Scott Lively is one disturbed man. He’s apparently stung by the fact that Sexual Minorities Uganda and the Center for Constitutional Rights are suing him for human rights offenses tied to his role in inciting hatred against gay people, hatred which gave birth to the now infamous “Kill the Gays” bill being pushed in Uganda. However, though he may be stung, that’s not stopping him from grabbing a shovel and digging his hole deeper. Right Wing Watch has the audio and transcript from Lively’s recent interview on the Janet Mefferd show, where he again advocated either forced therapy or prison for gays:
Mefferd: When you go back to 2009 and what you actually said during the conference, was there anything that you did say at that time that gave them actual fodder for screaming and yelling, do you regret anything you said—
Lively: No, no, no.
Mefferd: Or do you stand by what you said?
Lively: First of all as regards to the bill, the bill hadn’t been written yet, I had an opportunity, I spoke to members of the Ugandan Parliament in their assembly hall, and there was several other speakers and the minister of ethics and integrity was there and he made a few comments. My suggestion was, rather than focusing on punishment, you should focus on therapy. I gave my own personal testimony, before I became a Christian, an instrumental factor was I got arrested for drunk driving and they gave me the option in Oregon of taking diversion, as they called it, or losing my license and going to jail. I chose the therapy option, it was one of the best things that ever happened, it was in that rehab center that I got down on my knees and surrendered my life to Christ, so I gave that as my testimony to the Ugandans saying this is the model you should follow, you could be the first country in the world to offer this as a standard, a national standard, that we want to help people overcome this sin.
First of all, no one alive or dead can prove that homosexuality is a “sin.” But more than that, it’s sick that he thinks his drunk driving conversion experience is relatable to happy, healthy gay people simply living their lives. And even more than that, as we all know, there is no scientific evidence that so-called “ex-gay” therapy is effective, and people in those programs don’t actually end up changing their sexual orientations. Therefore, his advocacy of prison as the second choice would end up being the de facto result of his grand plan. Somehow, I don’t think that bothers him.
There’s much more at the Right Wing Watch link, including Lively again claiming that the existence of homosexuality in Uganda is somehow tied to George Soros and infiltration from the United States, a fever dream that can only come out of the sort of disturbed mind of a man who believes that the Holocaust was primarily conducted by gay people.
For many young Americans, the Westboro Baptist Church has become the face of extreme antigay hatred from the religious right; Mike Bickle’s Kansas City-based International House of Prayer, with its smooth pop-rock driven exterior, would seem almost the antithesis of Westboro Baptist. But today, Friday April 27th, 2012, IHOP is slated, according to a news release from ChristianNewsWire, to publicly screen a movie-length video featuring a Ugandan religious leader, Julius Peter Oyet, who has stated that “even animals are wiser than homosexuals.” and has openly called for practicing homosexuals to be hunted down and imprisoned or even executed.
Oyet even claims (see video at end of story) to have played a central role in a pending Ugandan bill, the internationally condemned Anti Homosexuality Bill, designed to make that happen; in a 2010 interview with French journalist Dominic Mesmin, Oyet stated that he had served on a committee that picked MP David Bahati to introduce the bill in Uganda’s parliament and had a special government commission to rally public support behind the bill, which has been internationally denounced – including by President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hlllary Clinton.
Julius Oyet has also worked closely with Ugandan evangelist Martin Ssempa, a former close ally of Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren. In 2010, after Warren had distanced himself, Ssempa subsequently became known for ostentatious incitement of antigay hatred that has included screening, in churches and other public venues, fringe gay pornography, in an attempt to convey the impression that coprophagia is a common homosexual practice.
In early 2011, Ssempa and Oyet co-presented to Uganda’s parliament a petition signed by millions of Ugandans calling for speedy passage of the Anti Homosexuality Bill. Julius Oyet has been consistent – in his interview with Dominic Mesmin, Oyet stated that he was able to rally millions of Ugandans behind the bill.
For his own part, IHOP founder Mike Bickle has stated that during the End-Times “Marriage as an institution will be forbidden in parts of the earth. As one of the signs of the times, the gay marriage agenda, which is rooted in the depths of hell – this is not about love, this is deception.”
These are far from IHOP’s only connections to the incitement of antigay hatred. One of the ministry co-directors of IHOP is Lou Engle, whose The Call ministry rents space from IHOP for its main base of operations. In May 2010, Engle brought his The Call to Uganda, to stage an event billed as fighting rampant immorality, including homosexuality, idolatry, and witchcraft.
Appearing at the event, held at one of the Ugandan capital Kampala’s biggest universities, were major supporters of the Uganda Anti Homosexuality Bill including prominent Ugandan evangelist Julius Oyet, who has ties to Uganda’s President and First Lady and declared from the stage:
“We call upon our parliament not to waste time. Uganda says no to homosexuality… our children today are being deceived by the West to buy them, to give them school fees, so that they can be homosexuals.”
Following Bishop Juius Oyet at the May 2010 The Call rally in Kampala, The Call founder Lou Engle told his Ugandan audience:
“We are not standing with violence or hatred to people in homosexual lifestyles. We are restraining, trying to restrain, an agenda that’s going to hurt the nation and hurt families. And so we have come here to join you, to pray that your government would have wisdom to uphold righteousness in this land.”
At the event journalist Sorious Samura, reporting for the BBC, asked Lou Engle “What do you think about supporting Julius Oyet’s fight against homosexuality here in Uganda?” Engle denied supporting the Anti Homosexuality Bill, telling Samura, “We’re not promoting the bill. We’re simply saying we believe that there needs to be a righteous stand, but there needs to be a revelation of Jesus in his mercy and kindness as well, in all that’s going on here.”
But when Samura questioned Julius Oyet, the Ugandan evangelist stated that “Lou Engle is a strong ally”. Samura then asked, “How do not feel that people like Lou, and American leaders, are withdrawing their support?” Oyet replied:
“To the media they may say that. But deep in their heart – as you hear him pray – what did he say? As he made his speech, what did he say? He said ‘Uganda, you are a key, you are standing now as a leader for righteousness’. That is support”.
Another speaker at the Uganda antigay rally, along with Lou Engle and Julius Oyet, was Ugandan evangelist John Mulinde – who has maintains a ministry base of operations in Southern Florida and gave a March 2011 sermon at Mike Bickle’s International House of Prayer in Kansas City.
Mike Bickle, who has repeatedly prophesied coming “prison camps” and “death camps” for Jews, was one of the original prophets in an elite prophetic group in C. Peter Wagner’s New Apostolic Reformation. The NAR boasts many leaders in the vanguard of the fight against LGBT rights both in the U.S. and internationally. Lou Engle later joined the same prophetic body Bickle was an early member in, the Apostolic Council of Prophetic (ACPE).
