Writing today for Bay Windows, journalist Rex Wockner reported that the California Senate passed a resolution Aug. 30 condemning Uganda‘s Anti-Homosexuality Bill. The vote was 21 – 14.
Sponsored by Equality California, the resolution calls upon the U.S. State Department to escalate efforts to decriminalize homosexuality around the world. It also “encourages a more careful review of all United States funding and resources given to faith-based organizations in foreign countries.”
The resolution says that “some United States-based religious leaders have been fomenting fear and discrimination against the…LGBT community in Uganda” and that “the links between some United States-based religious groups and the antigay bill…have been well-documented.”
“There is a growing movement, supported and funded by some United States-based religious groups, to further criminalize homosexuality globally,” the resolution states. “[T]he Senate calls upon the United States Department of State to censure American citizens and organizations who contravene American foreign policy by demonstrated exportation of fear and misinformation to other countries. …”
The thesis here, promulgated by Australian pastor Fred Nile, seems to be that pregnant women will be more likely to just have lots of abortions, rather than consider the idea of their offspring being raised by gay parents. This happened in a meeting called in opposition to a bill which would legalize same-sex adoption in Australia:
Addressing the packed public meeting, Christian Democratic Party leader Reverend Fred Nile said the bill could deter women thinking of adopting out their child and “lead to the tragedy of abortion”.
“Any mother putting up her baby for adoption would never imagine that their baby would be brought up by two male homosexuals or two female lesbians,” he said.
“Is this really an ideological issue or homosexuals demanding yet another human right?
WHERE DO THOSE DISGUSTING GAYS GET OFF WANTING “HUMAN RIGHTS”?
Ahem. What a revealing statement from the “man of God” in Australia that was!
Thankfully, there are sane people in this debate as well:
However, the Benevolent Society charity and UnitingCare Burnside, one of the largest child and welfare agencies in NSW, have come out in support of the bill, saying it will benefit children and boost foster carer numbers.
“We believe that an individual or couple’s sexuality has no relevance when it comes to considering their ability to provide high quality care and a nurturing environment for a child,” Benevolent Society acting CEO Maree Walk said today.
The charity has had contact with many same-sex couples who have adopted children outside of NSW and have found they are highly sensitive to the needs of their child, Ms Walk said.
“Potential adoptive parents should be assessed on the basis of their suitability to parent, not their sexual orientation.”
I can’t imagine why. Of course, the states that have marriage equality tend to be run a little bit better than the slave states, so we shouldn’t give all the credit to gay couples. Just some of it.
Ugandan First Lady Janet Museveni — longtime ally of The Family and genocidal pastor Martin Ssempa — cautioned 8,000 youths at a convention last week against promoting tolerance of homosexuality.
“In God’s word, homosexuality attracts a curse, but now people are engaging in it and saying they are created that way. It is for money The devil is stoking fires to destroy our nation and those taking advantage are doing so because our people are poor,” she said. Mrs. Museveni advised the youth not only to listen to messages on how they can make money but also focus on spiritual growth. “You know that you will lose everything else when you lose your soul.”
Uganda’s tribal and sexual hatreds, the corruption of its despotic leadership, and its suppression of creativity and individuality lead many graduates to flee the country at the earliest opportunity.
Instead of correcting these social ills for which she and her husband are responsible, the First Lady accused expatriates of selfishness.
[Museveni] also decried what she called selfishness of especially the educated who leave the country as soon as they are educated by the same nation. “They bite the hand that fed them and they appease their consciences by blaming whichever government is there. These are a few of the ills that have beset our nation. We need to consciously make our minds to succeed,” she said.
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.
A youth group warned Canyon Ridge Christian Church on Sunday that its members will be held accountable for bloodshed resulting from its support of antigay genocide and U.S.-sponsored theocracy in Uganda.
According to Prof. Warren Throckmorton’s article at Salon.com, the group — led by organizer Chase Cates — said that ”if this bill was passed and people were executed or criminalized in any way, Canyon Ridge Christian Church in turn would be held responsible for financing Ssempa who so overtly pushed the bill.”
The populist megachurch has openly supported Uganda pastor Martin Ssempa, who is a leading advocate for the nation’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill drafts of which call for the execution of HIV-positive homosexuals; imprisonment of family members, doctors, and clergy who fail to report gay relatives and patients to the authorities for execution; and the suppression of educational or scientific materials which discuss homosexuality without stigma or stereotype.
We pause for one of those inspirational deep thoughts that are widely posted on the Internet and credited to no one:
Never deprive someone of hope, it might be all they have.
Never give up on anybody; miracles happen everyday.
Never underestimate the power of a kind word or deed.
Never waste an opportunity to tell someone you love them.
Truth Wins Out opposes the “ex-gay” movement because it deprives same-sex-attracted people of hope for authenticity. The “hope” that Exodus sells is hope for dishonesty, denial of reality, mischaracterization of other people, and the ultimately the power of hatred and control over other people — and their souls.
Truth Wins Out opposes the “ex-gay” movement because it denies that same-sex-attracted people and non-Christians can enjoy the same miracles as anyone else. In the worldviews of Exodus International and its allies, miracles are not permitted to happen to the politically and spiritually incorrect.
