People who haven’t dissected a pig since high school won’t want to miss MSNBC host Rachel Maddow’s dissection tonight of Ugandan Member of Parliament David Bahati, whose support for antigay genocide in that country has won him financial and political support from U.S. Republicans and evangelicals.
Dr. Warren Throckmorton reports that David Bahati, author of Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” bill, was denied entry to an economic summit in Washington, DC.
He arrived mid morning and was informed of the decision. It turns out that we didn’t have his proper e-mail address for his phone. There was a frank but calm discussion and Mr. Bahati was not able to enter the building.
There is heavy speculation that Bahati used the economic meeting as a front to coordinate his anti-gay eliminationist campaign with prominent evangelicals — such as the C Street Family.
If you are in DC or New York City and happen to see this madman, do not hesitate to confront him. He is our Hitler and should be treated accordingly. Make it very clear to him that we will not willingly walk into his prisons or death chambers without a fight.
Bahati will be on the Rachel Maddow show this evening to discuss his psychotic fixation with LGBT people — who are innocent and have done nothing to harm him. Yet, he wants us imprisoned or dead.
In my view, Bahati’s visa should be denied and he should immediately be arrested and deported. The United States and other civilized nations should make Bahati and anyone connected to the Kill the Gays bill international pariahs. If the bill passes, he should be arrested for crimes against humanity.
This video is an example of what this atrocious monster has done to peoples’ lives.
Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill author, David Bahati, plans to attend a trade conference in Washington DC next week, Dec. 6-8. But conference organizers for the International Consortium of Governmental Financial Management have told the genocidal madman to take a hike.
Dr. Throckmorton spoke to Bahati who said that he was still planning to show up and be a rude, uninvited guest with no manners. Conference organizers say that if Bahati crashes the event they will call in the muscle.
“…his attendance is not consistent with the mission of the organization….He [Bahati] will not be admitted into the building,” an event spokesperson said.
Good for the International Consortium of Governmental Financial Management. It is wonderful that they stood up to Bahati and not allowed this blood-thirsty tyrant to present himself as an honorable human being who belongs among polite company.
The member of the Ugandan Parliament behind a controversial “anti-gay” bill that would call for stiff penalties against homosexuality — including life imprisonment and the death penalty — says that the bill will become law “soon.”
“We are very confident,” David Bahati told CNN, “because this is a piece of legislation that is needed in this country to protect the traditional family here in Africa, and also protect the future of our children.”
Governments that have donated aid to Uganda and human rights groups applied massive pressure since the bill was proposed a year ago, and most believed that the bill had been since shelved.
Not so, says Bahati, adding, “Every single day of my life now I am still pushing that it passes.”
Who knows how much weight should be given to Bahati’s words here, but things are getting scarier and scarier for gays and lesbians in Uganda.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE from Sexual Minorities Uganda
KAMPALA, Uganda
On October 14, 2009 the draft Anti Homosexuality Bill was introduced to the Parliament of Uganda by Ndoorwa West MP David Bahati. Mr Bahati’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill stipulates the death penalty for repeated same-sex relations and life imprisonment for all other homosexual acts. A person in authority who fails to report an offender to the police within 24 hours will face 3 years in jail. Likewise, the promotion of homosexuality carries a sentence of 5 to 7 years in jail.
This Bill is an expression of prejudice, intolerance, discrimination and violence. The bill abuses the dignity, privacy and equality of people with a different sexual orientation and identity other than heterosexual. If passed into law, it will further legitimize public and private violence, harassment and torture.
It has promoted hate-speech in churches, schools and the media. It has led to defamation, blackmail, evictions, intimidation, arbitrary arrests and unlawful detention, physical assault, emotional and mental assault of LGBT activists, our families and allies.
The bill has further led to increased violence incited by local media, particularly The Red Pepper tabloid and recently launched Rolling Stone newspaper. The headline of the Rolling Stone viciously screamed “100 pictures of Ugandan’s top homos leak- Hang them” in their Vol. 1 No. 05 October 02-09, 2010. They published pictures, names, residences and other details of LGBT activists and allies.