“An Unconventional War is one in a series of nine Transformationsmovies produced since 1999 by George Otis, a pioneer of the New Apostolic Reformation. In the film, a prayer movement led by Apostle Julius Oyet is credited with weakening Kony’s Lord Resistance Army (LRA) and ending a decades-long conflict in Uganda through “spiritual warfare in Jesus name.” The 2005 “documentary” claims that: 1) surviving youth were treated by deliverance of demons, 2) parents who prayed hardest got their children back first, and 3) the Acholi of Northern Uganda were fortunate to be forced into interment camps (by the Ugandan government) so they could hear the gospel and be shielded from Islam. Julius Oyet and President Yoweri Museveni are the godly heroes, representing “a unique church-state collaboration” against Kony, the demon-possessed villain.
According to this version of the conflict, Kony’s LRA was allowed by God to terrorize the Acholi people because they needed to repent of false beliefs. This is the story of Uganda presented as an advertisement for Christian supremacism.
All of these messages are tucked into a tear jerker with a happy ending about Kony’s young victims. The exploitation seen in this film and many other Western evangelical media productions, may help to explain why war-weary viewers threw stones at a screening of Kony 2012 in Lira in Northern Uganda this past week.
The Transformations Movies
The Transformations movies are part of a global attack on religious pluralism and secular democracy, promoted in the guise of prayer, charity, and social justice. The films can not be dismissed as emerging from the fringes, considering the evangelical pedigrees of the those involved. Throughout these movies, world leaders – including presidents, prime ministers and politicians – are filmed in interviews, with some actually participating in dramatic reenactments of past events.”
As a disturbing footnote, An Unconventional War was being filmed in Northern Uganda in 2005, around the time the co-founders of the Invisible Children nonprofit were shooting footage in Northern Uganda for one of their KONY videos.
This is notable because Northern Uganda was then sealed off by the Ugandan government – as Todd David Whitmore, a scholar at the Catholic University of Notre Dame who did research field work in Northern Uganda in 2005, “entry to northern Uganda required vetting by Lieutenant Colonel Shaban Bantariza, the Director of Public Relations and Information for the Uganda Peoples’ Defense Forces (UPDF), the military wing of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) government.”
During his research in Northern Uganda, according to Whitmore, he was given a typewritten letter, allegedly from now-Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni to his half-brother Salim Saleh, outlining the need for a depopulation campaign to reduce the population of Northern Uganda, to open up access to the region’s rich farmland.
Whitmore describes an atmosphere of desperation in the Acholi concentration camps, and a ubiquitous presence of government spies keeping tabs on the few non-Ugandans who had been allowed into the region.
The relatively few academics and journalists who have investigated the question of how between one and two million Northern Ugandans from the Acholi tribe wound up in the displacement camps in the first place describe the Ugandan army as having used murder, torture, even outright shelling and strafing of Acholi villages to drive the Acholi into the euphemistically termed “displaced person” camps (concentration camps in reality) that were, in turn, so lightly guarded by the UPDF (which by some accounts seemed mainly concerning with keeping the Acholi imprisoned, not defending them) that the camps served to make the Acholi population easy prey for Joseph Kony’s LRA.
The Ugandan army, in turn, instituted a policy that Acholi found outside of the camps were to be considered enemy combatants and killed. Few provisions were made by the Ugandan government to provide food, clean water, shelter, or medical care so that, by the height of the conflict, an estimated 1,000 Acholi per week, out of the 1-2 million in the camps (estimates vary widely) were dying from the wretched camp conditions.
This is the horrific backdrop to the so-called “Invisible Children” presented in Invisible Children’s KONY 2012 videos, which have a number of disturbing parallels to An Unconventional War including the presentation of the role of the Ugandan government and army as a positive force in the conflict, and an emphasis on alleged occult powers possessed by LRA head Joseph Kony.
But An Unconventional War takes the narrative to an even more grotesque perspective, that the Acholi brought their suffering upon themselves, for having the wrong beliefs. As Tabachnick describes:
“As An Unconventional War comes to a close, the viewer is told that the Internal Displacement Camps that housed approximately 1.6 million Acholi after they were herded when forced from their villages, served a “redemptive purpose.”
“God has allowed them in come in the camps, whereby all of them can hear the word of God and come to Jesus Christ, and if we don’t use this window of opportunity, the Muslims are there. They’re eager to come and take them.” [The last phrase is accompanied with a scene of a mosque.]The narrator states that the mystery of the Acholi’s people’s suffering has been solved.
Narrator: The cause of her wound is no longer a mystery.
Apostle John Mulinde: There is a strong connection between the bloodshed and the witchcraft.
Apostle Julius Oyet: What God is saying is that rebellion and idolatry can separate you far from me.”
“In September 1996, the government began what would prove to be a policy of long-term mass forced displacement and internment in Acholiland. The UPDF drove hundreds of thousands of Acholi peasants out of their villages and into camps through a campaign of intimidation, murder, torture, and bombing and burning entire villages, as discussed in chapter 2. After the formation of the camps, the UPDF announced that anyone found outside of the camps would be considered a rebel and killed…
Forced displacement had devastating consequences for the interned civilians… with excess mortality levels reaching approximately 1,000 per week by the mid-2000s. Moreover, the camps were tragically unprotected, and accusations that the government soldiers failed to protect the camps, refused to respond to LRA incursions, and thus turned civilians into easy targets for the LRA, were heard regularly from camp inhabitants.
Despite a record of extreme anti-civilian violence by both sides, as explained in the last chapter, dominant international portrayals of the conflict have tended to cast it in unambiguous moral terms, celebrating the Ugandan government and demonizing the LRA. This portrayal has been in the interest of the Ugandan government and its Western donors, but it is also in the interests of aid agencies, as I explain in this chapter… aid agencies are able to collect funds through marketing the suffering of abducted children and pour aid in to support the Ugandan government’s military campaign, even as they absolve themselves of the need to be accountable for the consequences of their actions. The irony, of course, is that the internment camps were, by far, the greatest cause of children’s-and adults’-suffering in Northern Uganda and, if anything, made abductions by the LRA easier.”
MassResistance has always been one of the silliest anti-gay hate groups in the country. If you’re looking for hysterical ravings, check in with Brian Camenker and Amy Contrada. A shining example of this is their memo speaking out against the US State Department’s project to fight anti-gay violence around the world. Said memo is a long doozy of madness, but let’s take a look at it anyway:
The Obama administration has announced that it is taking the unbelievable role of pushing the homosexual agenda around the world and punishing countries that don’t comply.
