At The Daily Beast, Max Blumenthal calls the Obama administration on the carpet for affirming Rick Warren and allies’ efforts to deny access to condoms and prevent Africa’s heterosexual and LGBT people from protecting themselves against HIV/AIDS.

Blumenthal notes that Warren has never been required to prove the efficacy of his anti-condom program. Instead, independent investigation into Warren’s involvement in Africa revealed alliances with Christian Right clergy who sidelined science-based approaches to combating AIDS in favor of abstinence-only education.

These clergy sabotaged Uganda’s once highly successful initiative to combat HIV/AIDS. Comprehensive sex education — consisting of lessons in abstinence, monogamy, and condom use — slashed HIV infection rates during the 1990s and up until 2003, when Christian Rightists in the Bush State Department and Congress began to sabotage the initiative. By 2005, Blumenthal notes, federal aid was being redirected to deny access to condoms and to discourage their use. Progress against HIV infection rates then halted. (Read More)

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.

Amid growing public criticism of federal funding for antigay violence in Africa, Eric Goosby — chief coordinator for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) — has finally spoken out regarding U.S. taxpayers’ support for the pogrom in Uganda.

Goosby defends the violent status quo, saying it’s not his job to stop gross misuse of the funds under his control:

My role is to be supportive and helpful to the patients who need these services. It is not to tell a country how to put forward their legislation. But I will engage them in conversation around my concern and knowledge of what this is going to do to that population, and our ability to stop the movement of the virus into the general population.

Goosby appears to be both ignorant of HIV/AIDS in Uganda, and determined to use taxpayer dollars to undermine the very same education programs that PEPFAR was created to support:

1. HIV/AIDS in Uganda is primarily a heterosexual phenomenon; Goosby falsely contends that it is a homosexual phenomenon that threatens the “general population.”
2. The Anti-Homosexuality Bill would criminalize key aspects of comprehensive HIV/AIDS prevention education and imprison health-care workers who refuse to report sexually active gay patients to the police.

Goosby’s use of federal funds to subsidize the punishment of HIV/AIDS education and health-care workers, and to push LGBT Ugandans deep underground, is inexcusable.

And the silence of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, regarding her subordinates’ support for violence in Uganda, is unacceptable.

Please write letters to Clinton demanding a hold on all PEPFAR funding until strict human-rights, patient-confidentiality, and free-speech controls are imposed upon all PEPFAR aid. PEPFAR aid must not be given to sectarian religious interests, especially those with violent and inhumane intentions.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520
(202) 647-4000

Please THANK Rep. Tammy Baldwin for her support and urge her office to continue fighting against The Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 by e-mailing Amber Shipley:

Amber.Shipley @ mail.house.gov

Please THANK Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen for her support via phone call or letter and urge her to continue using her position in the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs to hold Uganda accountable.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
2470 Rayburn H.O.B.
Washington, DC 20515-0918
(202) 225-3931

Hat tip: Box Turtle Bulletin

With the help of more than $200 million annually in U.S. taxpayer funds — including millions earmarked for antigay “AIDS prevention” –Ugandan political and religious leaders have shown the world that their new idea of internationally funded AIDS prevention and care is to execute the nation’s gay people if they are HIV-positive.

That’s the objective of the nation’s new Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which escalates the despotic country’s already-draconian sentence of life imprisonment for LGBT Ugandans. As Box Turtle Bulletin has observed, the legislation would:

• Extend the definition of prosecutable homosexuality from sexual activity to merely “touch[ing] another person with the intention of committing the act of homosexuality.”
• Create a new category of “aggravated homosexuality” which provides for the death penalty for “repeat offenders” and for cases where the individual is HIV-positive.
• Criminalize all speech and peaceful assembly for those who defend LGBT Ugandans with fines and imprisonment of between five and seven years.
• Criminalize the act of obtaining a same-sex marriage abroad with lifetime imprisonment.
• Add a clause which forces friends or family members to report LGBT persons to police within 24 hours of learning about the individual’s homosexuality or face fines or imprisonment of up to three years.
• Add extra-territorial and extradition provisions, allowing Uganda to prosecute LGBT Ugandans living abroad.

U.S. evangelical Rick Warren, among others, refuses to condemn this situation. Political Research Associates noted last week that Rick Warren has been a steadfast supporter of Archbishop Henry Orombi and Pastor Martin Ssempa, both of whom favor vigilantism and execution of LGBT Ugandans. Warren has freely interfered in Ugandan affairs, offering tacit endorsement of his allies’ condom-burning rallies and anti-gay witch hunts.

A spokesperson for Warren told Religion Dispatches on Nov. 3 that Warren no longer supports Ssempa — but failed to retract Warren’s support for Orombi and declined to oppose the proposed legislation.

