MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow has managed to elicit statements from the three U.S. ex-gay activists who, in March 2009, keynoted the conference which launched Uganda’s current antigay death-penalty and mass-suppression campaign.
The Anti-Homosexuality Bill calls for the nation to execute its sexually active LGBT and HIV-positive citizens — and to imprison family members, friends, doctors and pastors who fail to turn their LGBT peers in to police.
While the three activists step back from demanding an all-out death-penalty — some of them prefer mandatory brainwashing or life imprisonment — none regret having launched the campaign in the first place.
The conference lead organizer, the so-called Family Life Network, clearly expressed its intent before and during the conference and has remained active in the campaign since then.
With the continued support of Exodus International for his recent pro-vigilantism conference, Uganda ex-gay activist Stephen Langa on March 15 followed through on threats to renew a campaign of antigay vigilantism across the African nation, according to Box Turtle Bulletin.
Then, on March 19, U.S. writer Richard Rosendall noted that Uganda’s antigay vigilante campaigns may be subsidized by U.S. taxpayers through evangelical groups’ misuse of former President Bush’s abstinence-only AIDS funding in Africa.
And on March 22, Langa put self-proclaimed child molester and “ex-gay” George Oundo on the soapbox before Ugandan pro-government (antigay) media, to declare that all gay Ugandans are “targeting mostly children ‘because they are easy to initiate and they like easy things.’ ” Oundo projected his own sickness onto gay people, and accused Ugandan anti-violence and pro-equality groups of enabling his alleged past acts of child molestation. Oundo, who was arrested and possibly tortured by the Ugandan government in 2008, now works for antigay pastor Martin Ssempa, who has coordinated past Ugandan vigilante campaigns that were monitored by Human Rights Watch:
Campaigns with access to millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars that were intended for AIDS prevention, but which increased the spread of AIDS through vigilantism, prejudice, miseducation, and denial of access to condoms.
The new campaign by Langa, aided without apology by Exodus, may enjoy ongoing support from U.S. taxpayers unless action is taken to stop the funding.
The ranks of antigay activism may be divided into three castes:
1. Intellectually honest anti-liberty scholars, such as David Blankenhorn
2. Illogical and frequently dishonest political spin artists such as Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, both of which set lower limits on unethical tactics that might backfire upon them
3. Defamatory, profane, and indecent activists including Fred Phelps, Scott Lively, and Oklahoma state legislator Sally Kern
As Box Turtle Bulletin discusses in depth, Exodus International has abandoned the second caste for the third.
According to the conservative Christian Post, Exodus International President Alan Chambers applauds board member Don Schmierer for collaborating with Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively and with Stephen Langa, Ugandan leader of a campaign to imprison gay people, force gays into ex-gay re-education centers, and foster vigilante violence against gay people whom Langa falsely deems to be pedophiles because they oppose violence against gay youths.
One pro-exgay pundit is quoted protesting Exodus’ support for the conference.
I’ve disagreed several times with ex-gay blogger Karen Keen, who seemed a bit too unskeptical of obvious wrongdoing by certain Exodus International leaders and ministries, a wee bit too tolerant of harm done to most former ex-gays for the supposed benefit of a few.
However, I give Keen credit for not only acknowledging, but also agreeing with, key concerns about Exodus International’s keynote role last week in a Uganda antigay conference.
Keen writes at length about the conference and Exodus’ responsibilities. I encourage readers to view Keen’s entire article; here are some excerpts. (Read More)
SA GLAAD hereby expresses its solidarity and support for American GLBT advocacy groups who yesterday berated the anti-gay group Exodus International for its public involvement and support of those who are responsible for vigilante violence and state-sanctioned persecution of gays, lesbians and trans people in Uganda.
SA GLAAD wholeheartedly supports the initiative of the coalition of Truth Wins Out (TWO), Ex-Gay Watch, and Box Turtle Bulletin in their confrontation of these homophobic groups — and in particular Exodus International which is the largest homophobic anti-GLBT US group.