Back in July, MassResistance reported how the Pakistanis angrily denounced the US Embassy’s open homosexual parties as “cultural terrorism.” Well, that was just the beginning.
It is always so strange how the Religious Right haaaaaaaates Muslims, except for when certain Muslims say/do anti-gay things. Then they’re fine. Unless they’re trying to play victim about how mean the gays are being, in which case they say things like, “why are gays so hateful against [right-wing, fundamentalist, anti-gay, hate-group-supporting] Christians? Why, we don’t hang them like they do in Iran! Perspective, folks!”
Now, foreign countries which seek to protect their citizens against homosexuality and the homosexual movement will be actively confronted by America’s State Department, foreign service, and other federal departments, according to a Presidential Memorandum released by the Obama Administration announced on Dec. 6.
Earth to MassResistance: those countries already have gay people. The US is just trying to get the more backward corners of the planet to treat their gay citizens a little better.
Unless countries around the world subordinate their own social and religious values to U.S. demands that they embrace homosexuality and the homosexual movement, they can expect interference from the US government in their internal affairs and punishment — using foreign aid and in international commerce, trade, banking, travel restrictions, and the like.
Mirroring the homosexual lobby’s (and the Left’s) traditional tactics, Obama is characterizing this as a “civil rights” quest for homosexuality and transgenderism.
Obama is on a QUEST! For homosexuality and transgenderism!
The other day, Porno Pete was complaining that we on the mean gay side of things increasingly treat the Religious Right as if they have no legitimate arguments about anything. This is why.
In the memo, Obama declares that America will be targeting foreign countries having laws or customs which “criminalize LGBT status,” don’t allow LGBT pride celebrations, or allow other “discrimination” against homosexual or transgender behavior. Obama also repeats the homosexual lobby’s mantra that there is widespread violence and murder against “men, women, and children for their perceived sexual orientation” causing him to act, but he does not give any specifics.
Obama assumes you know how to use Google.
The memo then breathlessly recounts all the terrible, terrorist things that the Obama administration is doing to try to help usher in a world where it’s just not considered polite to execute people for being gay, and then that section wraps up with this:
Take another look the list of federal agencies involved, and the vehemence of the Obama administration on this. Make no mistake about it. This will lead to increasingly brutal oppression against people with traditional values both in America and around the world.
Vehemence! Brutal oppression! Why won’t anybody think of the wingnuts and their constitutional right to never have their fee fees hurt or their beliefs questioned?!
Time to complain about Hillary Clinton:
The same day that Obama issued that infamous Presidential Memorandum — Dec. 6, so-called “International Human Rights” Day — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reiterated Obama’s memo in a speech given in Geneva, Switzerland. (She’s unquestionably the only US Secretary of State ever to give a speech entirely on America’s support for homosexuality.)
Speaking to the Europeans, she specifically reinforced Obama’s directive to coordinate with and help fund international homosexual organizations, which will work to subvert the efforts of foreign countries holding traditional moral values and attempting to protect citizens from the effects of the homosexual agenda.
Just so we are totally clear, the countries that have “traditional moral values” and are “attempting to protect citizens from the effects of the homosexual agenda” have a really bad habit of passing laws criminalizing people for being gay, jailing them, sometimes giving them the death penalty. As much as Brian Camenker wants you to believe that this is all about Wingnuts of the World wanting to live free of their strange fear of people different from them, it’s not. It’s about nations that, like, kill gay people.
Starting a worldwide homosexual terror group?
As she said, this $3 million is “to start the fund.”
Look for enormous funding to come from various far-left government and private sources. This is quite frightening, because these radical groups can be used to perpetrate all kinds of sleazy and quasi-legal destabilizing and harassing activities in foreign countries that US government agencies can’t do so easily.
Sleazy! Quasi-legal! Worldwide homosexual terror group! Um, no, Brian, this is still about places like Uganda that want to pass things like the “Kill the Gays” bill.
3. Gov’t sanctioned website for homosexual activists in US State Dept. and foreign service reveals how far Obama Administration has taken us.
To see how far the Obama Administration has gone, one only needs to go to gliffa.org – “gays and lesbians in foreign affairs agencies.” The “gay pride” events in federal offices which seemed risqué just a few years ago, have given way to a virtual takeover by the State Department and foreign service around the globe.
Oh, god, they have a website. This is much more serious than I thought.
The next section of the memo details the horrific story of a transgender person being treated like a human being, working in the State Department, because of a new nondiscrimination policy which requires EVEN TRANSGENDER PEOPLE to be treated like human beings, rather than objects of the Religious Right’s confusion and derision. Even worse…
Last summer MassResistance reported that the nation’s blood supply is facing new danger from political pressure to change rules regarding homosexual blood donors. The major pressure was to ignore public health principles and bow to dangerous political correctness was from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
Now Sebelius is going even further. Her keynote speech centered around new legislation forcing insurance companies to cover the destructive effects of reckless homosexual behavior even if they are pre-existing conditions. She has also worked to have insurance cover “domestic partners,” and to extend the coverage for expensive “preventive testing” of homosexual-related diseases and health risks. These new mandates, of course, will help dramatically raise the price of health care for all Americans.
Um, so Brian seems to be insinuating here that Kathleen Sebelius has a master plan to inject AIDS blood into the US supply. Because as we all know, all gay blood is AIDS blood. Moreover, she wants loving gay couples to have health insurance benefits, and, wait, what’s this about “preventive testing?” You mean she wants gay people to have access to health care, which is a well-known way to prevent STD’s like, um, HIV/AIDS? This memo is getting really dumb, unless you’re a wingnut, in which case you’re just shrieking at all the scary words without taking time to comprehend them.
Moreover, if ObamaCare survives, it won’t be long before we taxpayers will be forced to subsidize “gender reassignment” surgeries and procedures.
Indeed. The actual master plan is for every transgender person to be teamed up with one “family valyews” wingnut, and they will be forced to become best friends. When the time comes, the wingnut has to write the check for the surgery.
Anyway, MassResistance concludes by explaining that the Frothy Mix known as Rick Santorum is our only hope, if we want to preserve a world where, more or less, there are still some places where you can do a little institutional gay bashing and get away with it.
Because, I guess, the most important issue facing our world today is protecting the poor, unwitting people of Uganda, Iran, etc., from Barack, Hillary and their roving band of rainbow terrorists.