“When my neighbors saw my picture in the paper, they were furious. They threw stones at me while I was in my house. I was so terrified somehow I managed to flee my home to safety.” said Stosh [Programme Coordinator- Kulhas Uganda]
“The sad truth is that most evil in Uganda is done by people who end up never being held accountable for their deeds. The Rolling Stone publication has incited violence against a group of minorities making them seem like less of HUMAN BEINGS” Gerald [Admin – SMUG].
The bill constitutes a violation of the right to freedom of privacy, association, assembly and security of the person as enshrined in Constitution of Uganda’s and International Human Rights Law.
The impact of such legal and social exclusion is being felt in the lives of LGBTI Ugandans. Sexual Minorities Uganda strongly condemns such laws and media witch-hunt of homosexuals.
We would like to acknowledge Human Rights institutions and activists, local, regional and international Civil Society, Development partners and friends around the world for the enormous support to the Uganda LGBTI community and request for your continued call to African governments to repeal the ‘sodomy laws’.
The September 2010 issue of Harper’s features a chapter-length excerpt from Jeff Sharlet’s upcoming book, C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy. A subscription or newsstand purchase required to read the full article, which is a must-read; what follows is an overview. C Street will be released on September 27.
For more than a year, Sharlet has warned of a secretive Christian fundamentalist group known as “The Family” or “The Fellowship,” which includes several U.S. and African lawmakers and Washington policymakers. Sharlet’s 2009 bestseller The Familydetailed the Family’s 70-year history, its membership’s undemocratic Christianist values, and their cozy relationships with key Washington insiders including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Expanding upon his earlier work, C Street now explores the motives and tactics employed by The Fellowship to turn the nation of Uganda into a test case and beachhead for authoritarian fundamentalist rule that — they hope — can be replicated across Africa and returned to the United States through influential African Anglican and evangelical megachurches.
Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill (or AHB) — still under consideration by Ugandan officials who are Fellowship leaders — calls for up to three years in prison for failure of family member, pastor, doctor, or other peer to report a homosexual; seven years for “promotion” of tolerance; life imprisonment for a single homosexual act; and for same-gender sex while HIV positive, same-gender sex with a disabled person, or, if you’re a recidivist, gay sex with anyone — marking the criminal as a “serial offender” — death.
The bill was launched after Exodus International board member Don Schmierer, U.S. ex-gay activist Scott Lively, and former PFOX president Richard Cohen’s protégé Caleb Lee Brundidge keynoted a March 2009 conference which collectively declared gay people to be pedophiles responsible for some of history’s great holocausts. The speakers agreed that Uganda (which already subjected LGBT people to life imprisonment) was too permissive and that tougher action was needed. Lively, in particular, was enthusiastic about the opportunity to force Ugandans into ex-gay brainwashing programs as the only alternative to execution.
The conference and the ensuing actions by Ugandan Fellowship leaders reflected a shift in tactics. Previously, African evangelicals collected millions of dollars from the U.S. State Department in supposed HIV/AIDS-prevention funds and then spent that taxpayer money on efforts to cut off Ugandans’ access to condoms, promote abstinence outside of marriage, and exclude sexual and religious minorities from Christian-run outreach programs.
Now, through the AHB, these political and religious leaders would use ongoing U.S. aid to openly foment ethnic cleansing. The United States would cooperate. Why? Because America has long needed Uganda as a base from which to secure American industrial interests, fight terror groups across the African continent, stabilize the oil- and mineral-rich territories of central Africa, and win African popular support through food, ecomomic, and cultural aid.
U.S. evangelicals have understood and exploited the importance of U.S.-Uganda ties for decades. As Sharlet notes:
The Family has poured millions into “leadership development” there, more than it has invested in any other foreign country, and billions in U.S. foreign aid have flowed into Ugandan coffers since a Family leader turned on the tap twenty-four years ago for President Yoweri Museveni, a dictator hailed by the West for his democratic rhetoric and by Christian conservatives for the evangelical zeal of his regime. …
Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, former attorney general John Ashcroft—both longtime Family men and outspoken antigay activists—and Pastor Rick Warren, are a frequent attraction at the Ugandan Fellowship’s weekly meetings. “He said homosexuality is a sin and that we should fight it,” Bahati recalled of Warren’s visits.
