We know you are teetering on the brink of total irrelevancy and that your mind doesn’t seem to be what it once was [a lateral move, I know], but when you complain that Obama is defending gay people in foreign countries but not defending religious minorities, i.e. persecuted Christians in other countries, you are simply confused. It was already our policy to promote the sorts of human rights you support abroad. We simply are now explicitly including people that make your little soul un-comfy, as well.
Yet again, it bears repeating. Liberals are the actual “pro-life” people in this country, as we support the rights of all people to survive and thrive. Wingnuts like Pat are really only concerned about non-gay, mostly white Christians and, purportedlly, fetus-Americans.
Recognizing that America’s own record on LGBT equality is “far from perfect,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on nations around the world to recognize that “gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights,” during a speech in Geneva, Switzerland this afternoon. Clinton’s address builds on a memorandum President Obama issued earlier today directing all agencies to “promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons.”
Clinton also announced that the administration is launching a $3 million global equality fund to support the work of civil society organizations working on these issues around the world. The fund will help human rights groups “record facts so they can target their advocacy, learn how to use the law as a tool, manage their budgets, train their staffs and forge partnerships with women’s organizations and other Human Rights groups,” Clinton said.
(A transcript of Secretary Clinton’s remarks can be found here.)
Wayne, Evan and I constantly write about the importance of electing LGBT people and allies to political office, and today’s historic speech should put an end to any skepticism about that point. After all, Secretary Clinton is articulating the official policy of the United States of America under a pro-equality administration. There’s absolutely no way she would have delivered a groundbreaking address to the United Nations, exclusively devoted to LGBT rights worldwide, had she not been specifically authorized to do so at the highest level of the executive branch.
Today’s speech should also serve to both galvanize the American LGBT community and throttle us out of any apathy anyone might feel about throwing our enthusiastic support, checkbooks, blood, sweat, and tears into electing pro-equality candidates.
Members of our nation’s LGBT community should make no mistake: apathy at the ballot box, or anything less than a full commitment to providing the maximum amount of support possible — of all kinds, on all fronts, and at all levels — to political leaders who explicitly support LGBT rights inadvertently helps to hand the country over to people who have specifically and repeatedly promised to do everything in their power to make sure advances like this are stopped for as long as possible, by any means possible, regardless of the consequences to millions of LGBT people around the world.
It’s good to see that the First World is taking notice of the brave, courageous gay activists of Uganda:
Ugandan gay activist Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera has been given the prestigious Martin Ennals rights award.
The 10 organisations which make up the award jury said she was courageous and faced harassment because of her work.
[...]
In January, her colleague David Kato was murdered not long after suing a paper that outed them both as gay. Police denied the killing was because of his sexuality.
Three months before the murder, Uganda’s Rolling Stone newspaper published the photographs of several people it said were gay, including activist Mr Kato, with the headline “Hang them.”
The name of Ms Nabagesera, the founder of gay rights organisation Freedom and Roam Uganda, also appeared on the list.
Still standing with the bigots in Uganda? Notable American conservative Evangelicals. “What’s new?,” says we.
It’s refreshing when major extremist Christian leaders wear their professional victim status on their sleeves, or in this case, their elaborate frocks:
VATICAN CITY (RNS) A Vatican official told a United Nations body on Tuesday (March 22) that people who openly object to homosexual behavior are at risk of losing their human rights when they are prosecuted or stigmatized for their beliefs.
“People are being attacked for taking positions that do not support sexual behavior between people of the same sex,” said Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi, the Vatican’s representative to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.
“When they express their moral beliefs or beliefs about human nature, which may also be expressions of religious convictions, or state opinions about scientific claims, they are stigmatized, and worse — they are vilified, and prosecuted,” Tomasi said.
“The truth is, these attacks are violations of fundamental human rights, and cannot be justified under any circumstances.”
In his statement, Tomasi said the Vatican “condemn(ed) all violence that is targeted against people because of their sexual feelings and thoughts, or sexual behaviors.” The Vatican also rejects all legal discrimination “based just on the person’s feelings and thoughts, including sexual thoughts and feelings.”
Their HUMAN RIGHTS?! Please, Archbishop Whoever, tell me about the extremist anti-gay Christians who have been denied housing, bullied, murdered, jailed for being bigots having a “moral objection to homosexuality.” No, seriously.