Contact: Wayne Besen, Executive Director
Phone: 917-691-5118
E-mail: wbesen@truthwinsout.org
Producers of KONY 2012 Are Cozy With Organization Linked to Uganda’s Notorious ‘Kill the Gays’ Bill
NEW YORK – Truth Wins Out expressed deep concern today that Invisible Children (IC), the non-profit made famous by its recent KONY 2012 video, shares profound ties with The Family (aka The Fellowship), the secretive fundamentalist organization widely believed to be behind Uganda’s infamous ‘Kill the Gays’ bill, which if passed would harshly punish LGBT people for the “crime” of homosexuality.
An exhaustive report released today by researcher Bruce Wilson reveals alarming social and professional associations between the two groups. This includes a network of elite evangelical indoctrination centers in Uganda, which groom Christian youth for future leadership roles in the country. The new report comes at a critical time, one day before Invisible Children releases its much-anticipated video sequel to KONY 2012.
“Invisible Children has portrayed itself as a group of idealists, but new evidence suggests that they may be ideologues who are engaging in stealth evangelism,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “Their profound ties to a notorious group like The Family raise alarming questions about the group’s genuine motives, actual goals, and real intentions.”
The Family/Fellowship is a secretive U.S.-based brotherhood of international political and business leaders. Founded in 1935, its growing political clout was brought to widespread public notice with a 2002 Los Angeles Times report by Lisa Getter, then exposed in subsequent articles and two books by journalist Jeff Sharlet: The Family and C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy.
At least two of Invisible Children’s programs have involved collaboration with The Fellowship and its members. By 2007, Invisible Children was described by both Fellowship and Invisible Children staffers as having partially merged its developing school and mentoring programs in Uganda with The Fellowship’s Ugandan educational and leadership training system, which works to raise up a cadre of elite Jesus-centered leaders who will transform their nation along “Biblical” lines – with one apparent objective being the categorical elimination of homosexuality.
The stated philosophy of Invisible Children’s Ugandan educational programs closely mirrors the stated philosophy behind The Fellowship’s Cornerstone Leadership academies. Neither program seeks to maximize educational opportunities for large numbers of Ugandans. Rather, both programs foster small numbers of exceptionally talented students selected from at-risk populations; both programs also state explicitly that their goal is to raise up a generation of Ugandan leaders who will transform their nation.
Toward that end, both programs employ mentors who are paired with individual students and provide a crucial quasi-parental support system. Further, both mentoring programs have been supervised by Ugandan Fellowship member Paul Lukwiya, now Education Director for The Fellowship’s Ugandan leadership training schools.
In Spring 2007 – little more than a year and a half after the Invisible Children nonprofit was launched – Paul Lukwiya is reported to have traveled with IC members to the United States, where he spoke before an April 28, 2007 Invisible Children Seattle rally.
“Invisible Children’s connection to The Fellowship’s network provides an explanation of IC’s early access to internationally powerful politicians; less than a year after the nonprofit was launched in 2005, Invisible Children had already gained political backing, from U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) and Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni, both important Fellowship members,” according to Wilson’s research.
Jason Russell and other top Invisible Children leaders also work with Raan and Shea Parton, the co-founders of Apolis Global, a California for-profit boutique-clothing brand. The Apolis Global co-founders are alumni of The Fellowship’s Africa Youth Leadership Forum.
“Given the incestuous ties, it is sometimes difficult to tell where Invisible Children ends and The Family begins,” said TWO’s Wayne Besen. “What is vexing is that both groups rightfully despise the murderous actions of Joseph Kony, but appear to be comfortably in the pocket of Uganda’s oppressive fundamentalist Christian dictator Yoweri Museveni. If these groups truly stand for freedom and liberty, it is difficult to understand their cozy relationship with the Ugandan strongman.”
To connect the dots linking The Family and Invisible Children, please read Wilson’s report in its entirety.
Truth Wins Out is a nonprofit organization that fights anti-LGBT extremism. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality.
The Associated Press is reporting that an anti-gay group in the west African nation of Liberia distributed hit lists over the weekend containing the names of LGBT people and those who support LGBT rights. According to the article, the fliers said that LGBTs and allies ““should not be given space to get a gulp of air;” one member of the Movement Against Gays in Liberia even threatened to “get to them one by one.”
The AP report notes:
The fliers mark the latest development in an increasingly hostile national debate about gay rights in this country on Africa’s western coast.
Lawmakers in February introduced two new pieces of legislation that would make homosexuality punishable by possible jail time. And a vow by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf last month to preserve an existing law criminalizing “voluntary sodomy” prompted a statement of concern from the U.S. State Department.
And it correctly points out that this disturbing news out of Liberia is only the latest in a long string of extremist anti-LGBT measures being undertaken in various African countries:
Last year, Nigeria’s Senate voted in favor of a bill that would criminalize gay marriage [sic], gay advocacy groups and same-sex public displays of affection. A newly added portion of the bill levels 10 years in prison for those found guilty of organizing, operating or supporting gay clubs, organizations and meetings.
And in 2009, a Ugandan legislator introduced a bill that would impose the death penalty for some gays and lesbians. The bill was reintroduced earlier this year, though its author has said the death penalty provision will be dropped.
Even in South Africa, the only African nation to recognize gay marriage [sic], gangs carry out so-called “corrective” rapes on lesbians.
And in Liberia, as in Uganda and Nigeria, the extremists justify their bigotry in the name of religion:
“Let these individuals be aware that we are coming after them soon,” the flier reads. “We urge them to also begin saying their Lord’s prayers.”
Note to President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: now might be the time for the United States to put its money where its mouth is. The nation of Liberia, for example, received $172 million in aid from the United States in 2009; last year the Liberian president visited our country to personally make the case for “sustained foreign assistance” to her nation. But in my view, countries that persecute LGBT people and their allies should be forced to decide between holding on to their dangerous extremism and holding on to that American assistance. We should suspend aid to homophobic countries like Liberia and Uganda until they step back from the brink and stop bullying, criminalizing, raping, incarcerating, and murdering their LGBT citizens.
Scott Lively, one of the most vicious anti-gay activists in the United States, is currently the subject of a lawsuit concerning his involvement in Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” bill. He, of course, claims complete innocence, as Religious Right figures tend to do when called on their insipid activities abroad. Lively’s strange fear and hatred of gay people has been well documented, but it appears that he’s really bought into the same fantasy-land lies that African despots use to engender hatred against the gay community, lies which deflect attention from the actual problems of poverty, disease, hunger and economic disenfranchisement in those nations, problems which are often inflicted by their own governments. Scott Lively went on the radio show of another head-in-the-clouds conspiracy theorist and hatemonger, Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association hate group, to explain how all this gayness came to Uganda in the first place. Get ready for some Grade A Black Helicopter content, folks:
Uganda, in the 1990s, entered into an incredible Christian revival and, as a result of that revival, Christian values were just infusing the whole society and they went from having the highest level of AIDS in Africa to the lowest through the promotion of abstinence and fidelity in marriage, you know, the core Christian values about sexuality.