Jim Naughton, Canon for Communications and Advancement for the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, observed:

“What does it say if you’re unwilling to say that the state shouldn’t execute homosexuals?”

U.S. congressional leaders delivered  a warning letter about this brewing crisis to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but according to Religion Dispatches, the State Department has initially declined to respond.

Meanwhile, most Ugandan media have obediently followed the murderous lead of the nation’s undemocratic rulers in advocating for the bill.

But The Monitor notes that much of the legislation violates the nation’s constitution and threatens non-gay Ugandans by suppressing speech, dividing families, obstructing medical treatment, and encouraging prosecution based upon false accusations.

Another publication, The Independent, on Nov. 4 courageously condemned the legislation while explaining the corrupt politics behind it. Okello Lucima wrote:

This is not only cavalier violations of human rights, but a dangerous hate campaign and incitement to harm or kill members of the GLBT in Uganda. The people of Uganda, and all people of good will, must not sit and watch while this happens. The sponsors of the bill, their supporters and political leaders- inside and outside parliament- must be identified, isolated and ostracised by the entire civilised world that respect difference and diversity. Most democratising societies have laws that criminalise purveyors of hate and incitement of hatred against a person, persons or communities; and have robust bill of rights that protect citizens and minorities. Uganda should not be an exception.

However, it is not surprising that the state should be seeking such kind of personal control, to the extent of wanting to police what people do in their bedrooms, and who else they do it with and whether their partners are of the skirt or trouser wearing sorts.

First, this comes about because of the nature and character of the Ugandan state: it is a military dictatorship that shot its way to and kept itself in power by military force. What there is in terms of a fledgling parliamentary democracy is sheer gloss of veneer for the consumption of the democratic tourist. For twenty years it outlawed political parties and suppressed freedoms of association and assembly, and the press is routinely knuckled. It rules by decree, not through free and open, well-informed debate in a deliberative, democratic process.  Therefore, like all autocrats, the Ugandan ruling clique is not about to deviate from the age-old practice of control and micromanagement of all the affairs of state, and particularly the censorship and directing of the thoughts and behaviour of its citizens. Control freaks love uniformity but are threatened by freedom, diversity, and difference.

The second reason why the hate campaign against GLBT is not surprising is that most of those connected to state power, for instance Nsaba Buturo & Co. are born-again, rigid, fundamentalist, revivalist Christians who bring to the public policy process and the management of state affairs, their religious bigotry that they pass off as public morality and ethics.  They completely ignore the fact that although Uganda is a majority Christian nation-state, there are people of other faiths, as well as non-believers, to whom the Muslim and Christian moralities they are so quick to refer to, cannot and should not apply. In any case, the Ugandan state is separate from the Church or Mosque, and it would be prudent for public servants to refrain from using and imposing the teachings and morals of one religion on the diverse people of Uganda, with pluralities of religion, faith, spiritual and moral inclinations.

Lucima warns:

It is not scientific, but a cursory observation would reveal that societies that have fewer sexual, social and personal taboos, have made tremendous progress and have shown greater imagination, ingenuity, innovations and inventiveness among their population. They cherish freedom of thought and respect civil liberties. Conversely, societies such as Uganda, where one man is in charge of awarding market tenders from Rukingiri to Lira and his word is the law; or where vice chancellors or chancellors of national universities are political appointees rather than meritorious  professionals recognised in their fields and elevated by a professional body and academic peers, the degree of restrictions on personal freedoms and civil liberties have direct relationships with the state of scientific research, social development, ingenuity, curiosity and intellectual debate on matters of public policy and interest.

Christian Rightists threaten to condemn Uganda to a permanent state of irrational and backward barbarism. But they threaten to do the same here in the United States, where people like Rick Warren make no apology for supporting such barbarism — and where U.S. taxpayers continue to fund this barbarism in the name of humanitarian aid and disease prevention.

Meanwhile, Exodus International — whose board member Don Schmierer co-launched the campaign for this bill — refuses to issue a press release formally condemning the death-penalty campaign and the four U.S. and Ugandan ex-gay activists who recklessly provoked it. Aside from a less-than-authoritative prayer for someone, somebody else preferably, to maybe do something, spokesman Randy Thomas offered no assistance to those who, like conservative Christian Warren Throckmorton, are campaigning to stop the legislation.

If you live in the United States, please contact your Congressperson and Senator TODAY. Ask them to join their colleagues Tammy Baldwin, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and others in challenging federal aid to Uganda until this foreign aid is made contingent upon specific gains in health education and human rights.