Inhofe and Warren, like most American fundamentalists, came out in muted opposition to Uganda’s gay death penalty, but they didn’t dispute the motive behind it: the eradication of homosexuality.
They may disagree on the means, favoring a “cure” rather than killing, but not the ends.
Decades of cultural and religious exchange have corrupted Uganda’s Christian churches, turning them into outposts of American fundamentalism.
Ugandan evangelicals sing American songs and listen to sermons about American problems, often from American preachers. Ugandan politicians attend prayer breakfasts in America and cut deals with evangelical American businessmen. American evangelicals, in turn, hold up Ugandan congregations as role models for their own, and point to Ugandan AIDS policy—from which American evangelicals nearly stripped condom distribution altogether—as proof that public health problems can be solved by moral remedies. It is a classic fundamentalist maneuver: move a fight you can’t win in the center to the margins, then broadcast the results back home.
The Fellowship may have overplayed its genocidal intentions — because of overwhelming international protest, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill is on hold. Some influential Ugandan leaders oppose the bill — but for the wrong reasons.
The closet, former ethics minister Miria Matembe believed, was a fine African tradition. That made her a liberal; she didn’t want to kill gays.
Her real problem with the bill, she said, “is it makes us all potential criminals.” She’d have twenty-four hours to report me or face a prison sentence of up to three years.
This, she thought, was unfair. To her.
“The Prayer Breakfast continues, but I no longer go to it. They were corrupted. It is the Americans! Confused as usual, exploiting.”
Sanctified brutality is difficult for ex-gay activists in the United States to perpetrate. But the African continent’s counterparts to Exodus International roam free: Corrective rape remains common. After a conservative Christian pastor and congregation correctively raped Victor Juliet Mukasa to make this transgender man “female,” the police blamed Mukasa. He and friend Yvonne Oyoo successfully defended themselves against police violation of due process — so Ugandan fundamentalists sought to change Uganda’s laws so that there would be no due process. They invited Scott Lively to numerous conferences, and drafted the AHB with the colonial concerns of their U.S. fundamentalist allies in mind. The language of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill declared itself a model not just for Ugandans, but also for other nations.
Sharlet explores certain disagreements within Uganda’s antigay movement.
One camp within the antigay movement, led by Pentecostal Pastor Michael Kyazze, argues that Ugandans must admit that homosexuality is an internal Ugandan problem. Martin Ssempa, Kyazze’s friend, had a different perspective, that U.S. and Europe are under the control of the homosexual. Ssempa had received $90K in U.S. PEPFAR aid and was guest of honor at Saddleback Church in 2005 and 2006.
According to Kyazze, homosexual predators recruit Ugandans through the use of iPods, laptops, cell phones — and UNICEF. His supposed proof: a 2002 UNICEF pamphlet, “the Teenagers Toolkit,” which referred to homosexuality as natural. Kyazze says the AHB is too lenient because it protects victims of same-sex rape from media exposure. But his objections may rest more upon religious favoritism than stereotypes about rape: While Kyazze is a pentecostal, his rivals MP David Bahati and ethics minister James Buturo are Anglican.
Ssempa has initiated antigay pogroms more than once. And before Ssempa, Ugandan dictator Idi Amin murdered hundreds of thousands of his countrymen in the 1970s.
In the 1980s, a war between dictator Milton Obote and [current president Yoweri] Museveni’s bush army killed hundreds of thousands more. Museveni, once in power, was different. He disposed of his enemies through “accidents” and frame-ups, not massacres. He wasn’t a kleptocrat, but he surrounded himself with thieves—on the theory, apparently, that rich men are peaceful men. Still, he is a dictator, and dictators need enemies. For years, the enemy was a vicious rebel group called the Lord’s Resistance Army, but the LRA has been reduced to a few hundred child fi ghters. Enter the homosexual: singular, an archetype—a bogeyman.
The nation, it seems, has not yet purged itself of barbaric tendencies.