Because of that, that represents a huge threat to the globalists who use the sexual revolution and the whole Planned Parenthood Federation and the global homosexual movement, they use all those components are a population control method as they gather more and more power for themselves.
So what Uganda did represented a major threat to them, so they began infiltrating the country. George Soros, for example, I don’t know what stage of the process, but he went in like he always does, bought media and set up grassroots activist groups. And then, starting in the late 90′s, early 2000′s they started, these infiltrators, starting introducing pornography into this very conservative society.
And so, in 2002, to combat this sort of threat to the Ugandan culture, the government held a conference against pornography and obscenity. I had the privilege of being the keynote speaker at the conference – the Lord really had orchestrated this because I knew how this was happening; I knew who was doing this and what it’s all about, so I was able to just lay it out. I said this is who’s doing it, this is what’s going to happen next, and you need to organize in your society to stop this group of people from homosexualizing your society.
Yes. He believes that George Soros was really freaked out that people were not dying of quite so much AIDS, so he sent an army of porn and gays into Uganda. Granted, many wingnuts view George Soros as some sort of Goliath-sized boogeyman, but most couldn’t pick him out of a crowd if their lives depended on it. These are REALLY SPECIFIC BELIEFS, Scott! It’s sad and creepy to see a man so unhinged by fear and hatred, but it’s scary when you realize that his lies, distortions and general contempt for an entire minority group actually has currency in other, less connected parts of the world.
Anyway, the question in the post title stands: don’t you just hate it when George Soros sends you all kinds of porn just to further his insidious agenda? All together, one big “LOL” at Scott Lively.
Note: it’s worth pointing out that the fundamentalist wingnut belief that HIV/AIDS rates dropped in Uganda due simply to monogamy and abstinence is mostly crap. The story is quite complex, but the evidence suggests that it was a comprehensive approach that reduced their rates of infection and death. Moreover, it’s worth noting that their decline didn’t last forever and rates have been rising again for several years.
In an October 2010 post on his blogspot.com site, Invisible Children’s Director of Ideology Jedidiah Jenkins grouped “homosexuality” as a sin along with “sexual addiction” and “pornography.” On the other hand, in a February 2012 post, Jenkins praised writing from a Christian theologian who is critical of ex-gay ministries.
Jenkins’ overtly evangelical tone, echoed in a November 7, 2011 Liberty University appearance by Invisible Children co-founder Jason Russell, evokes deep conflicts that run through Invisible Children, which as an organization has branded itself as welcoming to religious, cultural, and sexual diversity.
But IC has also partnered with politicians and governments, in America and Uganda, which seem intent on annihilating diversity – by law or, if necessary, through violence. And, while Invisible Children bills itself as primarily devoted to human needs, the nonprofit’s choice to spend less than a third of its budget last year on African programs is consistent with a less obvious mission, as a multimedia-based, stealth evangelical performance ministry that targets young Americans in the “millennial” generation.
Along with his role as Director of Ideology, Jedidiah Jenkins is a co-author, with Jason Russell, of the KONY 2012 viral video that’s been viewed over 83 million times on Youtube. Prior to its Internet launch, Russell identified KONY 2012 as “literally the best piece of propaganda we’ve ever made.”
Czar of Propaganda
Jedidiah Jenkins, whom Russell calls “Propaganda Czar”, has emerged as one of Jason Russell’s key IC captains marshaling hundreds or even thousands of young Americans who have fund-raised for Invisible Children and helped loft its videos, from Twitter, Facebook, and other social media, to superstardom. The 2011 version of Invisible Children’s website described Jenkins’ role in the organization as,
“to digest the vision of Invisible Children handed down from the collective leadership and articulate it, expand it, and build the world we hope to see in 100 years… His job is to be in all parts of the organization, from engaging with the interns to leading trips to Uganda to drafting partnership contracts and investing in donors… Jed is the main voice and vision of Invisible Children’s blog.”
In one YouTube video, Jedidiah Jenkins asks Invisible Children to take a Myers-Briggs personality test – apparently so IC could use the data to put volunteer skills to better use. Invisible Children has cultivated a deeply devoted fan base, and on Invisible Children fanpages across the Internet one can find young IC disciples’ worshipful quoting of “Jedi Sayings” from Jenkins’ prose poem ruminations, such as one on the hunt for Joseph Kony and the LRA, in which Jenkins writes,
“power can be used for evil and sinister spirituality and magic and murder and the LRA and G-d understands this better than i that when our flesh falls He has something to do with it… i believe the physical life matters, but i think the spiritual life matters more… may G-d have mercy.”
In his October 2010 blog post, Jenkins appeared to characterize Islam as a false religion, stating that he had never read the Koran because he had been “born into the truth.” Jenkins then referred to,
“the Christian scriptures that predict a very real deception
and an anti-christ
and a season of unrest
and violence
and a worldly kingdom ruled by Jesus”
As a July 2, 2010 Wall Street Journal story by Brad A. Greenberg noted, “Invisible Children’s media kit emphatically states that its founders “believe in Christ, but do NOT want to limit themselves in any way.” Later on, Invisible Children scrubbed the reference to Jesus.
Invisible Children v. Satan
The centrality of Invisible Children’s evangelical mindset emerges in a March 17, 2012 blog post from Jedidiah Jenkins that followed Jason Russell’s naked public meltdown, on a San Diego street corner and a wave of criticism, attacking Invisible Children’s KONY 2012 video, from Ugandan journalists, and academics and NGO members who study and work in Uganda and the DRC Congo.
In his “letter” that Jenkins described as inspired by a conversation with Hollywood director and screenwriter Tom Shadyac, writer of “Ace Ventura, Pet Detective” and other blockbuster films (and an early financial contributor to Invisible Children), Jenkins, writing in the style of in C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, takes on the voice of Satan castigating the lesser demon Screwtape, for a bungled plot to destroy Jason Russell and Invisible Children’s global youth movement.
In the letter, which seems to identify critics of Invisible Children as minions of the Devil, Jason Russell is portrayed as a Jesus-like figure, crucified for the greater good of mankind:
“You brag and gloat that you got the face of the world’s largest youth movement to go mad. To tear off his clothes and cry out to the Enemy in the streets for all the world to see. You list the lies you whispered in his ear as if it was some brilliant chess move. I understand that you think this is a huge victory, but I’m afraid you are terribly wrong. You fool. You have ruined everything… These millions of disgustingly idealistic and optimistic young people could have believed that this man is the author of love and justice… You could have made them think ‘I’ll never be that smart, that creative, that loving, that handsome, that true, so I might as well do nothing.’
