Replies to post #305646 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[blackhawks]

Hey asshole, didn't I point out to you that that is a Pence position?

Too bad for you in particular that you can't 'pray away' the stupidity.

Question, whom did Northam kill?

Asshole in NZ, citing Trump for his clarity on nationalism, 50, Northam 0.

[nwsun]

I liked one of the comments on that article. It said, Jews, LGBT and Muslims all in the same party. What could go wrong? That's what's so odd about who is aligned with who here in the USA.

[sortagreen]

You are truly a tiresome moron.


U.S. Culture Wars Gone Global: The American Evangelical Behind the "Kill the Gays" Bill in Uganda


By Emily Cody | April 30, 2012

On March 14, Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) filed a U.S. federal lawsuit against American Minister Scott Lively using the Alien Torts Statute. SMUG accuses Lively of collaborating with four named Ugandan co-conspirators (conservative evangelicals Martin Ssempa and Stephen Langa, MP David Bahati, and the former Minister of Ethics and Integrity James Buturo) to create an enabling environment for persecution and violence against gays and lesbians in Uganda. Lively is also accused of directly contributing to the infamous 2009 “Kill the Gays” bill which never came to a vote, but was reintroduced in February 2012 by Bahati.

The Case Against Lively. In the legal brief, SMUG testifies to having experienced discrimination in every “meaningful aspect of their lives.” SMUG and its U.S. partner, the Center for Constitutional Rights, track Lively’s involvement in fomenting an environment of persecution since his first visit to Uganda in 2002, with the campaign against homosexuality drastically increasing following the December 2008 landmark ruling by the High Court that gays and lesbians had the right to basic protection of law. Lively’s accused co-conspirator Stephen Langa rapidly organized the March 2009 “Seminar on Exposing the Homosexual Agenda,” which prominently featured Lively alongside fellow American evangelicals Don Schmierer and Caleb Lee Brundidge. In the conference, Lively described gays and LGBT advocates as the “most dangerous social and political movement of our time.” His remarks also correlated gay sexual identity with pedophilia (already an incredibly salient issue in Uganda) and compared gays to the Nazis and Rwandan genocidaires.

The Aftermath. Immediately after the conference, Lively’s co-conspirators began making sensationalised statements. Outing campaigns took on new dimensions, and several gays and lesbians left the country. In cases where mobs formed exposing gay couples in their home, police often intervened to disperse the mob and then arrest the accused couple. The Anti-Homosexuality Bill was introduced by Bahati the following month. The first version proposed to make “aggravated” homosexuality (when one partner is HIV positive, under 18, or is a “repeat offender”) a capital offense and homosexual activity subject to life imprisonment. Like its predecessor tabled in 2010, the current 2012 draft of the Bill has dropped capital sentencing but reportedly still seeks to expand criminal penalties from 14 years to life in prison.
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The most prominent outing campaign occurred in the October 2-9, 2010 issue of the short-lived Rolling Stone newspaper, whose founders were allegedly connected to Ssempa. The newspaper’s cover featured a banner reading “Hang Them: They Are After Our Kids” with a picture of SMUG Advocacy Officer David Kato below. In a suit brought by the Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law (representing Kato and two other prominent LGBT activists) a High Court Judge ruled in December 2010 that the story had violated constitutional rights to privacy and dignity. In mid-January 2011, Kato was bludgeoned to death in his home.

In the aftermath of criticism of the Bill, Kato’s death, and SMUG’s court filing, Lively and his supporters have attempted to absolve him of all complicity. Lively wrote to the Ugandan Parliament through Ssempa opposing the inclusion of capital punishment and emphasizing rehabilitation and mandatory reporting provisions, comparing it to the now overturned “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in the U.S. He tellingly never condemned the spirit of the Bill and some of his comments seem to contradict his 2009 remarks, possibly due to domestic pressure. Lively responded to the SMUG case by questioning how “truth became a crime against humanity.” Mass Resistance, a Massachusetts-based socially conservative organization, dismissed SMUG’s lawsuit by saying that “the bill was brought up twice, but never passed” (it’s actually now three times), as if the mere failure of the Bill indicated that the “climate of hatred and persecution” cited by SMUG and refuted by Ugandan public officials occurred in a vacuum, without linking the Bill to resistance to Western aid, domestic Ugandan politics, exportation of American culture wars, and the politicization of homophobia.

