On March 15, 2009, Stephen Landga of the Family Life Network in Kampala, Uganda, held a meeting to follow up on the conference from a couple of weeks prior.  Approximately 60 people attended the talk in which Langa attempts to blur the line between pedophilia and homosexuality.  While nothing especially new in the history of homophobia, the tactic is still both disgusting and dangerous, particularly in that region of the world.

In this clip, Langa uses the holocaust revisionist book “The Pink Swastika” as a source for a “history of the modern gay movement.”  The premise of the book, which appears to be largely based on conspiratorial fiction, is that the Nazi party upper echelon was comprised primarily of homosexuals, and that it was an integral step in the social evolution of the gay (rights) movement.  Such is the hatred of the author, Scott Lively, for homosexuals, that he has constructed a history in which they are responsible for the greatest holocaust in the modern era.  It is a commentary both sadistic and ironic.

They don’t care about you, they want your children…

The text Langa reads from so dramatically here was written by Michael Swift in 1987. “Michael Swift” is a pseudonym – a nod to 18th-century satirist Jonathan Swift – and the text attributed to him is satire. Despite this, it has been treated as a serious “gay manifesto” time and again by anti-gay activists to incite fear and hatred of the gay community. The essay contains the deliberately outrageous claims that gays “will sodomize your children,” that churches “will be closed” and “the family unit eliminated.” What is rarely quoted is the preface, which clearly marks the piece as satire:

This essay is an outré, madness, a tragic, cruel fantasy, an eruption of inner rage, on how the oppressed desperately dream of being the oppressor.

Depicting this work of satire written in the heat of the AIDS crisis as having serious intent is nothing less than an incitement to violence. Combined with the prestige provided by supposed American “authorities” on homosexuality in the meetings of March 5-8, Langa here brings to the surface the greatest fear, and one that has been used by so many campaigns against marginalized groups throughout history — they are a danger to your children. A lie served up by a “man of God,” backed by “experts” from the West and representatives of their own government. This is all a dangerous recipe for violence against anyone who is, or is perceived to be, gay in Uganda.

Owing to their passive participation with the earlier conference, their affirming position towards their representative and their unwillingness to take even the most basic steps to counter this menagerie of lies being used to generate anger and hatred towards gay men and women in that country, Exodus International and its president, Alan Chambers, has a direct line of responsibility for what happens next.  Along with Caleb Brundidge of the International Healing Foundation (Richard Cohen) and Scott Lively of Abiding Truth Ministries, they all carry responsibility for what is coming.

Not only have they actively participated in a sham conference, held by a person known to distort the truth, but they have been absolutely useless since, avoiding inquiries and desperate pleas alike, all the while posturing for whatever audience they ultimately care about.

Have you spoken with any gay people on the ground in Uganda, Mr. Chambers?  Well I have and they are terrified, and thanks in part to you, they should be.

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