National Public Radio has terrific story on the role social conservatives have played in exporting anti-gay extremism in Uganda. According to NPR:

Jim Naughton, a former canon in the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C., says their [Conservative Evangelical] message plays one way in the U.S., but differently in a place like Uganda. And they should have known.

“If you go to countries where there’s already a great deal of suspicion and maybe animosity towards homosexuals, and begin to tell people there, ‘Well, actually these people are child abusers, they’re coming for their children, that they’re the scourge that is being deposited on you by the secular West,’ you’re gonna get a backlash.” Naughton says it’s like “showing up in rooms filled with gasoline, and throwing lighted matches around and saying, ‘Well, I never intended fire .‘ “

Many U.S. evangelicals, including Lively, say they are “mortified” by the death penalty provision. Naughton doesn’t buy it.

“I think if they were mortified, they would have been mortified immediately,” he says. “Instead they were mortified ‚Äî oh, two, three months into the campaign against this thing, when it was getting real traction.”

Megachurch pastor Rick Warren is a case in point. Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, has extensive ties with religious leaders in Africa, including Uganda. Initially, he refused to condemn the bill. Finally, two months after the bill was introduced, he urged pastors in Uganda to oppose it.

“We are all familiar with Edmund Burke’s insight, ‘All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing,’ ” Warren began. He explained his silence by saying, “It is not my role to interfere with the politics of other nations,” then stated that the bill “is unjust, it’s extreme, and it’s un-Christian.”

If Warren was slow to condemn the bill, other Christian conservatives have yet to do so, says Warren Throckmorton, who teaches psychology at Grove City College and has been monitoring U.S. evangelical response. He says some of the Christian groups most publicly tied to Uganda have been the quietest. Joyce Meyer Ministries, Oral Roberts University, the College of Prayer in Atlanta — all have close ties and declined to express reservations about the death penalty.

“Silence is often interpreted as consent,” says Throckmorton, who is himself a conservative evangelical. “So I think those kinds of responses may lead those individuals in Uganda to think that perhaps what [they're] doing really is according to the evangelical faith.”

Michael wrote last night about the piece in the New York Times about the Uganda “Kill the Gays” bill and its American Evangelical supporters. The piece exposes the inciting role Don Schmierer of Exodus played in the inception of this bill, and showcases his mewling attempts to deny any responsibility for what’s now happening in Uganda. Schmierer’s statements can be summed up as “We was fooled!” That’s right, they’re just a few innocent, sweet ex-gay activists, and they’re just trying to help! Give me a break. Jim Burroway handily disposed of that notion in a piece last night. If you haven’t read Jim’s piece, do. I’ll wait.

What I want to draw attention to, though, is Amanda Marcotte’s piece on this, because she brings in some really important historical perspective on what Schmierer, Caleb Lee Brundige, and Scott Lively did on their little jaunt to Uganda, and she also makes an important point about the weak denials and condemnations they (and Rick Warren) have issued, now that the American press is paying attention:

Right now, Rick Warren and company’ slow-moving denunciations of this law are due strictly to their desire to stay in the mainstream of American society, and have nothing to do with actual moral outrage. After all, it’ an article of faith for the religious right that gay people “recruit” children because they can’t have their own. There are so many assumptions bundled up in that—that gay people don’t have children, that children can be considered carbon copies of their parents, that homosexuality is something taught at the knee instead of a genuine expression of sexual desire—but I’d like to point out that what the accusation is, at its base, is a 21st century version of the blood libel. The traditional blood libel that was a big deal in medieval Europe was to accuse Jews of killing and eating Christian children. Nowadays, the accusation has changed somewhat—now it’ that gays rape and recruit children—but the structure is basically the same, which is to say that the hated group is constructed as a cult that feeds on your children. And the religious right believes this stuff. (…)

The point is that the blood libel exists to justify extreme violence against the targeted group, painting them as child-thieves who inflict a society’ most dreaded crimes (molestation, cannibalism) on the children, and by doing so, take them away from the parents. So when the people who perpetuate this myth about gays and lesbians play innocent, we shouldn’t let them get away with it.

Exactly. I’ve said several times in the past (I’ve actually said it today) that there is no fundamental difference between religious extremists in the West and those in Uganda, or in the Middle East, etc. They look different to the untrained eye, simply because they can’t get away with what they really want to do in the West. Modern society won’t allow it. So of course they’re trying to cover their lily-white behinds in the American press, for their own followers, and for the rest of the American public which still thinks of Warren as the Purpose-Driven Cuddle Monster. These people have a narrative to uphold, and it’s a narrative that is in sharp contrast to their actual beliefs and actions: That Evangelical Christianity is primarily about love and family and patriotism and lots of other Pollyanna BS that plays well with the Fort Worth crowd. And for many Evangelical Christians, it is about those things. They may be misled about a lot of things, but I highly doubt that the average Saddleback member is jonesing to kill gay people.