…The youth are now looking beyond the madness, beyond the man. They are looking at the ideas. They are looking at the Enemy… They are loving the man behind the madness and seeing themselves in him. They are cleaving to the Enemy and singing songs of strength, brotherhood, and victory over evil… They now have no idol. They now have no icon… I’m afraid all might be lost.
I am convening an emergency meeting of devils and demons this very evening to do damage control.”
Conservative Evangelicalism is not LGBT friendly
In a March 2011 interview with PMc Magazine, Jason Russell, whose father founded a chain of Christian youth theaters across North America, described himself as a “dream evangelist” and during a November 7, 2012 Liberty University appearance, Russell told students,
“”We feel like God calls us to be joyful in the work that we’re doing, no matter what we’re doing. [...]
A lot of people fear Christians, they fear Liberty University, they fear Invisible Children – because they feel like we have an agenda. They see us and they go, “You want me to sign up for something, you want my money. You want, you want me to believe in your God.” And it freaks them out.”
Russell was responding to a raft of questions posed by Liberty students that included queries such as “How do you motivate hypocritical, apathetic Christians?” and “What is the greatest challenge to the millennial generation in impacting the world for Christ?”
Over the decades, Liberty University has emerged as one of the leading educational institutions for the politicized evangelical right, and has a strong ideological bent. Liberty University’s website describes, the school’s doctrinal statement is,
“An uncompromising doctrinal statement, based upon an inerrant Bible, a Christian worldview beginning with belief in biblical Creationism, an eschatological belief in the pre-millennial, pre-tribulational coming of Christ for all of His Church, dedication to world evangelization, an absolute repudiation of “political correctness,” a strong commitment to political conservatism, total rejection of socialism, and firm support for America’s economic system of free enterprise.”
On September 13, 2001, two days after the 9-11 terrorist attacks, Liberty University founder Jerry Falwell appeared on the 700 Club, and told the world,
“I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays, and the lesbians – who are actively tying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For The American Way, all of them who tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen’”.
Although Liberty University students now receive substantial federal funding to attend the school, the university teaches Young Earth creationism and has welcomed as a speaker, to the same fall convocation speaker series that featured Jason Russell, co-founder of the Watchman On The Walls ministry Kenneth Hutcherson.
Watchman On the Walls has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an antigay hate group. Along with Hutcherson, another co-founder of the group is Scott Lively, a key speaker at a Spring 2009 Kampala, Uganda conference on homosexuality that has been widely accused of helping ramp up the mounting, eliminationist antigay hysteria in Uganda.
Following the Uganda conference Lively, who equated homosexuality with Nazism and fascism, stated that he had delivered a “nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda.”
Liberty University, which has hosted conferences featuring ex-gay ministries such as NARTH and Exodus, was one of the sources of student activist energy that has helped launch Invisible Children, and KONY 2012, to international fame.
A 2009 YouTube video shows over a hundred Liberty students, assembled in formation on the steps of a campus building, calling out, “Mike Huckabee, come to our rescue!” and talking about their plans to attend one of Invisible Children’s April 25, 2009 The Rescue events held in cities across America.
Currently the largest evangelical university in the world, Liberty University requires students living on campus to attend chapel and convocations three times weekly. Along with Jason Russell and Kenneth Hutcherson, recent Liberty convocations have featured right-wing speakers including Dinesh D’Souza, Clarence Thomas, Oliver North, creationist Ken Ham, and many evangelical leaders.
LGBT Friendly?
Invisible Children has positioned itself as LGBT rights friendly. On its board of directors, the nonprofit includes a gay San Francisco pastor, and Vice President of Business Operations at Invisible Children Chris Sarette has stated,
“I have been a core member of the management staff at Invisible Children for five years. The fact that Invisible Children sees people as PEOPLE – whether they be family, neighbors, or children in Central Africa – is one of the reasons I finally came out as a gay man… Invisible Children is not an anti-gay organization.”
But Invisible Children was also launched with support and funding — including from one of the top financiers of the campaign to pass California’s now-notorious Proposition 8 — by leading funders of the antigay evangelical right such as the National Christian Foundation, and since 2006, or earlier, the nonprofit has worked closely with and enjoyed political support from virulently antigay politicians such as Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni and United States Senator James Inhofe.
Invisible Children leaders Laren Poole and Jason Russell, meeting with Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni.
The problematic nature of Invisible Children’s partnership with the Museveni regime extends beyond the issue of LGBT rights – while Invisible Children has identified Lord’s Reformation Army commander Joseph Kony as perhaps the worst war criminal of our age, facts sharply contradict that charge. Far more deadly than Joseph Kony’s LRA, by between one and two orders of magnitude, has been the ongoing conflict in the People’s Democratic Republic of The Congo.
As described in the 30-minute video documentary Crisis In The Congo: Uncovering The Truth, Uganda and Rwanda, which both serve as United States military proxy powers in Sub-Saharan Africa, played a major role in the war that wracked the DRC Congo from the late 1990s into 2003 and killed an estimated 5.4 million civilians.
The Museveni Government’s War On Gays
In his 2008 book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, journalist Jeff Sharlet identified U.S. Senator James Inhofe as an important member of The Fellowship — a secretive Washington D.C. based neo-fundamentalist group with international political influence. In his subsequent book C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy, Sharlet charged The Fellowship with helping to inspire Uganda’s Anti Homosexuality Bill.
While Inhofe’s senate office has a policy against hiring homosexuals and has boasted that “in the recorded history of our family, we’ve never had a divorce or any kind of homosexual relationship”, Yoweri Museveni’s anti-LGBT rights campaign traces back at least as far as 1999, when he told Uganda’s government-controlled New Vision news service,
“I have told the Criminal Investigations Department to look for homosexuals, lock them up and charge them.” The Ugandan president added, “God created Adam and Eve…I did not see God creating man and man.”
In a June 3, 2010, New Vision story, the news service reported that Museveni had warned Ugandan church leaders, “The African Church is the only one that is still standing against homosexuality. The Europeans are finished. If we follow them, we shall end up in Sodom and Gomorrah.”
Both President Museveni and First Lady Janet Museveni have also promoted a conspiracy theory, now endemic to Ugandan culture, which portrays homosexuality in Uganda as spread by Westerners who bribe Ugandan youth with cash and electronic goods, such as iPads.
While President Museveni has aired a version of the conspiracy theory as recently as a February 2012 interview with the BBC, Janet Museveni promoted the conspiracy trope in an August 2010 speech to the Uganda Youth Association. According to New Vision, the First Lady declared,
“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.”