For a decade or longer, GLBT refugees have been fleeing Uganda to escape violence and persecution. Police arrest and torture suspected GLBT and activists fear for their lives. The mistaken belief that gay people “recruit” is widespread in Uganda. Tabloid newspapers regularly publish pictures of suspected GLBT with details allowing people to identify them and even to target them. Rampant religious fundamentalism is seen to lie at the root of this problem. (Read More)
We, the undersigned organizations, have monitored the ex-gay industry for more than a decade. To our great horror, prominent members of the ex-gay organization Exodus International participated last week in a conference in Uganda that promoted shocking abuses of basic human rights. This included draconian measures against gay and lesbian people such as forced ex-gay therapy, life imprisonment for people convicted of homosexuality and the formation of an organization designed to “wipe out” gay practices in Uganda. The conference also featured Scott Lively, a holocaust revisionist who at the event also blamed the 1994 Rwandan genocide on gay people.
The facts incontrovertibly show that Alan Chambers, President of Exodus International, was aware of the list of speakers and abhorrent content prior to the conference. Exodus board member Don Schmierer, who spoke in Uganda, made no objections to the radical and dangerous platform offered. Instead, these mortal threats to the lives of gay and lesbian people were met with a deafening silence. Exodus, in effect, gave this insidious conference its tacit approval.
Today, we take the unprecedented step of joining together to demand that Exodus International’s Board of Directors take immediate action to hold accountable those who used the Exodus brand to promote an atmosphere conducive to serious human rights abuses. The accountability must begin with reasonable and responsible action by Board Chair Bob Ragan, including:
Dismissing Exodus President Alan Chambers for his knowing role in using Exodus to promote human rights abuses
Removing Board member Don Schmierer for speaking at a hate conference that promotes physical harm and psychological torture against GLBT people
Boldly articulating Exodus’ policy against human rights abuses including forced therapy
Promising to end future participation in all conferences that call on the persecution and criminalization of gay and lesbian people
We do not take this call to action lightly. These steps are necessary and commensurate with the massive breach of ethics and trust by the Exodus leadership. Clearly, Exodus has lost credibility and its claim to “love” gay people in the aftermath of Uganda seems duplicitous and insincere. As long as Chambers and Schmierer remain at Exodus, the organization is hopelessly compromised and even complicit in grave human rights abuses. It is time for the Exodus Board, led by Bob Ragan, to assert its moral authority by appointing new leadership and taking the organization in a more humane and principled direction.
The documentation implicating Exodus leaders for their participation at a hate conference in Uganda is robust and powerful. Most important, it is guided by indisputable facts:
The Case
Don Schmierer is a member of the board of directors for Exodus International. Last weekend, he used those credentials while speaking at an anti-gay conference in Kampala, Uganda alongside noted Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively. Those credentials as a leader of American’s largest and most influential ex-gay organization gave Schmierer the ability to speak authoritatively about the policies and ethics of sexual reorientation therapy. And more broadly, his presence as a leader of Exodus International lent credibility to the other speakers at the conference and the policy recommendations that emerged.
And so with Exodus International’s prestige fully utilized, we were outraged to discover that the conference was a forum for some of the most despicable statements and recommendations we have ever come across. During this conference we heard:
Gays blamed for the rise of Nazism in Germany. According to one eyewitness, Lively spoke extensively about his revisionist version of Nazi history, based on his book, The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party. In that book and in speeches, he claims that Nazi movement was, at its core, a homosexual movement. Despite the historical record to the contrary, Lively blames gays for the rise of Nazism and for the Holocaust itself, and claims that “the connection between homosexualism and fascism is not incidental.”
Gays blamed for the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. Lively often claims that wherever gays gain the upper hand, they unleash a murderous rampage on innocent populations. In The Pink Swastika, Lively claims that “homosexuals are responsible for 68% of all mass murders in America.” According to one eyewitness at the Kampala conference, he extended that charge by blaming gay men for the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda, which borders Uganda just to the south.
Parents blamed for their children’s homosexuality. Don Schmierer presented his contradictory list of fourteen “signs that an adolescent may be struggling with gender issues.” But his focus appeared to have been on one suggested cause: it’s the parent’s fault. One eyewitness said, “He told participants that one of the biggest causes of homosexuality is the lack of “good upbringing” in families. In other words, good parents make straight children; bad parents, gay children.
Calls for new laws enacted in Uganda to require that those convicted of homosexuality be forced to undergo sexual reorientation therapy. The law in Uganda currently calls for a life sentence upon conviction for homosexuality. As far as we have been able to tell, no one at the conference called for decriminalization of homosexuality, nor a reduction in the current penalties. Instead, there were calls to strengthen the law to add the requirement that convicted gays be forced to endure unregulated and unproven therapies, under duress and against their will.