But their leaders? As Amanda says in the piece, they’re not off the hook for this one. Growing up in That World, and now analyzing it from the perspective of one who knows the language, I’ve often noticed that the people who follow these leaders are, for the most part, fairly decent human beings, but that they have no idea what their leaders are really like. (And of course, when you point it out, most of them retreat into their shells or stick their fingers in their ears.)

The blood libel is not new. But it’s taken far too long for the LGBT community and its supporters to realize that the tactics of Warren, Lively, Schmierer, Brundige, Richard Cohen, etc., are indeed the modern-day version of this age-old Christian tradition. And the ex-gay element is just more delicious icing on the cake for those who promote this blood libel. Elsewhere in the piece, Amanda puts it this way:

When an ex-gay claims that gays recruit by raping children, wingnuts can feel good about themselves, because they say, “Hey, he should know.” But of course, that’ simply not true, because the religious right has created huge incentives for so-called ex-gays to lie about their previous (and often ongoing) sexual behavior and habits, in order to keep the esteem and the paychecks coming.

Sick and sad, but true. What a feat these religious extremists have accomplished — they have an entire “ex-gay” industry devoted to making gay people hate themselves so much that they’ll travel thousands of miles around the world to confess the sins of which they’ve been brainwashed to believe they’re guilty.

For these leaders to now claim that they couldn’t have imagined that things would play out the way they have is simply more disingenuous lying. They know what they’re doing.

Shame on all of them.

David Bahati (left), the psychotic would-be-murderer behind Uganda’s kill-the-gays bill, has said he will not water down the anti-gay legislation as previously reported. The bill may become law by February.

“We are not going to yield to any international pressure — we cannot allow people to play with the future of our children and put aid into the game,” said Bahati. “We are not in the trade of values. We need mutual respect.”

Bahati also rejected Rev. Rick Warren’s plea to eliminate the bill after the televangelist called it “unchristian.”

“It’s unfortunate that a man of God who has inspired many people across the world can give into pressure and disappoint them,” said Bahati.

It is becoming clear that Warren should visit Uganda to help kill this bill, before this bill kills gays. We applauded Warren for his statement last week, but it would be much stronger if he delivered it from Kampala.

It is worth noting that Bahati is quoting American “ex-gay” quack therapist Richard Cohen’s book “Coming Out Straight” verbatim when he talks about homosexuality as a “learned behavior” that can be “unlearned.”

“Learned behaviour can be unlearned,” said David Bahati. “You can’t tell me that people are born gays. It is foreign influence that is at work.”

Bahati is an ignorant, blood-thirsty tyrant who should be staunchly and forcefully opposed by anyone who cares about human rights. And Cohen does, as Rachel Maddow said last week, have blood on his hands. He and everyone associated with his International Healing Foundation is a would-be accomplice to death squads. They should be treated accordingly. It is amazing that the lives of GLBT Ugandans hang in the balance because of an idiotic book printed by an obvious madman like Cohen. (See video below)

In Entebbe last week, The Guardian reports that 200 religious leaders, under the powerful umbrella group Inter-Religious Council of Uganda, demanded diplomatic ties be severed with “ungodly” donor countries, including the UK, Sweden and Canada, who are “bent on forcing homosexuality on Ugandans”.

Is heterosexuality really that weak in Uganda? It sure seems like it based on the hysteria and pandemonium surrounding gay people. Particularly Mr. Bahati, who seems, based on his rhetoric, like he might mount a man any second if his clownish bill isn’t ramrodded through the legislature.

Personally, I think that the United States government would be foolish not to grant these preachers and imams their holiday wish. Uganda is about to treat GLBT people as if they are diseased vermin who need to be exterminated. Where have we seen this movie before?

It would be unconscionable for the U.S. to continue forking over our tax dollars to this sanguinary police state so they can declare war on our defenseless people. Our nation has a moral duty to display its values and cut off every cent of aid to Uganda if the Anti-Homosexuality bill becomes law.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow tonight recapped the known facts of Rick Warren’s history in Uganda, after he accused unnamed news media of lying.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

After weeks of stalling, Sen. James Inhofe expressed opposition to Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill — but he did not say whether he will tell this to his friend, President Museveni of Uganda.