Reports by U.S. and Ugandan news organizations that Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill had been “shelved” are, once again, incorrect.
This misunderstanding periodically occurs when reporters or editors misunderstand Uganda’s legislative usage of the term “tabled,” which means that a bill has been put “on the table” for eventual consideration, not that the bill has been withdrawn. The misunderstanding also happens when officials in the Uganda leadership anonymously seek to dampen foreign donors’ alarm over Uganda’s worsening human-rights situation with false assurances.
Conservative Christian pundit Warren Throckmorton clarified the bill’s status in a post on Monday.
Today, Mr. Tashobya [member of the committee overseeing the bill] told me that nothing had changed regarding the time table for considering the bill. He said the Parliament will reconvene very soon after the February 18 elections and consider the remaining bills, including the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
Throckmorton adds:
Jeff Sharlet reported a conversation with [David] Bahati on the matter. CNN interviewed David Bahati who said clearly that the bill would be considered. In November, Bahati told me that the bill would be considered before the Parliament ended in May. He confirmed that again to Rachel Maddow in December when he was in the US. Finally, Stephen Tashobya, the chair of the Ugandan committee which has jurisdiction over the bill, told me that the Anti-Homosexuality would be considered after the nation holds elections in February. Today, he said nothing has changed.
My goodness, Wendy, kids these days call this “emo.” Wendy Wright, preznit of Concerned Women for America, has a piece at the American Thinker [sic] where she bemoans the Obama administration’s contention that discrimination is alive and well in the United States:
What comes through is that President Obama’s crew thinks America is congenitally discriminatory, and his administration is bravely soldiering into this morass against the unwashed masses to create an equal society.
As the report states, “[w]ork remains to meet our goal of ensuring equality before the law for all.” Which American laws or institutions enshrine discrimination? Not mentioned. No matter — when you’re convinced that Americans are bigots, there is no need to provide proof.
Um, actually, Wendykins, it’s more that it’s self-evident to sane people which laws enshrine discrimination. There’s no need for a long-winded explanation.
Later on, she claims that the only people who are really discriminated against are Fundamentalist Christians Like Wendy. Oh, her tale of woe and lamentation:
Homosexual activists conducted a campaign of harassment, threats, vandalism, and attacks on employment against people who support traditional marriage — with particular venom toward religious people. The vile assaults on Carrie Prejean for merely expressing her views pulled away the curtain that had been hiding how homosexual activists routinely treat decent people who dissent. It raised the question: Who is the aggressor, and who is victim?
Bodycount? Zero. Injuries? No. And that campaign of whatever it is she’s crying about resulted in how many rights being taken away from Fundamentalist Christians? You get the idea. Meanwhile, gay and lesbian Americans still don’t have the rights Wendy does by virtue of the fact that she is heterosexual. So yeah, fundamentalists who want to remake America into a nation ruled by their backward beliefs are still the aggressors.
The Obama administration would answer that question in a manner different from how most Americans would.
[Source: Wendy's butt.]
Their report states, “In each era of our history,” there is “a group whose experience of discrimination illustrates the continuing debate of how we can build a more fair society. In this era, one such group is LGBT Americans.”
Did you get that? “In each era of our history” — that is, America is historically and inherently bigoted. Makes you wonder why they’d want to live here.
It’s funny that Wendy doesn’t actually try to argue against the statement that America has a history that is rife with examples of discrimination and bigotry. She just goes straight to her crying corner because She Doesn’t Like It.
But most telling is the language to describe the assault on traditional marriage. That’s where this report proves revealing.
Remember, since he ran for president, Obama has claimed that he does not support same-sex “marriage.” Yet he opposes the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the clearest federal statute that protects marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
Obama’s Justice Department sabotaged its defense of DOMA in a legal challenge, making such weak arguments that it guaranteed a loss. And he opposed California’s Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman.
Uh, no. Repealing DOMA and legalizing same-sex marriage will do nothing to change Fundamentalist Christian marriages. Women like Wendy are free to continue teaching the women who respect them that it’s best to be like chattel and give up career goals, etc.