Some have credited such rhetoric as helping incite hatreds that led to the brutal murder of Ugandan LGBT activist David Kato.
It is also well established that Janet Museveni has appointed to government commissions several Ugandan evangelical leaders who have been in the forefront of Uganda’s mounting antigay eliminationist campaign, including Stephen Langa, who organized the 2009 Kampala conference that featured Scott Lively.
Another of Janet Museveni’s appointments has been Martin Ssempa, who was tapped to co-authored a new HIV/AIDS policy for Uganda and testified before the U.S. Congress about HIV/AIDS reduction strategies. Ssempa subsequently emerged as one of the leading evangelicals inciting anti-LGBT hatred in Uganda and pushing for speedy passage of the Anti Homosexuality Bill, and works closely with MP David Bahati, who helped draft the bill and who took the lead in introducing in Uganda’s parliament.
Ssempa and Langa were specifically recognized in Uganda’s parliament when the bill was introduced, along with powerful Ugandan evangelist Julius Oyet, who also enjoys the favor of the Musevenis. Oyet has held top positions in Uganda’s born-again evangelical church networks that, prior to Uganda’s 2006 presidential election, were the sole major block among Uganda’s faith community to support Yoweri Museveni’s successful bid to amend Uganda’s constitution so that he could run for a third presidential term.
In April 2011, Julius Oyet and Martin Ssempa, co-chairs of a Ugandan entity called the “‘Inter-Religious Taskforce Against Homosexuality”, presented a petition to Uganda’s parliament, reportedly signed by two million Ugandans, calling for speedy passage of the Anti Homosexuality Bill. Oyet and Ssempa have also taken the controversial step of screening, in churches, fringe pornography in churches in an attempt to further demonize Uganda’s LGBT population.
It’s Their Own Fault
Julius Peter Oyet, who has extensive ties to American evangelists in Peter Wagner’s New Apostolic Reformation (whose star apostles fighting LGBT rights include Lou Engle, Cindy Jacobs, and Bishop Harry Jackson) was the star of a 2005 American evangelical-produced video, “An Unconventional War”.
An Unconventional War, which features President Yoweri Museveni and was made with help from his Presidential Media Team, has been shown to Christian audiences around the world.
The video portrays Joseph Kony as having demonic powers and blames Uganda’s Northern Acholi people for the savage attacks and child kidnappings they suffered from Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army – because they had disobeyed the will of God by practicing idolatry and witchcraft (for more information on An Unconventional War, (see this detailed treatment of the video, from researcher Rachel Tabachnick).
In 2007, an organization that is now one of Invisible Children’s major campaign partners, the Uganda Conflict Action Network (now Renamed Resolve Uganda) helped create the “Northern Uganda Faith and Action Kit”, designed to enable people concerned about the conflict in Northern Uganda to raise awareness and lobby American politicians to address the issue.
The kit contained sample letters to Senators and Congress members, and a list of actions to take, one of which was screening two movies. One was Invisible Children’s first film. The second was “An Unconventional War”, by George Otis, Jr.
The blaming-the-victim theme in An Unconventional War is mirrored disturbingly in a September 18, 2011 blog post from Invisible Children Director of Ideology Jedidiah Jenkins, who wrote,
” ‘there are no ordinary people, only eternal souls becoming gods and monsters’ or somethinglikethat cs lewis said
I think about that a lot as I ignore a jabbering homeless woman that looks at me with distant eyes dehumanizing me as a pocket-book-preppy-asshole-with-spoiling-parents as i dehumanize her as the result of a long string of short-sighted-self-serving-corroded-willpower-weakness-decisions
and she tells me some weak and tired lie that once probably sounded real about a bus ticket to see her children and i might buy her something at 7/11 although i probably wont because i’m rushing somewhere far less important than the state of her life
and as with everything I am, so enter the mitigating factors of: my belief that a free society must give people the right to suffer from their decisions, and my spread-too-thin lifestyle of care can destroy me and more importantly them as they see in me a promise i cannot fulfill… blah blah “
Yesterday, TWO’s John Becker traveled to Springfield, Massachusetts to represent Truth Wins Out in an action directed against notorious anti-LGBT extremist Scott Lively. The action, which has been covered by numerous media outlets including the New York Timesand the UK’s Guardian, was conducted by groups that included Springfield’s Stop the Hate and Homophobia Coalition, GetEQUAL MA, Join the Impact MA, Out Now, Arise for Social Justice, and TWO. It coincided with a federal lawsuit filed yesterday by the Center for Constitutional Rights over Lively’s role in the ongoing persecution of LGBT people in Uganda; attorneys and representatives from CCR were also in attendance.
As virulently homophobic bigots go, Scott Lively is the worst of the worst. His organization, Abiding Truth Ministries, is certified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-gay hate group. His inflammatory writings include The Pink Swastika – a book that outrageously claims that gay people helped to bring Nazism to Germany and mastermind the Holocaust — and his latest volume, Seven Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child, which purports to help parents take steps to ensure their children won’t be gay by preventing so-called “pro-homosexual indoctrination.”
Lively is a general in the global war on LGBT people, traveling the world and slandering gay people in countries as far-flung as Moldova, Latvia, Uganda, and Russia. In March 2009, he was one of three American evangelicals who flew to Uganda to keynote a three-day anti-gay conference that indoctrinated literally thousands of Ugandans, from government officials to teachers, with the most putrid and pernicious lies imaginable. Lively himself likened it to dropping “a nuclear bomb on the gay agenda.” Ugandans were falsely told that gay men sodomize vulnerable teenage boys in a kind of quasi-vampiric lust for new sexual conquests, “recruit” young people into homosexuality, and actively seek to undermine society and marriage, replacing it with sexual anarchy. They were told that it was possible to “pray away the gay,” that gays were to blame for the recent genocide in neighboring Rwanda, and that they should take measures in their homes and society to clamp down hard on the “evil” of homosexuality and strengthen weak anti-homosexuality laws.
We all know what happened next. A month after the conference, Ugandan parliamentarian David Bahati — one of Lively’s key men in the country — introduced the notorious Anti-Homosexuality Bill, also known as the “Kill the Gays” bill. An international outcry ensued, led by LGBT rights groups including Truth Wins Out, whose American Prayer Hour drew national attention to the Ugandan bill and its disturbing connection to American evangelical Christians and D.C. politicians. The bill stalled temporarily, but was re-worked and re-introduced last month. In the meantime, LGBT people in Uganda have faced threats, intimidation, persecution, violence, and even murder.