And finally, Sen. Chuck Grassley denied any ties to The Family, but insiders continue to say otherwise.

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.

On his blog, Andrew Sullivan writes about Rick Warren’s silence on the impending pogrom against gays in Uganda, despite the fact Warren has deep ties in this country. According to Sullivan:

“He [Warren] lies. He has taken sides, whenever possible, to stigmatize, demonize and now physically threaten the lives of gay people in his own country and abroad. And his silence on this issue means the deaths of others. Warren needs to come out and condemn this law as evil, which it is. And to stop hiding his own enmeshment with the most virulent forms of fundamentalist hatred under the veil of media-savvy benevolence”

Very well said Mr. Sullivan. We concur.

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’ 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.

George W. Bush longed to escape his daddy’ shadow, while Barack Obama has turned to shadowy preachers in his long search for a father figure. His filial approach to faith began with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and has now taken a sharp turn right.

The New York Times reports that the president has surrounded himself with a cadre of clerical crackpots known as the “Circle of Five.” These holy men are: Rev. Joel Hunter, former head of the Christian Coalition; anti-gay Bishop T.D. Jakes; the ex-gay loving Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell; and Jim “waffling” Wallis, a protean progressive. The only Obama shaman who isn’t shameless is the civil rights era preacher Rev. Otis Moss Jr.

Rev. Jakes refers to homosexuality as “brokenness” and has claimed that he wouldn’t hire a sexually active gay person. But it seems T.D. can’t even keep his own son off the D.L. (down low). His “sexually broken” heir was arrested earlier this year for cruising a Dallas Park in search of gay men.
(Read More)

UPDATE 2: It appears that the Team Obama has responded. Gene Robinson’s website said that, “One addendum to yesterday’s posting: I have been invited to be on the President’s Platform for the inauguration/swearing in. An astounding honor!”

UPDATE 1: This is the official statement from Team Obama:

“We had always intended and planned for Rt. Rev. Robinson’s invocation to be included in the televised portion of yesterday’s program. We regret the error in executing this plan — but are gratified that hundreds of thousands of people who gathered on the mall heard his eloquent prayer for our nation that was a fitting start to our event,” said PIC communications director Josh Earnest.

TWO’s Response: “We appreciate the explanation,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. “However, it seems that Team Obama should make up for its error by having the courtesy to invite Bishop Robinson to address the nation on national television. He is a major national figure, and more historically prominent than Rick Warren, who will give the invocation. He deserves a ‘Do-Over’.”

Warren Gets Prime Time, Robinson Gets No Time, Says TWO

Truth Wins Out today urged the Presidential Inauguration Committee (PIC) to explain why openly gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson was excluded from a Home Box Office airing of inauguration festivities. He gave his sermon on Sunday, but HBO did not air it, leaving America wondering why he was bumped from the broadcast. Additionally, Robinson’ microphone wasn’t turned on until his prayer was nearly over, so the crowd was also unable to hear him. (Read More)

(Bernard Madoff)

If 2008 taught the world one lesson, it is that religious people are not morally superior to those who are non-religious. Indeed, faith often shelters the shameless and provides cover for the most corrupt among us.

Sanctimony was the sanctuary of Bernard Madoff, the con artist who bilked fellow Jewish people who never imagined this man of piety would mastermind a Ponzi scheme. A New York Times article summed it up: “…Jews all over the country are already sending up something of a communal cry over a cost they say goes beyond the financial to the theological and personal.”

The article quoted Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angles who said, “I’d like to believe someone raised in our community, imbued with Jewish values, would be better than this.”

Apparently, the rabbi has a short memory. In 2006, corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff disgraced the Jewish community. When he wasn’t stealing from Indian tribes and polluting Washington, he could be found in synagogues extolling his Jewish family values.

Many in the Jewish community seem shocked by recent events. They have the same befuddled looks on their faces as Christians ripped off by televangelist Jim Bakker. Or, the wide-eyed puritans in the pews who were stunned that Revs. Jimmy Swaggart and Ted Haggard had a proclivity for prostitutes.

This is not to say that religious people are necessarily more corrupt. But, the myth that faith makes one less fallible and more pure must be punctured. This fable comes at a great cost to the holy who keep getting hosed. Charlatans are acutely aware that when religious institutions confer credibility, it is easier to con the credulous. Needless to say, churches, temples and mosques are often a refuge for reprobates. As escaped slave turned abolitionist Frederick Douglas noted in his tome “Autobiography,” the most devout Christians made the most brutal slave owners. (Read More)