David Bahati’s training in U.S.-style theocracy, political campaigning, and ethnic cleansing began in 2004 at The Leadership Institute in Arlington, Va., where he was invited to the Family’s headquarters and coached to seek out the Ugandan branch of The Fellowship when he returned to Uganda.
To him, homosexuality is only a symptom of what he learned from the Family to be a greater plague: government by people, not by God. The burden is on you, David, his American friends told him. Inhofe’s staff had sent word, he said, and there were others— about half a dozen American leaders who supported his cause. …
There was still hope for Africa. God would use the weak to teach the strong, a Bahati to send a message to America.
Like its siblings among the Christian Right, the Family coaches its members to be spiritual egotists on a messianic mission to impose their will upon ex-democracies, using selective words from the Bible.
Five words, actually, Isaiah 6:8, illuminated for Bahati by Jesus: “Here am I; send me.”
Smartly divorced, that is, from what follows, just two verses later:
Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, / Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, / And the houses without man, / And the land be utterly desolate, / And the lord have removed men far away, / And there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land.
Sharlet quotes Bahati and a pastor ally saying that Fellowship groups in the governments of countries across the continent — Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia, Congo — have requested copies of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
Time for the weekly wrap-up and then some music, so let’s go.
Ken Mehlman is gaygaygaygayGAYgaysuper-duper gay. Ann Coulter made fun of Joseph Farah and his WorldNetDaily on Fox News, without shame. Exodus International has no money, and still, no shame. NOM and Ed Whelan figured out why Ted Olson is so gay for marriage equality: his hippie liberal wife made him do it. Gary Bauer came up with a measuring system where each and every 9/11 victim is three feet long, which helps Muslims figure out how far away from “Hallowed Ground” they have to build their mosques. Memphis gay leaders pulled an inclusive nondiscrimination ordinance because the City Council wouldn’t give it a fair hearing, which led one Memphis resident (and a personal friend of mine) to stay until the bitter end to give the Council a bit of what-for. And of course, Peter LaBarbera, Molotov Mitchell and Ugandan MP David Bahati are still insane. Oh, and Wayne put up a music post of his own last night, so if you haven’t been there, go.
Instead of picking one song and hitting the iTunes shuffle from there, this week is going to be a little bit different. As a songwriter and composer, I’ve always paid particular attention to lyrical narratives, and the way that songs can work together to form an arc. The other night, my iTunes did something that I found magical when it played three random songs in order, which I then listened to in that order again, and again, and again, about eleventy times. The three songs are “Transatlanticism” by Death Cab for Cutie, “1000 Oceans” by Tori Amos, and “Run” by Snow Patrol. Aside from being three amazing, heartwrenching songs, when played together, they indeed form an arc. Sometimes there are deep oceans, but there are also lighthouses.
So those three songs, and then we’ll hit shuffle on the last one and see what happens. Ready, set, go. More videos after the jump.
“Transatlanticism”
“1000 Oceans”
“Run”
1. Dar Williams – “In Love But Not At Peace”
2. Janelle Monáe – “Faster”
3. The National – “Racing Like A Pro”
4. Imogen Heap – “Tidal”
5. Damien Rice – “Eskimo”
6. Neil Young – “Harvest”
7. Suzanne Vega – “Blood Sings”
8. Marissa Nadler – “True Love Will Find You In The End” [Daniel Johnston cover]
9. Van Halen – “Dreams”
10. U2 – “Dancing Barefoot” [Patti Smith cover]
No word on where that Van Halen came from, but I’m okay with it if you are.
Unfortunately, we’ve been consumed with Mehlman fever (antibiotics should do the trick) the past twenty four hours, so I missed this. Jeff Sharlet has a new book, and a new piece in Harper’s, which unfortunately isn’t available yet, but an NPR interview with Sharlet drops a bit of a bombshell about the private ambitions of the sick, twisted, maniacal Ugandan MP David Bahati, the sponsor of that nation’s infamous “kill the gays bill”:
“Bahati said: ‘If you come here, you’ll see homosexuals from Europe and America are luring our children into homosexuality by distributing cell phones and iPods and things like this,’ ” Sharlet recounts. “And he said, ‘And I can explain to you what I really want to do.’ ”
Sharlet accompanied Bahati to a restaurant and later to his home, where Bahati told Sharlet that he wanted “to kill every last gay person.”