Yesterday’s lawsuit was filed by CCR on behalf of Sexual Minorities Uganda, a major LGBT advocacy group in that country. Lively is being sued for persecution under the alien tort statute, a law allowing foreigners to sue American citizens in federal court for violating international law. TWO has been consulted on the suit, due to the prominent role the “pray away the gay” myth plays in Lively’s anti-LGBT bigotry and Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
Demonstrators in Springfield, including TWO’s Becker, processed yesterday from the federal courthouse to Holy Grounds Coffee House, a local coffee shop owned by Lively where he lures people in (including students from a school just down the street) with free coffee and wifi in order to expose them to anti-gay, fundamentalist propaganda. The protesters wore all black. Some also wore masks to symbolize the silencing of Uganda’s LGBT people, others carried signs with the names of LGBT victims of violence and persecution in that country. Still others carried coffins representing those who have been murdered for being gay. One of them bore the name of prominent LGBT activist David Kato, who was killed last year. The signs and coffins, along with flowers memorializing the victims, were laid in front of Lively’s coffee house, symbolically placing the blame at his feet. The peaceful demonstration was conducted in complete silence, punctuated only by slow, solemn drumbeats keeping time as the mourners marched.
I’m going to bet that most of you, if not all of you, have seen the new viral video sensation called “Kony 2012.” The video was created by a San Diego-based charity called Invisible Children and has received nearly 74 million views, capturing the attention of celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Stephen Colbert, and Rihanna. It calls for the apprehension and prosecution of former Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army.
But you probably haven’t heard about this: according to researcher Bruce Wilson and IRS 990 forms, Invisible Children receives major funding from far-right, anti-gay fundamentalist donors and organizations, chief among them the U.S.-based National Christian Foundation (NCF). The NCF has also provided significant funds to fanatical groups deeply tied to the persecution of LGBT people in Uganda, including that nation’s infamous “Kill the Gays” bill.
According to Wilson’s report, the NCF (which counts among its biggest donors Rick Santorum’s billionaire buddy Foster Friess, by the way) has emerged as the biggest funder of the anti-gay, dominionist Christian right over the last ten years. Groups receiving NCF grants include James Dobson’s Focus on the Family; the Family Research Council, a Southern Poverty Law Center-certified anti-gay hate group; the Fellowship Foundation, a nonprofit arm of the subversive D.C.-based fundamentalist shadow organization known as “The Family;” and Harvest Evangelism, a California-based ministry whose founder, Ed Silvoso, has worked with Julius Oyet, a leading promoter of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
NCF also funds The Call, led by Lou Engle, a notorious anti-LGBT extremist who frequently uses violent imagery in his tirades against homosexuality. In 2010, Engle brought The Call to Uganda, where the legislature was already considering the infamous “Kill the Gays Bill” – authored and sponsored by MP David Bahati, a member of The Family. Engle’s rally, which Bahati attended, stoked the fires of homophobic hatred and helped to create an even more frenzied climate of intolerance in that country.
American anti-gay groups like The Family, The Call, and Harvest Evangelism are waging a global war on LGBT people, exporting their hateful bile abroad even as the tide turns against their dangerous views at home. While stopping a brutal warlord is an admirable and important goal, it should not be done at the expense of LGBT Ugandans. Invisible Children needs to account for the very disconcerting ties between their organization and the religious right. More fundamentally, though, they need to decide: are they going to be idealists or ideologues? If Invisible Children is a group that simply seeks to do good, it is incredibly irresponsible for them to be affiliated with the funders of anti-gay fanaticism.
The National Christian Foundation isn’t the only connection between Invisible Children and homophobic bigotry. Invisible Children also received contributions from Californians Terry and Barbara Caster and their foundation. The Caster family contributed heavily to the successful push for the passage of Proposition 8, California’s constitutional marriage discrimination amendment, in 2008.
The sponsor of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill, David Bahati, is practically begging the United States to cut off aid if his grotesque bill is passed.
“If there was any condition to force the Western world to stop giving us money,” David Bahati told Josh Kron of the New York Times. “I would like that.”
Newsflash to Bahati: The United States does not need Uganda and 99-percent of our citizens would not notice if every last nickel was withdrawn from the dictatorship. Indeed, in a time of economic distress at home, many people are questioning whether we should be sending our hard earned tax dollars to places like Uganda — that may not represent our interests and values.
If Uganda passes this hideous violation of human rights the US should take six actions:
1) Cut off all aid to Uganda.
2) Work to ensure LGBT Ugandans can escape their country’s tyrants and resettle to more friendly nations.
3) Offer legal immunity for LGBT Ugandans who defend themselves and their families in the face of state terror. Everyone is entitled to a vigorous self-defense and is not required to sheepishly walk into the hands of security forces that would violate international human rights standards and lock them in prison for life and throw away the key — or worse.
4) Congressional hearings about the involvement of American evangelicals in egging on Uganda’s anti-gay hysteria — that has already led to fear, violence, and death of gay activists.
5) Evidence should be compiled to eventually take to the International Criminal Court to prosecute Bahati, Martin Ssempa, and the Americans involved with this anti-gay bill.
6) A travel ban to the United States for all Ugandan officials
The most cynical part of violent tyrants like the oddly gay-obsessed Bahati is that he claims attempts by the West to stop the human rights violations are “neocolonialism.” In fact, Bahati had no problem when American Christian colonialists like The Family (aka The Fellowship), Rick Warren, and Lou Engle embraced him and made Uganda their right wing experiment. As Bahati pointed out, Uganda became their virulently anti-gay laboratory because the Americans admitted that it was “too late” to pass such heinous laws in the U.S.
Furthermore, I would still like to know why a Ugandan General was at a party at the same hotel where the Values Voter Summit was taking place last year in Washington. What unsavory plotting and planning may have been taking place? Who were the evangelicals who may have been involved with undermining US foreign policy and promoting violent homophobia overseas?
Finally, the Obama administration should not forget Bahati’s insult today against the President. He told the Times: “The good thing with the West is that we know that Obama can influence the world only up to 2016. That’s definite.”
The Obama Administration should recognize exactly what the Republican-embracing Bahati does — that as long as Obama occupies the White House, America can reduce our financial obligations abroad by cutting off Uganda like a midnight drunk at the bar.
If the hate bill is passed, the rabidly euphoric anti-gay celebrations would eventually die down. Ugandans would soon realize that the money from Uncle Sam has dried up. In short order, the public would turn on Bahati and others of his ilk who put their prejudices before the best interests of their nation.
And if I’m wrong and they still support Bahati in the face of poverty, economic and diplomatic isolation? Well, then it is rather clear that our money would be better spent elsewhere — like in more tolerant nations or fixing the aging infrastructure back home.
It is simply unacceptable that American citizens would be asked to continue subsidizing anti-LGBT violence and discrimination.
