There is a piece in Christianity Today written by a “Timothy Shah,” which basically accuses gay activists of making a mountain out of a molehill in Uganda.  Of course, real investigative journalists like Jeff Sharlet disagree.  This is Shah’s read on the “Kill the Gays” bill proposed:

Instead, Uganda has attracted human rights activism because of a single legislative stunt by a single low-level politician named David Bahati, a member of the country’s authoritarian ruling party and an Anglican. In 2009, Bahati proposed an anti-homosexuality bill so draconian that it would make “serial” homosexual practice a capital crime and punish pro-gay advocacy with a seven-year jail sentence.

But the legislation has received widespread attention not primarily because of its draconian provisions, whose very harshness has repelled virtually all of Uganda’s major political and religious leaders—including the President, the Catholic Bishops Conference, and a parliamentary committee that recommended the bill be thrown out as unconstitutional, effectively stopping it in its tracks. Instead, a major reason for the attention focused on the bill is that many believe it is the fruit of American evangelical homophobia.

No, it’s both, sir. But he’s getting around to the real thrust of his piece, which is to absolve American Evangelicals of any responsibility for the consequences of their words and actions.

In the telling of journalist Jeff Sharlet, it’s the American fundamentalist gospel that turned supine Ugandans into raving homophobes. American “fundamentalists,” “evangelicals,” and advocates of “theocracy”—terms Sharlet uses more or less interchangeably—see Uganda as a crucial theo-political “laboratory.”

No, it’s more that the country was already rabidly homophobic [elsewhere Shah points out the statistic that a whopping one in five Ugandans are okay with homosexuality. Whoopie!], full of corrupt leaders who have chosen, on an institutional level, to make homosexuality the next scapegoat for the problems faced by the citizenry. This sort of strategy, of convincing people to blame people completely unrelated to them, or people who have less than them, has played out in the United States for years. The entire Tea Party movement is a case study of this sort of peasant behavior spurred on by political and business leaders. So in this already homophobic climate, American Evangelicals decided to go in and “help” with that “love of Christ” that looks like love only to people who are already inside their echo chamber.

But here is the statement from Shah that demonstrates that he fundamentally doesn’t get it. Referring to the conference led by Scott Lively, Don Schmierer and Caleb Lee Brundige in 2009, Shah says this:

There are, in fact, many reasons to doubt a causal or conspiratorial relationship between Bahati and American Bible-thumpers. Perhaps most important is that the agenda of the Americans who ran the 2009 conference was therapeutic, whereas Mr. Bahati’s bill is remorselessly punitive. His bill even contains provisions that would render the pastoral care advocated by the conference organizers illegal in Uganda.

Ha ha, like hell it was! First of all, no respected, grown-up mental health or medical association considers the work of Exodus to be “therapy” in any sense of the word. Moreover, this was the conference where Scott Lively dropped his “nuclear bomb,” in the form of a series of bold-faced lies fed to the Ugandan attendees, chief among them the insinuation that homosexuals were the kinds of people who caused the Rwandan genocide. Rwanda, of course, is next to Uganda. Perhaps Shah is not aware of the strange, bitter, gay-obsessed history of Scott Lively. If that is the case, click here. And perhaps Shah has never seen video of the presentation. If that is the case, hit the play button below.

So no sir, please don’t tell us that American Fundamentalists don’t bear any responsibility here because, after all, they were just trying to bring therapy and pastoral care to the poor people of Uganda! Those may be the buzzwords for extremist Christian eliminiationist policies against gay people, but they’re buzzwords just the same.

And encourage your ideological cohorts to stop trying to “help.”

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 Family detailed 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.

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.

His legislation has also been outright defended, or explained away, by Cliff Kincaid, Peter LaBarbera, Don Schmierer of Exodus, Lou Engle, Molotov Mitchell of WingNutDaily and several others.

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.

[h/t Jim Burroway]

The lead sponsor of Uganda’ controversial Anti-Homosexuality Bill, David Bahati, (pictured) was reportedly disinvited today from The National Prayer Breakfast, which is scheduled for February 4, in Washington, DC. According to The Advocate Magazine, Ambassador Richard Swett, a breakfast spokesperson, distanced the group that hosts the event, The Family, from Bahati and the “Kill the Gays” bill in Uganda.

“The National Prayer Breakfast is an organization that builds bridges of understanding between all peoples, religions and beliefs and has never advocated the sentiments expressed in Mr. Bahati’ legislation,” said Ambassador Swett.

