The clueless tabloid and public health hysteria over man-on-man sex.”

Valenzuela points to “an imaginary “super strain’ of HIV to the sci-fi MRSA superbug.” And, he is correct that it seems the media and society seem to always take on the absurd posture that gay sex is a mysterious ticking time bomb.

It is important to remember that gay bashing is a multi-million dollar industry. There is a vested interest by fundamentalist groups to convince the public that gay people are morally inferior and diseased, thus a threat to children, society and themselves.

The notion that AIDS is a punishment from God is a staple of right wing literature. Instead of focusing on the condemnation of unsafe sexual practices, extremist groups say that the very nature of being gay makes one a candidate for an early death. For example, the so-called “ex-gay” group Exodus International uses the Bible to justify their belief in God’ wrath and fury against homosexuals.

“Those who practice these sins “receive in their own persons the due penalty of their error,’” writes former Exodus Executive Director Bob Davies in “A Biblical Response to the Pro-Gay Movement.’ “In today’ society, homosexuality is reaping a bitter harvest…homosexual involvement reaps deep devastation in the lives of many who practice it.”

The Traditional Values Coalition has published what they call a “fact-based report on the dangers of homosexuals and homosexual behavior to children and to our society.” One “fact sheet” is called, “Homosexual Sex = Death From HIV Infection.”

Focus on the Family offers that, “solid, irrefutable evidence proves that there are lethal consequences to engaging in the defining features of male homosexuality…”

Of course, blaming victims for deadly diseases is nothing new and has ushered in some of the most shameful and horrific acts in world history. In a recent New York Times magazine article, epidemiologist and physician Gary Slutkin (the article was about gang violence, not HIV) spoke of how Chinese Americans were once thought to be inherently prone to disease.

“Chinatown, San Francisco in the 1880′,” Slutkin said. “Three ghosts: malaria, smallpox and leprosy. No one wanted to go there. Everybody blamed the people. Dirty. Bad habits. Something about their race…And people come up with all kinds of other ideas that are not scientifically grounded — like putting people away, closing the place down, pushing people out of town. Sound familiar?”

John Kelly’ book, “The Great Mortality” explains how Jews were blamed for the “Black Death” that wiped out an estimated one-third of fourteenth century Europeans.

“In January 1349, Basel burned its Jews on an island in the Rhine, while hygiene-conscious Speyer, fearing pollution, put its dead Jews in wine barrels and rolled them into the river,” wrote Kelly. “Strasbourg marched its Jews to a local cemetery and burned them…In Worms the local Jewish community, faced with death at the hands of Christian neighbors, locked themselves in their homes and set themselves ablaze.”

What I find bizarre is how the right continues to portray HIV as a gay disease when more than 80 percent of people infected worldwide are heterosexual. If God really wanted to punish the so-called “gay lifestyle” and send a message, wouldn’t He use a smart bomb — like blowing up gay bars on Saturday nights — instead of an indiscriminate shotgun blast that claims the lives of hemophiliacs and babies? The last time God was this inefficient, He placed George W. Bush in the Oval Office to carry out his will.

For reasons of political convenience and conservative correctness, anti-gay groups pick and choose who gets blame. In Washington, DC, black residents account for 81% of new reports of HIV infection and 86% of people with AIDS, though the city’ population is only 57% African-American. Based on anti-gay “logic,” this would mean that the “black lifestyle” is dangerous and should be condemned. Interestingly, they only focus on homosexuality and ignore other demographics and the largely hetero International AIDS epidemic because the inconvenient facts don’t mesh well with the right’ anti-gay storyline.

Gay people were around for thousands of years before AIDS and will still inhabit this planet long after the disease subsides or is eradicated. In the grand scheme of the universe, HIV does not define homosexuality any more than past syphilis or gonorrhea outbreaks in Europe defined heterosexuality.

Illnesses, like natural disasters, are not God’ wrath, but ordinary phenomena that affect different populations at any given time. History, however, teaches us that the most enduring disease is divisiveness in the name of the Divine, that predictably rears its ugly head at the very moments when healing is needed instead of hatred.