Search Results for: uganda gay

Check out this full-throated defense – “Uganda Is Right; Rick Warren Is Wrong” – of executing homosexuals under the civil law – which uses Martin Luther King Jr as support for a law that would round up, spy on, jail and execute members of a minority. The speaker argues that because gay people ahve a choice to leave the country if they want to avoid being rounded up and killed or imprisoned, this is not equivalent to those leftist regimes (of course Nazi Germany is leftist for much of today’s Republican right) that have persecuted minorities in the past. I have to say this honesty is refreshing. It’s a full-throated follow-through of Christianist doctrine. The Bible, after all, mandates the execution of homosexuals. The GOP believes that the Bible is the most important basis for social policy. What else, after all, can compete with the divine word? Others on the evangelical right have actually denounced the Uganda bill as un-Christian. So let me take this chance to praise unreservedly John Mark Reynolds’ brilliant evisceration of the proposed law in First Things from both a Christian and secular perspective. But that led me to search for other statements in the conservative press in the US. Guess what?

The NYT has just discovered the Ugandan bill, inspired by key American Christianists, that will round up, jail and execute homosexuals. (Non-MSM readers would have been following this essential story for months on Box Turtle Bulletin). The multi-media page is superb. What's fascinating is that the rhetoric the Christianists use is the same in Africa as it is in America, but in Africa, the public consensus is so anti-gay already that the consequences of this demonization are felt much more immediately and brutally. Here's the American rhetoric:

For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”

If a movement is "evil" and trying to "defeat" all families, as evangelicals claim of gays (and Nazis and Communists said of gays), then of course some already predisposed against gays would believe it is essential to identify, round up, forcibly cure or execute this foul threat from within. And yet the Americans now claim they are shocked, shocked! by the results of their strategy. Maybe they are.

"Killing them might not be helpful," – Christianist Ethics and Integrity Minister Nsaba Buturo of Uganda on plans to remove executing gay people in IUganda, in favor of rounding them up and jailing them for life, along with anyone who doesn't inform on them. You want to know the true face of evangelical Christianism in … Continue reading Quote For The Day II

by Chris Bodenner

The Ugandan Daily Monitor runs a front-page profile of Val Kalende, a lesbian who refuses to cow to the threat of life imprisonment, or even death, at the hands of the state:

The Sunday before last, Val Kalende listened quietly as her pastor’s sermon digressed into a soft tirade against homosexuals. “We may even have one in our midst,” the cleric told a congregation of about 50 born-again Christians. If Ms Kalende did not know her pastor to be an honourable man, a father figure, his sudden anti-gay remarks would have left her shifting uncomfortably in her chair, wondering if those dreaded words were meant for her.

In the end, the woman who also serves as a minister, regularly taking her place on the worship team at her church of eight months, chose to let it go. It would not be her last time there.

Continued here. GayUganda is in awe of Kalende:

by Patrick Appel Timothy Kincaid posts a statement against anti-gay violence from the Vatican. It doesn't mention Uganda by name but Kincaid thinks the timing isn't a coincidence: [E]ven though the Catholic Church does not have the courage or integrity to directly oppose Uganda’s proposed legislation by name nor the moral character to oppose the … Continue reading “Respect The Rights Of All Persons”

Religion Dispatches interviews filmmaker Lisa Dargen, who pressured the evangelical leader to condemn the Uganda bill: Darden believes that Warren’s noncommittal statement [to Newsweek] revealed that the evangelical Christian community didn’t believe that the Uganda story would be such big news in the United States and that they would not be asked to address it. … Continue reading Rick Warren’s “Catalyst”

David Link, with his customary nuance, examines the question:

Warren is all over the map on gay equality. On her show last night, Maddow clearly nailed Warren’s incoherence, both on Prop. 8 and on his role in Uganda. But that is where I think a bit of empathy may be in order (and I know this will be controversial). Like so many other heterosexuals of his age and older, Warren is

Today on the Dish we had a small reax of the president's Nobel speech.  Social conservatives Rick Warren and Tom Coburn came out against the Uganda bill, and Andrew wondered when the pope would do the same.  A reader thought they took too long.  Another social conservative helped gay rights by moving marriage equality along … Continue reading The Daily Wrap

Rick Warren disowns the new Uganda bill designed to inform on, round up, imprison, forcibly submit to "psychological cures", and execute homosexual Ugandans: This is an extremely positive if overdue development. I remain deeply concerned that Uganda's public policy is based on the "curing" homosexuals rubric, but that sure is better than executing them. The … Continue reading “This Terrible Bill”