Uganda’s corrupt and undemocratic parliament is preparing to pass a bill that may execute LGBT Ugandans and imprison anyone who works to prevent HIV infection among LGBT Ugandans, who favors tolerance, or who fails to report gay or transgender loved ones to the authorities.

Ugandan and international human rights activists are responding with a last-ditch petition.

The petition will be delivered to President Museveni, members of the review committee and Ugandan embassies worldwide this week, as well as to key donor governments.

Ugandan gay rights advocate Frank Mugisha writes, “This law will put us in serious danger. Please, sign the petition and tell others to stand with us – if there’s a huge global response, our government will see that Uganda will be internationally isolated by the proposed law, and strike it down.”

The Reverend Canon Gideon Byamugisha says of the legislation, “It is violating our cultures, traditions and religious values that teach against intolerance, injustice, hatred and violence. We need laws to protect people — not ones that will humiliate, ridicule, persecute and kill them en masse.”

The host of the petition is Avaaz.org, which describes itself as “a 3.8-million-person global campaign network that works to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people inform global decision-making.”

The text of the petition reads:

To President Museveni of Uganda, Members of the Review Committee, and donor governments:
We stand with citizens across Uganda who are calling on their government to withdraw the Anti-Homosexual Bill, and to protect the universal human rights embodied in the Ugandan constitution. We urge Uganda’s leaders and donors to join us in rejecting persecution and upholding values of justice and tolerance.

Please sign today.

An Open Letter from Soulforce to Jan and Paul Crouch, founders of the Trinity Broadcasting Network, and the Evangelical Christian broadcasters who are featured on Lighthouse Television, TBN’s affiliate in Uganda, including: Matthew Crouch, Joyce Meyer, Andrew Wommack, Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland, Joel Osteen, T.D. Jakes, and Franklin Graham:

By now you are well aware of the anti-homosexual bill pending before the Parliament of Uganda. We urge you to denounce this bill. Use your personal friendships with President and Mrs. Museveni, with MP David Bahati (your Christian colleague who proposed this bill) and with Stephen Langa, (the Ugandan Christian organizer behind the bill) to take a public and passionate stand against it.

The media are blaming the visit to Uganda by three of your colleagues for this despicable and truly un-Christian law. In fact, for years you have used your Lighthouse Television programs, your radio broadcasts and your massive public meetings to warn Ugandans of the so called “threat homosexuals pose to Bible-based values and the traditional African Family.”

In no small part, you are already responsible for the current call by Ugandan leaders to enforce the old law condemning lesbian and gay Ugandans to up to 14 years in prison. This new law increases that sentence to life imprisonment and even death by hanging. Denounce this new bill or the blood of lesbian and gay Ugandans will be on your hands.

It isn’t just the “liberal media” who are condemning the bill. (Read More)

Bruce Wilson of Talk To Action – a veteran watchdog of the Christian Right — has created a very short documentary called “Transforming Uganda.”

Please share the video with friends or colleagues, and spread the word that the Uganda antigay genocide legislation is not an isolated incident. In fact, the “transformational” movement is working underground in several cities in America.

Transforming Uganda / high resolution from Bruce Wilson on Vimeo.

Related:
More about the documentary
Resource directory for New Apostolic Reformation

Rep. Tammy Baldwin today chaired a Congressional hearing in strong opposition to pending legislation in Uganda that would outlaw all same-sex attraction and make any form of sexual relations between people of the same gender punishable by life imprisonment or execution.

Like others in South Africa over the past few years, I have long been asking the South African government for an explanation for not signing the UN Statement to Decriminalize Homosexuality in 2008 and what they meant when they said they did so on the grounds of “having principles“. It seems they have been answering my question in increments.

I got an inkling of what this might mean when our new president, who is on record for making homophobic statements in the media, went on stage in the hall of the Rhema cult and placed gay rights on the bargaining table for right wing religious fundamentalists less than a month before the General Election in 2009.

Not long after that, the ANC and Ray Macaulay started working together in a joint venture called the NILC (the National Interfaith Leadership Coalition) more commonly referred to as “the God Squad” which has ousted the long-standing South African Council of Churches in religious dealings with government. The God Squad leadership includes four ANC MP’s, including the Chief Whip of Parliament and has in press statements put out through government email, put removing gay rights from the SA Constitution right at the top of their list of priorities.

Yesterday I was utterly appalled to discover that Jon Qwelane, the homophobic and racist journalist who has for years been critical of gay people and their fight for human rights – and whom human rights groups have been lobbying for almost two years to see appear before the Equality Court – has just been appointed ambassador to Uganda! I take issue with this appointment, because this man has proved himself to be utterly intolerant, and prone to inciting hatred between races and sexual orientations alike. He is not a peace-maker, but a blunt instrument who would – if anything, make matters worse for the pink community in Uganda.

This man is so unbelievably bigoted that he even went so far as to write in his column that if he required blood transfusions, he wouldn’t accept white blood under any circumstances! His criticism of black people who embrace Western culture are referred to in derogatory fashion as “coconuts“, being black on the outside and white on the inside. Of course, many people ask how can a black person be so racist? Well, duh. Because he obviously has a major chip on his shoulder about white folks – and gay folks. Oh, and women too. Considering the history of this country, how can such people be allowed to perpetuate the old hatreds from that time and to reinforce them instead of lay them to rest? (Read More)

The “culture war“, now more than 30 years old – today is far from the obscure reference cloaked and made fun of by the little quotation marks which try to create the impression that the culture war is a euphemism and not really a war at all. The truth is very different, because when people’s lives are destroyed through the actions of other people – even people on the other side of the planet, even without the use of conventional weapons – and when people die - it is a war in every real sense of the word.