This statement is not only astonishing, but it is inaccurate and dishonest. The Family is intimately tied and directly connected to the politicians who sponsored Uganda’ Anti-Homosexuality bill. As a result of negative publicity, The Family is covering its rear-end and scurrying away as fast as it can. However, it is completely outrageous, totally insincere and remarkably deceitful for The Family to deny the crucial role it played in the introduction of the “Kill the Gays’ legislation.

On November 24, 2009, Terry Gross, host of National Public Radio’ Fresh Air, interviewed Jeff Sharlet, the author of “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.” In the interview, Sharlet identified Uganda’ dictator, President Yoweri Museveni, as one of The Family’ “key men” in Africa. He also linked Bahati directly to The Family.

“David Bahati, the man behind this legislation, is really deeply, deeply involved in The Family’s work in Uganda, that the ethics minister of Uganda, Museveni’s kind of right-hand man, a guy named Nsaba Buturo, is also helping to organize The Family’s National Prayer Breakfast,” Sharlet revealed to Gross on Fresh Air. “And here’s a guy who has been the main force for this Anti-Homosexuality Act in Uganda’s executive office and has been very vocal about what he’s doing, in a rather extreme and hateful way. But these guys are not so much under the influence of The Family. They are, in Uganda, The Family.”

The linkage and direct connection is incontrovertible. Swett’s only comeback against such damning evidence might be that the actual National Prayer Breakfast does not promote death bills. Well, maybe not on-stage, but backstage is where this creepy organization recruits it’s “key men”.

Along with eggs and bacon, The Family is serving up extremism at The National Prayer Breakfast – even if the dirty work is done behind the scenes. This is not a benign organization and they have displayed atrocious judgment in selecting “key men” across the globe. The people they have held up as “moral’ have turned out to be monsters and it is time they apologize for the damage they have inflicted on innocent people.”

On February 2, respected religious leaders will hold a press conference to announce the formation of The American Prayer Hour, a multi-city event on February 4, 2010, with primary events in Washington, DC, Dallas, Chicago and Berkeley. Please consider attending one of these events, or hosting your own American Prayer Hour in your town.

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow and journalist Jeff Sharlet on Monday discussed Uganda’s “Anti-Homosexuality Bill,” which would execute sexually active LGBT and HIV-positive Ugandans and imprison, for three years, any relative, pastor, or doctor who failed to report an LGBT person to police within 24 hours.

Sharlet described the connections between leading U.S. Christian Rightist Republican leaders, evangelist Rick Warren, and antigay Ugandan leaders such as President Yoweri Museveni; pastor Martin Ssempa; and David Bahati, the Uganda “ethics” minister who is leading the battle to enact the legislation.

NEW YORK — Truth Wins Out (TWO) today urged world leaders and members of Congress to skip the National Prayer Breakfast, February 4th, in protest of “The Family’ (aka The Fellowship) direct role in promoting a bill that would lead to severe human rights abuses against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in Uganda.

“The National Prayer Breakfast is giving legitimacy to those who promote barbarism in the name of the Bible,” said TWO’ Executive Director Wayne Besen. “We hope that world leaders who care about human rights will reconsider attending this year’ breakfast. To say grace with the people pushing this hateful and dehumanizing bill in Uganda would be disgraceful.”

On National Public Radio’ Fresh Air, Terry Gross interviewed author Jeff Sharlet (pictured), whose book, “The Family”, is a groundbreaking expose on the clandestine group in charge of the National Prayer Breakfast. On the program, Sharlet revealed a “smoking gun”, tying The Family directly to the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009, which threatens liberty and life for all GLBT people living in Uganda. Here is the key part of the transcript:

GROSS: So you’re reporting the story for the first time today, and you found this story — this direct connection between The Family and the proposed [Uganda anti-gay hate] legislation by following the money?

SHARLET: Yes, it’ — I always say that the family is secretive, but not secret. You can go and look at 990s, tax forms and follow the money through these organizations that The Family describe as invisible. But you go and you look. You follow that money. You look at their archives. You do interviews where you can. It’ not so invisible anymore. So that’ how working with some research colleagues we discovered that David Bahati, the man behind this legislation, is really deeply, deeply involved in The Family’ work in Uganda, that the ethics minister of Uganda, Museveni’ kind of right hand man, a guy named Nsaba Buturo, is also helping to organize The Family’ National Prayer Breakfast. And here’ a guy who has been the main force for this Anti-Homosexuality Act in Uganda’ executive office and has been very vocal about what he’ doing, and in a rather extreme and hateful way. But these guys are not so much under the influence of The Family. They are, in Uganda, The Family.