“It was a very chilling moment, because I’m sitting there with this man who’s talking about his plans for genocide, and has demonstrated over the period of my relationship with him that he’s not some back bencher — he’s a real rising star in the movement,” Sharlet says. “This was something that I hadn’t understood before I went to Uganda, that this was a guy with real potential and real sway and increasingly a following in Uganda.”
And he has connections to American leaders. Sharlet explains that Bahati is one of the Uganda leaders of an American evangelical movement called the Fellowship, or the Family — the secretive fellowship of powerful Christian politicians who wield considerable political influence, both in Washington and abroad.
If that’s what Bahati says to an American journalist with a history of reporting facts, I’d hate to imagine what he says behind closed doors to American Religious Right wingnuts.
Bahati is an aspiring genocidal maniac, and continuing American support from fundamentalist Christian leaders just proves what so many have always said: They are our American Taliban, and the only reason they haven’t started bombing things is because they live in a developed country where the Enlightenment and secularization have had a civilizing effect on the most grotesque applications of Deep Religious Faith. Bahati just has more “freedom” where he lives than our American mullahs do.
In February, a brave gay Ugandan man living in exile appeared at the National Press Club in Washington with a paper bag over his head to denounce Uganda’s draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill. He wore the mask to conceal his identity because he feared for his life.
Today, Kushaba Moses Mworeko took off his mask to urge the African Anglican Bishops at the All African Bishops Conference in Entebbe to speak out against Uganda’s “Kill the Gays Bill” and other forms of anti-gay discrimination on the continent.
“It is time for Christian leaders in Africa to start promoting peace and stop persecuting LGBT people,” said Kushaba Moses Mworeko, who recently escaped to the United States. “I call on the Anglican Church to speak out forcefully against the Anti-Homosexuality Bill and to support decriminalizing gay relationships across the continent. As the church grows in Africa it must choose to be a force for good and not intolerance.”
Speakers claimed that the continent would have 673 million Christians by 2025 and lead Christendom in the 21st century. Egyptian Bishop Mouneer Anis spoke of the significance of this meeting when he told bishops from more than 400 dioceses, “There is no doubt that history is going to record what happens at this conference for future generations. This is no ordinary conference because it’s happening in an extraordinary context.”
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, (pictured) spoke at the event, but has yet to effectively use his bully pulpit to shape a more accepting environment towards LGBT people in Africa.
“The All African Bishops Conference offers Rowan Williams a unique opportunity to show leadership and moral clarity by denouncing Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill,” said Mworeko. “I urge the Archbishop of Canterbury to display a backbone and set a positive tone for the Anglican Church in Africa. His silence will be seen as a green light for the witch hunts against the LGBT community to continue.”
In a new Youtube video, Mworeko sent a message of perseverance and hope to his LGBT brothers and sisters still living in Uganda.
“We shall continue fighting for our rights and the time to fight is now,” said Mworeko. “This is about liberty, this is about equality, this is about justice. We are here to reclaim our freedom.”
“If Moses has the courage to put his life at risk by speaking out against intolerance and injustice, the least Rowan Williams can do is acknowledge the inhumanity of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill while he is at this conference,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “His noticeable indifference to the suffering of LGBT people in Africa and worldwide is a great stain on his shrinking legacy. Only by finding his voice on LGBT issues can Williams reverse the damage that has occurred on his watch.”
Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that fights anti-gay religious extremism. TWO’s goal is to create a world where lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people can live openly, honestly and true to themselves.
There is heavy speculation that Bahati used the economic meeting as a front to coordinate his anti-gay eliminationist campaign with prominent evangelicals — such as the C Street Family.
Via 
For more than a year, Sharlet has warned of a secretive Christian fundamentalist group known as “The Family” or “The Fellowship,” which includes several U.S. and African lawmakers and Washington policymakers. Sharlet’s 2009 bestseller 
Speakers claimed
