The American Roots of the Ugandan Anti-Gay Law

[El_Johns]

Last edited Sun Dec 29, 2013, 04:55 PM - Edit history (1)

The Ugandan anti-homosexuality law, which would make same-gender sex punishable by imprisonment and apply the death penalty to lesbians and gays who are HIV-positive, is shameful enough in itself. But even more shameful is the fact that there's evidence that the law may have come about with the support and encouragement of United States congressmen and fundamentalists.

The fundamentalist group known as The Family (or The Fellowship) has recently gotten a lot of unwelcome attention as several of their members—such as Senator John Ensign and Governor Mark Sanford—found themselves embroiled in high-profile scandals involving sex and political corruption. The Family is well-connected politically: they own a house on C Street in Washington, DC which serves as a second home for conservative politicians such as Senator Sam Brownback, Representative Bart Stupak, and Senator James Inhofe. And according to Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, Ugandan MP David Bahati, who introduced the anti-gay legislation, is a "core member" of The Family. Ugandan President Yoweri Musevini, who supports the legislation and says that homosexuality is a European corruption of Africa, is also considered by The Family to be their "key man" in Africa, and has had close relations with the group since 1986.

Sharlet was interviewed by Terri Gross on NPR's Fresh Air last week and detailed the connection between The Family and the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda. Of Bahati, Musevini and the Ugandan ethics minister, Nsaba Buturo, Sharlet says that "these guys are not so much under the influence of The Family. They are, in Uganda, The Family." Thanks to his connections with The Family, Sharlet says, Musevini has a direct line to American politicians such as Inhofe and Brownback when he needs favors such as military aid. Inhofe has paid especially close interest to Africa in general and Uganda, even going so far as to say that he has "adopted" the country.

Although The Family may seem especially sinister, given its combination of secrecy and political connections, the association of American fundamentalists with Ugandan homophobia are much broader than that one single group. As the Guardian reports, the original impetus came from a seminar held last March in Uganda's capital, Kampala. The seminar, organized by a Ugandan pastor named Steven Langa, who teaches that gays pay children to recruit their friends into homosexuality, featured three American fundamentalists as speakers: Scott Lively, President of Defend the Family; Don Schmierer, a board member of "ex-gay" organization Exodus International (note: Exodus International has officially said it opposes the bill); and Caleb Lee Brundidge, a "ex-gay therapist" with the International Healing Foundation. Immediately following the seminar, a petition was circulated and submitted to parliament, ultimately resulting in the bill.

And according to Newsweek, Pastor Rick Warren, who created controversy when Barack Obama selected him to give the invocation at his inauguration in February, has refused to condemn the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill... Warren's response to a request for his position on the bill attempted to strike a "neutral" stance...Warren's plea for neutrality is particularly disingenuous given his association with Ugandan minister Martin Ssempa, who has given addresses and seminars at Warren's Saddleback Church in Orange County, California. According to The Daily Beast, in Uganda, "Ssempa’s stunts have included burning condoms in the name of Jesus and arranging the publication of names of homosexuals in cooperative local newspapers while lobbying for criminal penalties to imprison them."

http://carnalnation.com/content/40170/10/american-roots-ugandan-anti-gay-law



Exporting the Anti-Gay...

In October 2010, a banner headline ran on the front page of the Ugandan newspaper Rolling Stone: “100 Pictures of Uganda’s Top Homos Leak.” Subheadings warned of these people’s dark designs: “We Shall Recruit 1,000,000 Kids by 2012,” and “Parents Now Face Heartbreaks as Homos Raid Schools.” One of the two men pictured on the front page was David Kato, an outspoken leader of Uganda’s small human-rights movement. Inside the newspaper, his name and home address, along with those of other LGBT Ugandans, were printed. The article called for the “homos” to be hanged. Three months later, after numerous threats, Kato was bludgeoned to death in his Kampala home...

While the Ugandan controversies have garnered the most attention outside of Africa, the influence of U.S. evangelical culture warriors has been felt across sub-Saharan Africa. The Christian right has been involved in legislative or constitutional efforts to crack down on the LGBT populations of Kenya, Liberia, Namibia, Nigeria, Malawi, Rwanda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe as well. Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill has become a kind of template for other countries, including Nigeria and Liberia, where similar laws have been proposed.

How did African sexual minorities become collateral damage in the U.S. culture wars? The story of American religious conservatives’ involvement on the continent is long and complicated. While American mainline churches, with their more liberal views on social issues, supported the fight against South African apartheid and other colonial regimes, many conservative U.S. evangelicals insisted that anti-colonial leaders were godless communists and terrorists. Despite this ignoble history, American conservatives have reinvented themselves as Africa’s best allies and the true representatives of Western Christianity. This dramatic makeover has involved heavy investment in communications networks with continental reach; both Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network and the evangelical Trinity Broadcasting Network are seen across sub-Saharan Africa, and Christian-right radio networks abound. Evangelical churches and groups provide scholarships for African clerics to receive conservative theological training at U.S. institutions. They sponsor orphanages, Bible schools, universities, and social-welfare projects.

African evangelical churches have traditionally been doctrinally orthodox but socially progressive on such issues as national liberation and poverty, making them natural partners of liberal Western churches. The African churches long depended on financial aid from mainline U.S. churches for most of their operations. However, right-wing groups have enticed numerous African religious leaders to reject funding from mainline denominations and to accept replacement funds from the American Christian right.

The financial ties between U.S. conservatives and African political and religious leaders are often clandestine, with both parties typically denying any funding relationship. Tax documents show that two African leaders—Stephen Langa, whose Family Life Network hosted the Kampala anti-gay conference in 2009, and Martin Ssempa, pastor of the Makerere Community Church in Kampala and a leading promoter of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill—have both received funding from conservative U.S. groups. David Bahati, who introduced Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill, has deep ties to the secretive U.S. Christian political group known as the Family, or the Fellowship. According to investigative journalist Jeff Sharlet, Bahati “appears to be a core member of the Family. … He organizes their Ugandan National Prayer Breakfast and oversees an African sort of student leadership program designed to create future leaders for Africa, into which the Family has poured millions of dollars...”

But the anti-gay agenda has been orchestrated by U.S. conservatives....

http://prospect.org/article/exporting-anti-gay-movement

[El_Johns]

1. Kick

[El_Johns]

2. It's curious to me that many folks here are so interested in decrying the Pope for his anti-gay

but so little interested in decrying the wing of the anti-gay discussed in this article, who seem to be much more active.

In fact I've run across several posts attributing the anti-gay efforts in Uganda (death penalty etc) to Catholics, when it's right-wing US Protestants who are responsile. The Catholic Church in Uganda & Rome has denounced such efforts repeatedly.

[El_Johns]

3. Trying again to get some traction...maybe a new title will help.

[Oilwellian]

5. Don't take it personally

Seems to be a slow day and The Family has been discussed by DU'ers many times.

[Oilwellian]

4. Hillary is also very involved with The Family...aka The Fellowship

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/09/hillarys-prayer-hillary-clintons-religion-and-politics