Racist Accusations or the Globalisation of U.S. Culture Wars? One of the areas Mass Resistance cited was the “disturbing racist elements to accusations,” with the “strong rhetoric condemning Lively implying that a black Ugandan would not have acted in that way unless a white man from America led them to do it.” This tenuous connection may have some elements of truth to it, but not in the way Mass Resistance thinks: The portrayal of homosexuality as imposed by the West is also about resistance to Western aid and its influence on the state and the construction of homosexuality as “un-African” and a Western import. In a must-read report by Reverend Kapya Kaoma (who was also present at the 2009 conference) called “Globalising the Culture Wars: US Conservatives, African Churches, and Homophobia,” Kaoma details the increased involvement of far right-wing American evangelicals in Africa as they enlisted African church leaders to help cooperate in the U.S. culture wars. As the demographic center of Christianity shifts from the global North to the global South, Africa’s influence within Christian churches has increased. Socially conservative American evangelicals who may hold more conservative views than the “mainline” views held by their churches depend on African religious leaders to help legitimize their positions.

Tragically, Kato’s death was largely dismissed by Lively and his supporters, who claim that Kato was killed by a male prostitute that he refused to pay. The police later delinked Kato’s death from his activism and his killer was sentenced to thirty years in prison. Speaking about the case and Kato’s death, Lively states that “it is paranoid to interpret reasonable views as hate,” as if the LGBT Ugandans that have left Uganda since the conference and following Kato’s death are coincidental.
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As much as the case resonates for LGBT advocates, it also raises important questions about power and free speech. Homophobia is a huge problem in Uganda, but can’t be portrayed accurately without viewing the restrictive environment for civil and political rights within the country. As one Ugandan Muslim taxi driver said, “I can defend them. But I fear what? The police, the government. They can arrest you and put you in the safe house, and for me, I don’t have any lawyer who can help me.” In February 2012, a meeting of Freedom and Roam Uganda was shut down in the city of Entebbe in central Uganda, with one Ugandan Minister stating that “we don’t like them to organize and associate.” Liberty Counsel, who is defending Lively, states: “the suit should cause everyone to be concerned, because it is a direct threat against freedom of speech.” At the heart of the SMUG v. Lively case is the open exercise of civil and political rights; for LGBT activists and members of the gay community in Uganda to have equal rights before the law and the freedom to live without fear; and what Lively perceives as his right to the freedom of expression, even if his views are perceived as hateful to some. If they looked a little deeper, Lively and his supporters may find that they are not so different from their gay opposition after all.

A longer version of this article originally appeared on The Mantle.

https://mic.com/articles/7699/u-s-culture-wars-gone-global-the-american-evangelical-behind-the-kill-the-gays-bill-in-uganda#.sP5FGTynl

[sortagreen]

It’s Not Just Uganda: Behind the Christian Right’s Onslaught in Africa

For years now, evangelical activists from the United States have been speaking out against homosexuality and cheering on antigay legislation all over Africa.

By Nathalie Baptiste and Foreign Policy In Focus
April 4, 2014

This article is a joint publication of TheNation.com and Foreign Policy In Focus.

In Uganda, being gay can now earn you a lifetime in prison.

In February, the East African country was again thrust into the international spotlight after President Yoweri Museveni signed into law a draconian bill that criminalized homosexuality. The high profile, on-and-off battle over the so-called “kill the gays” bill has drawn headlines for years as the most extreme example in a wave of antigay legislation on the continent. But homophobia in Africa is not merely an African problem.

As the gay rights movement has gained traction in the United States, the more virulently homophobic ideologies of the religious right have been pushed further out of the mainstream and into fringe territory. But as their influence has waned at home, right-wing evangelists from the United States have been flexing their sanctimonious muscles influencing policymakers in Africa.

For years now, evangelical activists from the United States have been injecting themselves into African politics, speaking out against homosexuality and cheering on antigay legislation on the continent. The influence of these groups has been well documented in Uganda. The now-defunct Exodus International, for example, sent Don Schmierer, a board member, to Uganda in 2009 to speak at a conference alongside Scott Lively, a pastor who was later sued by a Ugandan gay rights group for his role in promoting human rights violations against LGBTQ people. The two participated in a disturbing antigay conference, where speakers blamed homosexuals for the rise of Nazism and the Rwandan genocide, among other abhorrent acts. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, a hard-right Christian group that is active in US politics as well, similarly supported antigay laws in Uganda. At the peak of the controversy over the “kill the gays” bill, Perkins praised the Ugandan president for “leading his nation to repentance.”

But such groups aren’t just active in Uganda. They have promoted antigay legislation in Kenya, Nigeria and Zimbabwe, just to name a few other places. The support ranges from popular agitation and sideline cheerleading to outright intervention.