Far from fading out over time, it is a war that has escalated if anything – and now employs advanced weapons such as the internet, science, medicine, psychology and multimedia – along with more traditional hardware like covert operations, surveillance, intelligence, counter-intelligence, propaganda, politics, dirty tricks, entrapment, investigative journalism, expose’s, espionage, infiltration – and denial. (Read More)

Wow, this is an interesting development:

Late on Wednesday, the Supreme Court in Pakistan ordered that the government officially recognize a separate gender for Pakistan’s hijra community, which includes transgendered people, transvestites, and eunuchs. The court told the federal government to begin allowing people to identify as hijras when registering for a national identity card.

Such cards are necessary for everything from voting to more informal situations; patrons must present the card at cybercafes before surfing the Internet, for example. Not having an identity card, or having one with incorrect information, leaves a person vulnerable and easily excluded from society.

(…)

In addition to the order for government recognition, Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry also issued a warning that the hijras’ rights of inheritance, which are often informally ignored, would be enforced, and that police harassment would not be permitted, a sign, perhaps, of rulings to come.

The article also points out that India has recently made similar provisions.

It’s unclear whether this is a giant leap forward for the recognition of Pakistanis who don’t fit neatly into the binary gender construct, especially since, as Charli Carpenter points out, women still face such institutional discrimation in Pakistan.  My instinct is that it’s a definite step, since in so many societies (including, ahem, American society), transgender people still have to fight tooth and nail to be recognized as a legitimate minority worthy of protection.

Of course, the situation can be turned around and viewed quite differently.  Ever reliable for spot-on snark, curv3ball at The Poor Man Institute assesses the situation as such:  ”Pakistan has suffered a costly setback in the My-Taliban-Is-More-Retrograde-Than-Your-Taliban Olympics.”

Hehindeedy!

Eighteen months ago, British antigay activist Stephen Green was planning to open an “ex-gay” school to perform fake miracles against LGBT people — for a profit, of course.

Now, however, Green prefers a more direct solution for homosexuals:

Execute them.

(According to PinkNews, Green also believes husbands have a Biblical allowance to rape their wives.)

A document on Exodus International’s web site has, since 1996, rejected the notion that the world’s homosexual or LGBT people are entitled to human rights.

In a PDF file located on the Exodus site (backup copy here), Exodus affirms antigay Episcopalians’ failed heresy trial against Bishop Walter Righter for ordaining a noncelibate gay Christian man.

Regarding the human rights of homosexual persons, Exodus says (emphasis is ours):

The casting by Bishop Righter and his supporters of the trial as a trial of “justice” is inflammatory and disingenuous. They act as if their idea of justice was self-evident. In fact, their justice is clearly a reflection of a secular radical ideology that dilutes the category of basic human rights by applying rights language to interest and lifestyle groups.

Here’s an image copy of this text:

The footer of every page clearly indicates that the document is being hosted and automatically generated (or re-generated) by Exodus International. (Click the image for a full-size view.)

The document concludes:

This document was prepared and distributed in support of the Presenting Bishops by: Concerned Clergy and Laity in the
Episcopal Church, Post Office Box 36433, Grosse Pointe, Michigan 48236. More information on the purpose and work of
CCLEC may be had by calling 1-800-307-7609.

The document is dated February 1996.

For up to 13 years, it appears, Exodus has hosted this document which leaps far beyond the topic of Bishop Righter to reject the basic human rights of sexual minorities.

When I consider Exodus’ keynote role in the March 2009 conference which launched Uganda’s campaign for antigay genocide — and Exodus’ refusal to condemn the campaign until seven months later — I am not surprised by this finding.

Nor am I surprised, given this document, that antigay Anglicans who collaborated with the Righter document have likewise refused to condemn the Uganda campaign.

Do you know who is spending your tax dollars in Uganda?

No? Neither do a number of organizations that have sued the State Department for access to this information — and have received little data in return.

The international AIDS charity AVERT hosts a web page which diplomatically explains the complexity (aka unaccountability) of foreign-aid recipients to U.S. taxpayers.

At a very basic level, it is apparent that U.S. tax dollars are transferred — in amounts counted in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars — to “prime partners” who then reallocate (some might say, launder) the foreign aid to “subpartners.” Each new layer of aid-laundering reduces the accountability of that aid to its original purpose.

Uganda is one of the largest single African recipients of PEPFAR HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment aid.

In Uganda, according to AVERT, two of the leading “prime partners” are Catholic Relief Services (which steers Ugandans toward abstinence-only education and prevention) and the conservative Children’s AIDS Fund — formerly the Americans for a Sound AIDS/HIV Policy — which likewise denies Ugandans easy access to comprehensive education and prevention methods.

Uganda’s designated prime partners contract out their aid allocations to some reputable outfits — but they also hire the likes of Uganda’s Martin Ssempa and other “faith-based” antigay vigilante leaders that have used the aid to promote hate-based myths about LGBT Ugandans: Specifically, the myths that LGBT people are pedophiles, that they “recruit” heterosexuals, that they are lust-crazed and rapacious vagabonds, and that they are primarily responsible for HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Please contact your congressional representative and senators. Ask them to demand full transparency and accountability of foreign-aid prime partners and subpartners to national policy objectives. All partners should comply with U.S. and international protocols for human rights and individual liberty — including freedom from ethnic, religious, and sexual discrimination, and freedom from religion-based bias in partners’ offerings of education, services, and materials.

No recipient of federal aid should offer health care or advice that is officially discouraged or rejected by the American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association, or American Psychological Association.

If a recipient or sub-recipient of U.S. aid enforces religious principles that prevent it from providing comprehensive and non-sectarian education, prevention, and treatment to all, then its access to federal aid should be eliminated or tightly regulated.