Announcement of a new organization designed to “‘wipe out’ gay practices” in Uganda. It is unclear what form or tactics this new organization will take, but another follow-up meeting was called for March 15. Our fear is that this will lead to another round of officially sanctioned extrajudicial anti-gay vigilantism, with Ugandan media — as they did in previous campaigns — publicly identifying private LGBT citizens and calling for their arrest or worse.
Given Uganda’s recent history, this is no idle fear. There were at least three successive public anti-gay campaigns in 2005, 2006 and 2007. In the most recent campaign, government-affiliated newspapers published articles identifying specific individuals with physical descriptions, addresses, places of employment — even photos — of those targeted, making them easily identifiable to neighbors, family members, employers, and the police.
Watching this unfold with the active participation of an Exodus board member has left us concerned with the direction that Exodus is taking. Some of us contacted Exodus president Alan Chambers on Friday, February 27 to raise our concerns about Schmierer’s participation alongside a Holocaust revisionist at this conference. We did this even though we do not believe it is the responsibility of Exodus’ critics to inform Exodus about the activities of an Exodus leader.
Chambers is not just the President of Exodus International, he’s also a fellow board member with Don Schmierer. He, along with board chairman Bob Ragan, had plenty of time to contact Schmierer to demand that he withdraw from the conference. (They do have cell phones, SMS text messages and email in Uganda, especially at the luxurious four-star Hotel Triangle in Kampala where the conference took place.) Chambers also had plenty of time of time to publicly articulate Exodus’ policy on forced conversions and criminalization of homosexuality, two subjects which are not new to the controversies surrounding ex-gay ministries. And he had plenty of time to clarify Exodus’ position on Scott Lively’s Holocaust revisionism and to denounce Lively’s dangerous rhetoric. But in all of this, Chambers has remained silent.
Don Schmierer, as a board member — and as one who was identified at the conference under those very credentials — could have spoken out against the excesses of anti-gay violence that has marked Uganda’s history. He could have spoken out against criminalization of homosexuality and denounced the policy recommendation of forced conversion therapy against the will of the individual being “treated.” Schmierer could have denounced Lively’s rabid anti-gay extremism, historical revisionism, and dangerous scapegoating. But in all of this, Schmierer has remained silent.
And the board, particularly Board Chairman Bob Ragan, could have exercised its oversight responsibility to ensure that Exodus’ name and reputation remain unsullied by its association with Scott Lively and the Uganda conference.
Exodus serves as an umbrella organization of some two hundred ex-gay ministries, each of which, according to Exodus, is “an independent organization which has met Exodus’ criteria for membership.” If Exodus is unable to regulate the actions of its own board member, how can we expect Exodus to monitor the practices and qualifications of their member ministries?
Despite informing Exodus of our concerns on February 27, they have remained silent on Schmierer’s association with Scott Lively, as well as their own links to him. And with the passage of each day, as we’ve received more reports about the conference, our concerns have grown to outrage.
It is not the first time forced therapy has become an issue with Exodus International. This issue was raised in 2005 when “Zach”, a 16-year-old gay teen, was forced against his will to attend an eight-week ex-gay therapy program at Exodus-affiliated Love In Action in Memphis. That same year, another father drove his 17-year-old son to Love In Action in handcuffs. Despite all this, Love In Action remains one of Exodus’ most prominent member ministries. Today, the calls for enshrining forced therapy into Ugandan law has been met with silence at Exodus. We call upon Exodus once and for all to address the morality of forcing people into unregulated and unproven therapies against their will.
Laws banning private consensual relationships between adult same-sex couples are no longer in force in the United States. While this is settled law in this country, it is not a settled position among most anti-LGBT organizations. Furthermore, criminalization of private, consensual relationships remain a reality in many countries throughout the world, many of which provide harsh, draconian penalties upon conviction. As Exodus International engages in ex-gay movements around the world, we call upon Exodus once and for all to address the morality of punishing private adult consensual relationships.
Because of Schmierer’s actions, Exodus International will bear responsibility for any renewed convulsions of violence that may arise in the aftermath of this conference. Given the highly volatile history of anti-LGBT vigilantism in Uganda, we find Schmierer’s actions there appallingly reckless and irresponsible. Lives and the well being of many Ugandans may well be at stake in the weeks and months to come. Because of the danger that Schmierer’s actions may pose to citizens of that volatile nation, we call upon the Board of Directors of Exodus International to remove Don Schmierer from the Board of Directors.
