GayLawNet is another great source of information about laws pertaining to LGBTQ people in countries around the world, as well as a library of relevant legal documents and contact information for sympathetic attorneys and rights organizations. It rocks a retro look too.

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.

According to the Christian Post:
(Read More)

Jim Burroway of Box Turtle Bulletin is following the March 5-7 antigay conference in Uganda, and he has posted updates:

• 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 revisionist Scott 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.

According to UGPulse.com:

… 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.

The stepson of antigay megachurch pastor T.D. Jakes was arrested by Dallas police on Jan. 3.

According to KTVT-TV, police accuse 29-year-old Jermaine Jakes of exposing himself to undercover vice detectives at Keist Park. Here’s the arrest warrant, which says Jakes was one among several men observed in a wooded area of the park.

We live in an age when same-sex-attracted men in tolerant communities can date and become intimate in much the same normal fashion as heterosexual men — through work, community organizations, religious groups, local bars, or the Internet.

What drives men — particularly in less tolerant communities — to seek sexual interaction in less safe or illegal locations?

Is it the thrill of a risk?

Is it a product of antigay indoctrination which dictates to gay men from an early age that unsafe or illegal sex is their only option?

Or is it, as ex-gay activists will no doubt assert, the inevitable “lifestyle” of anyone who practices honesty regarding their sexual orientation?