In the distorted view of the Obama administration, Americans’ deep respect for the sanctity of marriage is categorized as “discrimination.” In their view, clinging to traditional marriage — the fundamental building block of society — is evidence of America’s breach of human rights. Deconstructing marriage to be “whatever feels good” is considered progress.
Stop saying “Americans,” Wendy, and stop pretending you speak for them. The polls on marriage equality have started to officially shift in our favor, and Kids These Days have already figured out that the Religious Right’s teachings on this subject are unmitigated crap, with large majorities of them favoring full equality for gays and lesbians. When Wendy uses the word “Americans,” she’s bitterly clinging to the bigoted beliefs of a daily shrinking segment of the population, and it’s kind of pathetic.
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.
The World Bank won’t decertify antigay parents group PFOX as a beneficiary of employee charity, but the Bank won’t match employee donations to the antifamily organization, either — for now.
Metro Weekly reported last week that the bank — part of a multibillion-dollar international foreign-aid institution that is governed by its 187 member countries, with significant influence from the world’s economic superpowers — had admitted Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays to the bank’s Community Connections Campaign. The Campaign matches employees donations to a list of authorized charities that claim to serve employees’ local communities.
The World Bank Group employs approximately 8,000 workers at its headquarters (pictured) in Washington, D.C. These staffers may choose the CCC as a means for automatic charitable donations from their paychecks. PFOX, however, has no documented ex-gay constituency in the D.C. area and, despite Bank requirements, provides no inclusive charitable services.
The Bank’s legitimization of a group that abuses youth and parents with discredited diagnoses and damaging “treatments” for homosexuality prompted protests and petitions by Truth Wins Out and other ex-gay watchdogs. One anonymous bank LGBT staffer complained:
“If a charitable association supporting female genital mutilation, a pro-life organization or an association claiming it can turn black people white had wiggled its way in the CCC, The Bank’s management would have removed it immediately and issued an apology.”
No such removal is yet forthcoming. Indeed, the Bank has claimed that “diversity” is the reason why an antigay, pro-bully group was added to a charity list that includes the pro-equality parental support group Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG).
While PFLAG is a legitimate support group for parents, with support from the mental-health community, PFOX is anything but.
As Truth Wins Out notes, a former PFOX board member, Richard Cohen (who still serves as a therapy guru to the organization), was intimately involved in efforts to create legislation in Uganda that would punish homosexuality with the death penalty or life imprisonment. Furthermore, the director of PFOX’s Speakers Bureau, Arthur Abba Goldberg, is a convicted felon who was sentenced to a year and a half in prison for bilking poor communities with bond schemes. And PFOX has also had its tactics condemned by the worldwide psychological and medical profession, with leaders from the organization being thrown out of professional groups such as the American Counseling Association for violating ethical protocols.
According to TBD.com writer Amanda Hess, a Community Connections Fund rep wrote to one concerned employee that, despite the Bank’s supposed commitment to a safe workplace, “it does mirror society and so there are staff with many differing viewpoints to accommodate which makes for a delicate balancing act” in the Bank’s charitable policies. Hence, inclusive pro-safety charities are to be balanced by exclusive pro-harassment groups with no demonstrated charitable purpose.
The Bank’s only concession thus far is a newly announced probationary period in which the CCC prrogram’s list of faux charities prove their popularity — not their integrity — with Bank staff. According to an internal memo obtained by Hess:
For this year’s Community Connections Campaign, Bank-matching funds will be provided to those organizations that have, through prior participation, established a track record of support with staff. Organizations that have come on the list this year will not be offered matching funds in this year’s campaign, though the Bank will match any contribution that has been made to this latter group prior to today, November 15 2010. We will review the new organizations after one year, to see if they have the staff and community support to warrant a match in the FY12 campaign.
Since the Bank management in D.C. is violating its own charitable policies and disrespecting respect human rights in its employee-charity campaign, pressure may have to be applied not only to Bank management, but also to key foreign representatives to the bank. Political pressure from Washington-area local political leaders has also proven helpful in the past.
Disclosure: The writer, Mike Airhart, is a former staff assistant of the World Bank Group.
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’.
Nearly a decade after religious extremists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, our nation’s anti-terrorism policy is in shambles. America is caught in a ruinous cycle, where we simultaneously fund the very enemies we fight, while embarking on morally bankrupt, logically incoherent, economically destructive, and politically suicidal campaigns in distant lands.