In 2010, for example, when Zimbabwe began the process of drafting a new constitution, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a Christian law firm founded by evangelist Pat Robertson, launched a Zimbabwean counterpart called the African Centre for Law and Justice. The outpost trained lawyers for the express purpose of putting a Christian stamp on the draft of the new constitution.

The African Centre joined forces with the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe (EFZ), an indigenous organization, to promote constitutional language affirming that Zimbabwe is a Christian nation and ensuring that homosexuality remained illegal. These and other hardline views are outlined in a pamphlet distributed by the EFZ and ACLJ. Jordan Sekulow, the executive director of ACLJ, announced that his organization would lobby for Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe in political and religious circles in the event of any controversy over the provisions, despite the fact that Mugabe has been sanctioned by the United States and the European Union for violating human rights. Last year, Zimbabwe’s new constitution, which includes a ban on gay marriage, was approved by an overwhelming popular vote.

ACLJ’s Kenya-based offshoot, the East African Center for Law and Justice (EACLJ), lobbied against Kenya’s progressive new constitution as well. In April 2010, a report on the group’s website called homosexuality “unacceptable” and “foreign” and called for the Kenyan constitution to clearly define marriage as between a man and a woman, thus closing the door on future laws that could attempt to legalize same-sex marriage. In this case the EACLJ was unsuccessful, and the new constitution was approved without any language regarding same-sex marriage.

Pat Robertson’s entanglements in Africa go well beyond Zimbabwe and Kenya.

In 1960, Robertson created the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), which broadcasts through cable and satellite to over 200 countries. Robertson is a co-host on the 700 Club, arguably CBN’s most popular show. From his perch on the show, Robertson has made a seemingly endless variety of inflammatory remarks about LGBTQ people and just about everyone else that does not fall in line with his own religious thinking.

In the United States, Robertson’s vitriol can be brushed aside as the antiquated ravings of a fringe figure. Not so in much of Africa. A survey conducted in 2010 found that 74 million people in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, had watched at least one CBN show in the previous year. That’s a remarkable reach, considering Nigeria is home to about 80 million Christians in all.

Robertson’s influence plays into an increasingly hostile political climate for gays in the country. Last January, President Goodluck Jonathan signed into law the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, which provides punishments of up to fourteen years' imprisonment for a gay marriage and up to ten years for membership in or encouragement of gay clubs and organizations. The enactment of the law was followed by a wave of arrests of gay men—and widespread denunciation from the international community.

The religious right, however, doesn’t see Nigerian laws regarding homosexuality as a gross violation of human rights but rather as protection of “traditional marriage.” In 2011, on the heels of the Nigerian Senate passing an earlier version of the antigay law, President Obama announced that the United States would officially promote LGBTQ rights abroad as part of its development framework. In response, the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute denounced the administration’s directive for putting “U.S. foreign policy on a collision course with religious freedom.”

MassResistance, a Massachusetts-based organization that bills itself as a “pro-family” activist group, praised Nigeria when the Nigerian House passed an earlier version of the bill that President Jonathan signed into law on January 7. In a statement, the group said that African nations are “feeling the brunt” of the gay rights movement, claiming that the “huge spread of AIDS” and the “breakdown in society caused by the homosexual movement seems to bring more general social destruction in African cultures than in the West.” Antigay laws in Nigeria have enjoyed unequivocal support from some hardline evangelical groups in the United States, with some going so far as to travel to Nigeria to spread antigay sentiment.

One such group is the “pro-family” advocacy group Family Watch International. Formed in 1999 and headed by Sharon Slater, FWI boasts members and supporters from over 170 countries. In 2011, Slater was the keynote speaker at a meeting of the Nigerian Bar Association, where she touted her beliefs on homosexuality, telling delegates that they would no longer have religious freedom and that homosexuals would prey on their children if they supported “fictitious sexual rights.” To Slater and her ilk, the rights of LGBTQ people are imaginary.

FWI even wields influence within the United Nations. In early 2011, FWI co-hosted a “Global Family Policy Forum” in Phoenix. Over the two-day event, FWI coached twenty-six UN staffers from twenty-three different countries in attendance on how to resist UN initiatives on gay rights. An FWI newsletter claimed that conference attendees were finally hearing scientific and clinical “evidence” that homosexuality was not genetically determined and could be cured by therapy.

To some, the belief that homosexuality is a disease that needs to be cured may seem too ridiculous to even entertain. But if the devout can’t win at home, they’ll take their message abroad. It’s up to the international community and African activists dedicated to human rights to put an end to this export of hate.

https://www.thenation.com/article/its-not-just-uganda-behind-christian-rights-onslaught-africa/