Scott Lively, along with another of Alan Chambers’ “good friends”, Seattle pastor Ken Hutcherson, is a co-founder of Watchmen On the Walls, one of twelve anti-gay hate groups identified and tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Incidentally, Scott Lively’s Abiding Truth Ministries is also listed by the SPLC as a hate group. While speaking at a Watchmen conference in Novosibirsk, Russia, in 2007, Lively excused the murder of Satendar Singh, a gay immigrant from Fiji who was killed in an anti-gay hate crime in Sacramento. We call upon the Board of Directors of Exodus International to resolutely and unambiguously denounce Scott Lively’s dangerous rhetoric. We further call upon the Board to end future participation in all conferences that call on the persecution and criminalization of gay and lesbian people.
It is clear that that Exodus under the leadership of Alan Chambers has failed to live up to its claim of challenging “those who respond to homosexuals with ignorance and fear.” The Board must take swift action and remove Chambers as its leader. If the Exodus Board fails to act, it bears culpability and full responsibility for creating a climate where hate crimes can and do occur both at home and abroad.
Uganda Family Life Network leader and conference organizer Stephen Langa has declared that Uganda’s gay people are child molesters, and that Uganda’s life-imprisonment sentence and extrajudicial torture and execution for homosexuality are too lenient.
Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, co-founder of the European hate group Watchmen on the Walls, has advocated that persons convicted of homosexual orientation be detained permanently for ex-gay brainwashing. If the brainwashing fails, then the convicts — it seems — would remain subject to Uganda’s life-imprisonment statutes as well as extrajudicial execution.
Exodus International board member Don Schmierer has given a silent nod to the above conference proposals: Exodus was warned in advance of these policies, and Schmierer continues to take no action whatsoever to protest them. Instead, Schmierer used his March 5 conference speech to blame African parents for sexual orientation, and declared that parents should raise their children according to U.S. evangelical Christian ideology — or else.
The appropriate opportunity for Exodus to retract its conference involvement passed some time ago. Both the Exodus Global Alliance and Exodus International board member Phil Burress have persistently sought to criminalize homosexuality. Exodus’ flagship Love In Action program has previously been caught allowing parents to force youths into involuntary ex-gay detention and brainwashing. The time for Exodus to act against any renegade board members and programs was before, not after, these pre-planned and persistent attacks upon human dignity and human rights.
In recent years, Exodus International chose to renew its membership in the Exodus Global Alliance, knowing that the EGA was acting to condemn gay people in Jamaica, Barbados, Uganda and elsewhere to years of imprisonment, torture, and vigilante violence. Exodus leaders have chosen to re-associate with Lively through illicit promotion of his Holocaust revisionism; and Exodus has chosen to re-associate not only with same-sex sexual-cuddle and tennis-racket therapy advocate Richard Cohen, but now with Cohen’s ex-gay foundation witchdoctor, Caleb Lee Brundidge, who is said to perform tribal magic rituals — dressed in a veneer of pentecostal language — upon would-be ex-gays.
Given Exodus’ deliberate choices to allow and affirm its leaders’ extremist activities, no after-the-fact cosmetic statement from Exodus (to the effect that its board members and flagship program act autonomously even when they use Exodus’ name in their activities, or that its leaders have a right to engage in public policy no matter how immoral their personal policies are) is acceptable.
Ex-gay movement pundit Warren Throckmorton called on Alan Chambers and Richard Cohen to have their representatives make public statements distancing themselves from the conference proposal for forced ex-gay brainwashing.
Ex-Gay Watch, meanwhile, warns that Exodus has a “very short window in which to soundly renounce the entire conference, the idea of forced therapy and, as we suggested earlier, call for the decriminalization of homosexuality in Uganda and the rest of the world.”
These calls against Exodus are noble, but insufficient.
Exodus was told in advance of the conference’s likely policies by representatives of Box Turtle Bulletin and Ex-Gay Watch. Exodus’ failure to pre-empt a leader’s role in extremist incitement to violence and affirmations of police-state activity is negligent and indefensible. That negligence, unfortunately, has long been Exodus’ intentional modus operandi: Exodus encourages its leaders’ and allies’ extremism, then repeatedly invokes a right-to-ignorance of its leaders’ ongoing immorality, incompetence, and incitements to violence. Executive vice president Randy Thomas is especially guilty of this abdication of basic morality and responsibility.