Truth Wins Out opposes the “ex-gay” movement because it denies kind deeds to same-sex-attracted people. Exodus believes that meanness, ostracism, and discrimination — the abusive myth of “tough love” — will force people to conform to the selfish wickedness of “ex-gay” and Christian Right activists. Instead of offering kind words, Exodus and its fellow Christian Rightists sugar-coat words of selfishness, condescension, and ostracism.
And Truth Wins Out opposes the “ex-gay” movement because it prefers to spend 18 months (and counting) promoting genocide in Africa, rather than tell LGBT Ugandans that they are loved unconditionally and tell antigay Ugandans that they have betrayed a God of love. Exodus cannot love anyone, because it denies the prerequisite existence of fundamental human rights.
The so-called “Living Word Christian Center,” an Exodus International member organization in suburban Minneapolis, said it neither supports nor opposes a Minnesota-based Christian punk-rock group which endorses the Islamist-style extermination of homosexual persons.
Here’s the organization’s statement, courtesy of Exodus’ blog:
Statement Regarding You Can Run But You Cannot Hide Ministries
Living Word Christian Center (LWCC) did host You Can Run But You Cannot Hide Ministries on March 25, 2009 in our Senior High School Youth department. The speaker was Jacob MacAulay the chief operations manager of their ministry, his topic was on the influences of pop culture in our society. LWCC does not support financially or in any other manner, nor is an affiliate ministry of You Can Run But You Cannot Hide Ministries. Our faith community at LWCC believes it is the love of God who draws all men (people) to Him, not condemnation or judgment.
LWCC does not apologize for hosting the hate group, does not acknowledge the rock group’s loud-and-proud kill-the-gays message, does not clarify its own policy regarding the imprisonment or execution of homosexual persons, and does not admit to the incident on its own web site.
Meanwhile, You Can Run continues to bring its fundamentalist hate to gullible public schools in Minnesota under the guise of anti-drug and anti-sex music.
Since Exodus International continues to deny prior knowledge of Scott Lively’s Holocaust revisionism and his plans for antigay genocide in Uganda, we pause for a moment to take a quick look back. Over the past four years, Exodus and NARTH have been reminded several times of their ties to Lively — and both organizations responded by deleting the evidence of their ties from their respective web sites.
Wayne Besen noted in passing: “Another major NARTH contributor is Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, co-author of The Pink Swastika, a book that partially blamed gay people for the Holocaust.” NARTH subsequently deleted the linked page.
XGW devoted an entire article to the ongoing connections between Scott Lively and NARTH, the American Family Association, and JONAH (the Christian Right’s front group for Jewish “ex-gays”). After the article was written, NARTH and the AFA deleted the pages on their respective web sites which documented their ties to Lively. XGW had previously, in August of that year, published an article tying JONAH to another notorious Holocaust revisionist, Paul Cameron — and in February, XGW demonstrated that JONAH’s purpose is not to support largely non-existent Jewish ex-gays, but to convert Jews to politically conservative evangelical Christianity.
Exodus deleted that article from its web site shortly thereafter.
This brief list is not comprehensive.
For the past half-decade, TWO, Ex-Gay Watch, and Box Turtle Bulletin have written numerous articles about Scott Lively — as have our friends at Right Wing Watch and the Southern Poverty Law Center. We know from blog comments and site logs that Exodus staffers monitor these sites. We know that they deleted incriminating articles after we spotlighted them.
And we observe that, even after the past year in which Lively has publicly used his endorsements from Exodus, NARTH, and AFA to fuel his campaign for African genocide, Exodus International still has expressed neither regret nor retraction of its endorsements.
The South Africa Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (SA GLAAD) has drafted a protest e-mail regarding Malawi’s arrest, remand, conviction, sentencing and incarceration of Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza, Amnesty International’s prisoners of conscience.
Please consider writing your own messages to the following officials, using the following bullet points to craft a brief message in your own words.
To: justice@malawi.gov.mw, sg-justice@sdnp.org.mw, lawcom@lawcom.mw, lawcom@sdnp.org.mw, highcommalai@telkomsa.net, distms@malawi.gov.mw, infopol@africa-online.net, chadzapg@malawi.gov.mw,
Subject: Free Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza now
Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza were disingenuously convicted of a supposed indecent act: Daring to hold a symbolic marriage ceremony.
The law under which they were convicted is a remnant from the Western colonial era.
The pair has been adopted as “prisoners of conscience” by Amnesty International. The governments of Great Britain and the United States of America, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, have vocally opposed the conviction. The UNHCR said that protection against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is a fundamental human right that cannot be overruled on cultural grounds.
The sentence is inhumane. The refusal of bail and the remand of Steven and Tiwonge are abhorrent.
It is time for Malawi to rid itself from the defunct colonial codified discriminations and human rights oppressions.
On these bases, Malawi has no ethical or cultural justification for continuing to incarcerate these men and others like them.
U.S. cable network Current TV is premiering a can’t-miss documentary this week:
The network’s Vanguard program traveled to Uganda to “trace the influence of American evangelical leaders on a proposed law that could make being gay punishable by death.”
The episode premieres on Wednesday, May 26 at 10/9c. Current TV is available on DIRECTV channel 358, DISH Network channel 196, Comcast channel 107 (most cities) or 125 (Dallas and Seattle), AT&T U-verse channel 189, and various Time Warner Digital channels. Portions of its broadcasts are also available at Current.com/video.
Update: The documentary is now viewable via Hulu. (Hat tip: Ex-Gay Watch)
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