GROSS: So how did you find out that Bahati is directly connected to The Family? You’ve described him as a core member of The Family. And this is the person who introduced the anti-gay legislation in Uganda that calls for the death penalty for some gay people.

SHARLET: Looking at the, The Family’ 990s, where they’re moving their money to — into this African leadership academy called Cornerstone, which runs two programs: Youth Corps, which has described its in the past as an international quote, “invisible family binding together world leaders,” and also, an alumni organization designed to place Cornerstone grads — graduates of this sort of very elite educational program and politics and NGO’ through something called the African Youth Leadership Forum, which is run by -according to Ugandan media — David Bahati, this same legislator who introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Act.

“It is unconscionable to pray with a group that is actively preying on innocent people in Uganda, just because of their sexual orientation,” said Truth Wins Out’ Executive Director Wayne Besen. “We call on all world leaders who care about human rights to opt out of this year’ National Prayer Breakfast. No one should break bread with a group that is breaking the bones and spirits of gay and lesbian people.”

Earlier this month, four members of Congress wrote a powerful letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to express alarm over the proposed law in Uganda.

“This egregious bill represents one of the most extreme anti-equality measures ever proposed in any country and would create a legal pretext for depriving lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Ugandans of their liberty, and even their lives,” said the bipartisan letter, signed by Reps. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc., Pictured), Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Howard Berman (D-Calif.) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.). “Particularly given the United States’ substantial contribution to Uganda through the President’ Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), we believe swift action is necessary to ensure Ugandan leaders understand this bill is wholly unacceptable and antithetical to democratic values.”

The United States embassy in Uganda also spoke out against the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009, calling it a major setback in the promotion of human rights.

“If adopted, a bill further criminalizing homosexuality would constitute a significant step backwards for the protection of human rights in Uganda,” the embassy’ public affairs officer Joann Lockard said in an email. “We urge states to take all necessary measures to ensure that sexual orientation or gender identity may under no circumstances be the basis for criminal penalties, in particular executions, arrests, or detention.”

Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that counters anti-gay misinformation, fights religious extremism exposes the “ex-gay” myth and educates America about the lives of GLBT people.

Additional coverage: The Family’s Sen. Ensign Scandal and cover-up

In March, American anti-gay activists traveled to Uganda for a conference that pledged to “wipe out” homosexuality. Seven months later, a draconian bill has been introduced that pledges to make good on this threat. The “Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009″ is so severe that it is designed to shred the spirit and suffocate the soul of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Ugandans. If it passes, Uganda will become a predator state that actively hunts down GLBT people to destroy them.

Uganda already punished gay intimacy with life in prison. But, apparently that was not harsh enough, with this bill penalizing anyone who “attempts to commit the offence” with up to seven years in jail. Additionally, a person charged will be forced to undergo an invasive medical examination to determine their HIV status. If the detainees are found to be HIV+, they may be executed.

This barbaric legislation stifles free speech by threatening anyone who is accused of “promoting” homosexuality with five to seven year prison sentences. Snitching on gay friends and family members is strongly encouraged because “failure to disclose the “offence’ within 24 hours of knowledge makes somebody liable to a fine or imprisonment of up to three years.”

Sadly, this witch-hunt has the blood stained fingerprints of leading American evangelicals. The Fellowship, (aka The Family) one of America’ most powerful and secretive fundamentalist organization’, converted Uganda’ President Yoweri Museveni (pictured top) to its anti-gay brand of Christianity, which is the “intellectual” impetus behind the anti-gay crackdown. The clandestine organization’ leader, Doug Coe, calls Museveni The Fellowship’ “key man” in Africa. Jeff Sharlet, author of “The Family”, writes of the African strongman’ conversion:

“So,” Doug Coe told us, “my friend said to the president, “why don’t you come and pray with me in America? I have a good group of friends‚Äîsenators, congressmen‚Äîwho I like to pray with, and they’d like to pray with you.’ And that president came to the Cedars (a religious retreat), and he met Jesus. And his name is Yoweri Museveni…And he is a good friend of the Family.”

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