Ex-Gay Watch

In an opinion piece for Christianity Today, Timothy Shah absolves American evangelicals from any responsibility for homophobia in Uganda and says the Anti-Homosexuality Bill is “a single legislative stunt by a single low-level politician.”

Shah responds to the claim that a 2009 conference stirred up anti-gay sentiments . The agenda of its American organizers, Shah says, was “therapeutic, whereas Mr Bahati’s bill is remorselessly punitive.” The reference is to David Bahati, the Ugandan MP who attended the conference and was later to draft the bill that would effectively put to death homosexuals and their supporters in Uganda.

Therapeutic? Perhaps Shah has not seen this video from the conference, in which historical revisionist Scott Lively explains his theory that homosexuals were behind the atrocities of the Holocaust and Rwanda:

Following the conference, chief organizer Stephen Langa, of the Family Life Network, continued to promote Lively’s so-called history of the “gay movement,” a fabrication that connects homosexuality to Nazism, communism and pedophilia. Lively later described his visit as “a nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda.”

Along with other commentators, we predicted an increase in anti-gay violence in Uganda — and it happened.

More video at BTB.

American evangelical leader Lou Engle has confirmed his support for the leaders who drafted Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009.

Engle, whose TheCall conference in Uganda promoted the bill that would spell execution for gays and their supporters, told Sarah Posner of Religion Dispatches that he was in favor of “the principle of a nation … restraining [homosexuality] from coming into their nation.”

He said he supported “a legal restraint and punishment” to keep out the “homosexual agenda,” but was evasive about what type of punishment he favored. He denied supporting the death penalty for gays, but said there were biblical grounds for execution in the case of a person transmitting HIV to a minor.

Engle downplayed his association with David Bahati, the Ugandan MP who drafted the bill, and said he did not even remember meeting Bahati and his right-hand man, Bishop Julius Oyet. He did, however, say that he “appreciated the two guys whose hearts were to bring forth a principled bill.”

In May this year, Engle praised Ugandans for “showing courage to take a stand for righteousness in the earth.”

More analysis from Dr Warren Throckmorton can be found here.

Ugandan MP David Bahati was “ecstatic” that American evangelical leader Lou Engle supported his Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009, according to journalist Jeff Sharlet.

The bill, which would effectively make homosexuality – and “aiding” homosexuality – a capital offense, was promoted heavily at Engle’s TheCall Uganda conference in May this year. More recently, Engle apologized and denied having anything directly to do with the promotion, claiming it occurred in his absence. But, as Warren Throckmorton has shown, the bill was promoted in Engle’s presence as well.

Now writer Jeff Sharlet adds more confusion to this web of inconsistencies and half-truths, saying he spoke to Bahati, who believed Engle explicitly supported the bill:

Both [Bishop] Oyet and Bahati told me that Engle had explicitly expressed his support for the bill, telling them that he had to lie to the Western media because gays control it.

The rest of Sharlet’s account throws doubt on other claims by Engle, including the suggestion that Christian leaders in Uganda are trying to soften the penalties in the bill. Bahati supports the harsh punishments, obviously, since he drafted the bill. It appears Bishop Oyet is now his right-hand man.

Throckmorton follows up Sharlet’s guest post with some pressing questions for Engle, whose words have been inconsistent at best, deceptive at worst. Read the full article here.