George W. Bush told us we invaded Iraq to bring democracy and freedom to the region, while Barack Obama has increased troops in Afghanistan to supposedly keep the volatile area stable.
Yet, this week the Obama administration announced that it is trying to sell the repressive regime of Saudi Arabia up to $60 billion in advanced weapons, including 84 new F-15 fighter jets. How exactly is selling out our values to prop up this fundamentalist dictatorship in the interest of our long-term stability? Could we try any harder to subvert our message of democracy, sabotage human rights in the region, and undermine reformers?
Ironically, only days before the announcement of this massive arms shipment to our “ally”, a high level Saudi diplomat told NBC News that he was seeking political asylum. Ali Ahmad Asseri, the first secretary of the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles, claimed he feared for his life after Saudi officials discovered he was gay and had a friendship with a Jewish woman.
Is such bigotry and persecution what our weapons are defending?
Asseri, who is now in hiding, posted a letter on a Saudi website, condemning his country’s “backwardness”, as well as its decision to allow “militant imams” who have “defaced the tolerance of Islam” to take control of Saudi society.
How easily we forget that eleven of the fourteen 9-11 hijackers were Saudi Arabian. At our own peril, we blithely ignore that Saudi Islamists radicalized nuclear-armed Pakistan. These Sunni extremists are still funneling money into Pakistan to build Wahabi madrassas that brainwash youth into becoming Jihadists. Saudi cash — earned by selling oil to liberal western democracies — is also responsible for the proliferation of mosques that preach hate throughout Europe.
If America really gave a damn about stopping terrorism and promoting human rights, it would invest massively in energy innovation, so we would not feel compelled to fund and arm a nation that treats women like pets, brutalizes reformers, and murders gay people.
Our current policy is insane. We turn a blind eye to international Saudi mischief, and then rely on our brave young soldiers to stop the fruits of their fanaticism in the killing fields of Iraq and Afghanistan. Occasionally, the violence spills over into an American or European city, and we all momentarily focus on the problem, before we get distracted and return to our gas guzzling SUVs and reality TV shows.
While the majority of Americans napped through our historic proposed weapons sale to an archaic country known as the financier of fundamentalism, most people were fixated on the “Ground Zero Mosque” spectacle, where an Imam of the moderate Sufi tradition wanted to create a community center dedicated to peaceful dialogue. Could our nation’s attention span be any shorter or our priorities more misplaced?
America must wake up and wise up if it expects to contain religion-based terrorism.
The first thing we can do is stop making this a battle of Islam vs. Christianity. The entire fight should be recast, as extremism vs. modernity and our criticism must extend across the board to all religions. Peaceful versions of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc., should be praised and rewarded, while intolerant, militant brands of faith condemned, with no exceptions.
To succeed, we must educate ourselves on the various sects. Failing to distinguish between a moderate Imam and Osama bin Laden is as foolish as a Muslim not knowing the difference between Rev. Pat Robertson and openly gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson.
What matters is not the broad label of the religion, but what each branch of faith is teaching its children. If hatred, backwardness, authoritarianism are the values taught, it will lead to divisiveness and bloodshed. When love, peace, respect, and modernization are imparted, societies will be uplifted.
Of course, the largest force in undermining national security is the GOP’s embrace of the Religious Right. After all, how can America promote its values and ask Muslim nations to separate mosque and state, when prominent American preachers and public officials are pledging to undermine separation of church and state?
Can you imagine how comforted the Taliban and Iranian mullahs must have been when they watched Glenn Beck’s recent Washington, DC rally and the theocratic calls to return America – a supposedly secular nation — to God?
It is in America’s strategic interest to promote rhetoric and policies that are aligned with our professed secular values. As long as our resources are being used to support nations that export extremism, we can’t say that we are truly in a war against terrorism. It would be more accurate to say we are at war against ourselves.
This misunderstanding periodically occurs when reporters or editors misunderstand Uganda’s legislative usage of the term “tabled,” which means that a bill has been put “on the table” for eventual consideration, not that the bill has been withdrawn. The misunderstanding also happens when officials in the Uganda leadership anonymously seek to dampen foreign donors’ alarm over Uganda’s worsening human-rights situation with false assurances.
Weekly Column