The brewing human-rights disaster in Uganda has thus far been blamed squarely on those who launched the current campaign of violence and brutal punishment: Exodus International board member Don Schmierer, Massachusetts ex-gay activist and Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, the ex-gay International Healing Foundation led by Richard Cohen, Uganda ex-gay activist Stephen Langa, and Martin Ssempa, a longtime leader of Uganda’s religious war against its LGBT citizenry who is funded by U.S. evangelicals.

But as the crisis grows, so does U.S. foreign aid to Uganda: The State Department just promised Uganda $246 million with few if any human-rights strings attached. And so responsibility must now be shared not just by the masterminds of the campaign, but also by U.S. taxpayers. Let’s take a look back at how U.S. taxpayers like me — and many of you — became implicated in a violent evangelical war against Ugandan sexual minorities.

(Read More)

TAKE ACTION NOW

Truth Wins Out today urged Congress to deny financial aid to Uganda if the country passes a draconian bill that would trample the fundamental rights of the nation’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender population. The Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 threatens sexual minorities with cruel and usual punishment for simply existing.

On Friday, four members of Congress wrote a powerful letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to express alarm over the proposed law.

“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’s 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.”

Please THANK Rep. Tammy Baldwin for her support and urge her office to continue fighting against The Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 by e-mailing Amber Shipley

Amber.Shipley@mail.house.gov

Please THANK Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen for her support via phone call or letter and urge her to continue using her position in the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs to hold Uganda accountable.

2470 Rayburn H.O.B.
Washington, DC 20515-0918
Telephone: 202-225-3931

Please contact the Ugandan Embassy and express your disapproval of the anti-gay bill:

His Excellency Professor Perezi K. Kamunanwire
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Tel: (202) 726 4758
pkamunanwire@ugandaembassyus.org
(Read More)

We received news passed along to us via South African Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation:

Heartened by support from prominent U.S. ex-gays — in particular, Exodus International board member Don Schmierer, ex-gay activist Scott Lively, and Richard Cohen protege Caleb Lee Brundidge — at a March 5-7 conference in Kampala, Uganda is moving forward with a campaign that was announced at that conference. Uganda intends to imprison gay Ugandans for their attraction, regardless of whether they are sexually active.

Church- and government-led vigilante campaigns require money to operate, and that money appears to be coming, in part, from U.S. taxpayers.

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission has uncovered evidence that the Bush administration had used anti-AIDS funds to subsidize groups in Uganda that actively promote violence and discrimination against lesbians and gay men. Among those receiving money, according to U.S. government records, were Uganda Muslim Tabliqh and the Makerere University Community Church. The church’s leader, Pastor Martin Ssempa, was a leading organizer of anti-gay rallies in Kampala. The supply of laundered has not yet been stopped by the Obama administration.

According to 365gay.com (April 6):

KAMPALA — The Ugandan government vowed to move forward with a bill that would toughen the country’s already harsh punishment of homosexuality. Sex between two people of the same sex already is a criminal offense in Uganda – punishable by life imprisonment – although there are no records of any recent convictions.

Now the government is prepared to expand the law, making it a criminal offense to be gay. The legislation would make any public display of being gay a crime.

International human rights and LGBT groups have called on Kampala to drop the bill and repeal the sodomy law.

Last week, about 20 gays and lesbians staged a rally in the capital denouncing the government. One woman said she was publicly stripped naked and taunted by a pastor and his congregation as they attempted to exorcise her.

Read more at 365gay.com.

With the continued support of Exodus International for his recent pro-vigilantism conference, Uganda ex-gay activist Stephen Langa on March 15 followed through on threats to renew a campaign of antigay vigilantism across the African nation, according to Box Turtle Bulletin.

Then, on March 19, U.S. writer Richard Rosendall noted that Uganda’s antigay vigilante campaigns may be subsidized by U.S. taxpayers through evangelical groups’ misuse of former President Bush’s abstinence-only AIDS funding in Africa.

And on March 22, Langa put self-proclaimed child molester and “ex-gay” George Oundo on the soapbox before Ugandan pro-government (antigay) media, to declare that all gay Ugandans are “targeting mostly children ‘because they are easy to initiate and they like easy things.’ ” Oundo projected his own sickness onto gay people, and accused Ugandan anti-violence and pro-equality groups of enabling his alleged past acts of child molestation. Oundo, who was arrested and possibly tortured by the Ugandan government in 2008, now works for antigay pastor Martin Ssempa, who has coordinated past Ugandan vigilante campaigns that were monitored by Human Rights Watch:

Campaigns with access to millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars that were intended for AIDS prevention, but which increased the spread of AIDS through vigilantism, prejudice, miseducation, and denial of access to condoms.

The new campaign by Langa, aided without apology by Exodus, may enjoy ongoing support from U.S. taxpayers unless action is taken to stop the funding.

Extensive previous coverage by Truth Wins Out. Details after the jump. (Read More)