With its latest blank check allowing yet another organization official to affirm and collaborate with human rights violations, involuntary detention and brainwashing, and police-state activity, Exodus falls within the definition of a hate group — and a cult.
Until Exodus’ entire board and executive director resign, Exodus should be treated as a hate group by public schools, local governments, and community organizations.
A three-day antigay conference starting today in Kampala, Uganda, will promote magic, life-imprisonment, and parental blame-games as methods of “curing” people of their sexual orientation. Exodus International board member Don Schmierer of the United States will help keynote the conference.
Schmierer was scheduled to join Holocaust revisionistScott Lively and Caleb Lee Brundidge as speakers for the event, organized by Uganda’s so-called Family Life Network. Brundidge is a therapist within ex-gay Richard Cohen’s International Healing Foundation who also co-leads Extreme Prophetic, a movement of pentecostal extremists who anticipate that God shall empower them to raise corpses from the dead — right out of cemetery graves.
The decision of Exodus leadership, Lively, and a prominent therapist at Cohen’s foundation to endorse Uganda as ex-gay conference locale is appalling:
Uganda has an atrocious human-rights record. Security forces commonly inflict torture and illegal detention; the nation remains wracked by civil war; more than 1.2 million Ugandans have been driven from their homes; an estimated 20,000 children have been kidnapped by the LRA for use as child soldiers and slaves; and the country is led by president-for-life Yoweri Museveni.
The conference objective is to defend Uganda’s criminalization of homosexuality, which remains punishable by life in prison — or by extrajudicial execution, which also is common. FLN leader and conference organizer Stephen Langa justifies this brutality by falsely accusing gay people of recruiting children. (Langa offers no evidence of such recruitment.)
The conference is not intended for the people who actually struggle with their sexual orientation; it is targeted instead at antigay parents, politicians, violently antigay preachers, and vigilantes. Langa says the conference will (falsely) inform these audiences that sexual orientation can be suppressed and destroyed through changes in parenting, through brutal law enforcement, and through concerted campaigns of ostracism by organizations and communities.
Conference tickets cost 25,000 Ugandan shillings per day — U.S. $13, in a Ugandan economy whose per-capita purchasing power is about one-fortieth that of the United States.
Thus far, only one ex-gay pundit has spoken out against Exodus’ participation in the conference: Warren Throckmorton.
… Throckmorton says that he believes it is a big mistake for these US people to go to Uganda and discuss prevention of homosexuality when they are not scientists and have no training to discuss these matters in a reliable or factual manner.
He says people who are involved are not qualified to speak about the causes or change of homosexuality.
“None of them have any research on the topic or scientific qualifications to understand the research on the subject. They will be spreading old ideas about homosexuality which even Christian psychologists in the US and Europe have dismissed as without support,” he says.
He says that one of the presenters has a significant problem with credibility.
“Caleb Brundidge is affiliated with Extreme Prophetic here in the US. He leads groups to mortuaries to attempt to raise the dead!
“He believes God drops jewels and gold dust on worshippers but refuses to gain verification of these claims. He also claims he was gay and changed. Given his other claims, it is difficult to take any of his claims seriously.
“I also believe it is dangerous for those who might struggle to admit their struggle in Uganda when it might land them in trouble with the authorities,” he says in a commentary sent to our reporter after we broke the story of the Conference.
“Mr. Schmierer is a board member for Exodus International and he should not be promoting questionable theories of prevention in a country where just admitting being gay can lead to serious consequences,” he adds.
Exodus International and Exodus Global Alliance support criminalization and long prison terms for gay people in many countries in the world. Despite numerous requests, Exodus International has refused to disavow its membership in EGA or its role in EGA opposition to human rights. [And since 2002, despite my own personal appeals to Exodus executive vice president Randy Thomas, Exodus International has refused to establish and publish a clear and official policy opposing the criminalization and prosecution of homosexual orientation and behavior.]
Why, then, is it a surprise to Prof. Throckmorton when Exodus board member Schmierer acts in support of imprisonment and forcible brainwashing in Uganda?
Addendum: A commenter at Ex-Gay Watch points out that it is effectively illegal to be ex-gay in Uganda. To admit past or present sexual activities with the same sex, immediately exposes oneself to imprisonment, torture, or extrajudicial execution.
Perhaps the entire leadership of Exodus International should fly to Uganda, stay there for a year or two, and enjoy life under the laws and vigilantism that they defend. To advocate for laws that one refuses to live under is both sadistic and cowardly.
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