Ex-Gay Watch

According to a Parliament of Uganda order paper published today, a second reading of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 is imminent.

The legislation, dubbed the “Kill the Gays” bill, would effectively make homosexuality a capital offence. Related offenses of “promoting” homosexuality could carry the same punishment.

While the order paper doesn’t make it certain the reading will be soon, Jim Burroway of Box Turtle Bulletin has done the math and considers it likely the bill will be addressed by the Parliament of Uganda on Wednesday, May 10.

There are several petitions circulating. I’m generally skeptical of internet petitions — do they really achieve anything? — but at this stage, anything’s worth a shot. Click here to sign the All Out petition.

For a concise run-down of the facts on the bill, see my previous post: Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009: Just the Facts.

Update: Here’s the email I sent to my local MP, Rick Dykstra, asking him to raise the issue with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

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.

An abstinence group based in Jacksonville, Florida, has ties to the anti-gay Ugandan activist Martin Ssempa, according to a report in the Florida Independent.

Project SOS founder Pam Mullarkey is quoted on Ssempa’s website as saying that Ssempa is “the most powerful voice for abstinence in the world and his passion, charisma and character make his vital message irresistible.”

Mullarkey refused to decry Ssempa when contacted for comment; instead she praised him. Other US evangelicals have disassociated themselves from Ssempa when pressed.

The Ugandan pastor is notorious for promoting misconceptions about gays in Uganda, including the myth that eating one another’s “poo-poo” is a defining homosexual practice. He has been the most vocal Christian supporter of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which would result in the death penalty for gays.

Many XGW readers will be familiar with the painful, anti-gay efforts in Uganda, highlighted over the past couple of years by this and other blogs.  The reporting has been at times very detailed, and devastating to take in.  This was all punctuated by the recent murder of Ugandan gay rights advocate David Kato, and signs that the dastardly Anti-Homosexuality Bill may move forward after President Museveni’s recent re-election.

In spite of all the excellent writing on this issue, only the posts of GayUganda have come close to giving this writer the same human connection as this excellent BBC effort.  The degree and scope to which harsh, unyielding anti-gay sentiment has been whipped into the Ugandan population leaves one dumbstruck.  And one begins to realize what a fertile ground the various Western “evangelists” have found when traveling there to plant their own anti-gay doctrines.

Whether one be a pastor, preacher, evangelist, social worker or politician, the only responsible and ethical message you could put forth in Uganda — regardless of personal beliefs — is one of tolerance at the very least.  Ant it is obvious now that the messages of all three from the original meeting — Scott Lively, Caleb Brudidge and Don Schmierer — even if they said what they claim to, acted as match to gasoline.

Please watch the video — Scott Mills does a great job.  There are four parts due to Youtube’s upload limitations, but the playlist will advance automatically to the next segment.

Only Comedy Central can really do justice to the absurdity of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill proponent Martin Ssempa.   Tosh.0 is one of my favorites.

Doing research  — where have I heard that one before?

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.

Fifteen months to the day since I wrote this post summarizing the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Conference, Exodus President Alan Chambers has written his own acknowledgment of how badly he and his organization screwed up.

First things first, I was personally lax in investigating thoroughly the pre-conference intelligence that was coming in from Timothy Kincaid, David Roberts and Warren Throckmorton, to name a few. My initial belief was that their major concern was over Caleb Lee Brundidges association with Richard Cohen. Again, no excuses, I was negligent in digging deeper and heeding their warnings.

As I have stated in less trafficked public settings, I am disappointed that some of my reasons for not heeding warnings was due to who was issuing them.  I believe that probably works both ways, but in this case my error was grave.

Alan will get no disagreement from me here, particularly concerning the truly disgusting background of Scott Lively.  There was more than enough information on his activities to turn most people’s stomachs and yet Alan was silent.   It did occur to us that the messenger could be part of the problem, though inexcusably so.  Certain Exodus executives have been particularly dismissive and hostile to what they call “militant gay activists,” and especially to XGW.

I cannot undo my initial lack of, then delayed, response or the harm that it caused, but I have learned from that terrible mistake and tried to make amends by condemning the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2009 and by standing with a cross-spectrum group of people to see that the measure is, itself, killed. Exodus and I will continue to do that with regard to the Uganda measure or any other similar law or proposed law in other nations. We will also seek to condemn that which is condemnable more swiftly; not to do so finds us breech in our responsibility as an organization people look to for biblical wisdom.

During the past fifteen months, Exodus has released some rather weak statements concerning Uganda and their connection to the whole mess.  Then, last March, they issued a much more definitive statement.  We acknowledged the good and called out the bad (mainly the unconscionable delay).  We also gave them this bit of advice: Read more…

If you keep up with those who fight against GLBT rights at all, you have come to expect no good from an organization called the Family Research Counsel (FRC).  It is headed by Tony Perkins, a man who seems to crave the power and influence of a politician but without any of the accountability.  A Senior Fellow, Peter Sprigg, either wants gays sent out of the country or their lives criminalized, depending on the interview.  Their history is pretty bad, and a simple search will give the reader all they need.

Even with all that in mind, I don’t think I could have imagined what Joe Jervis (Joe.My.God) has uncovered with the help of the Gay City News.  Joe is reporting that the FRC paid $25,000 to lobby Congress against approving a resolution denouncing Uganda’s plan to execute homosexuals  — and he has copies of the official lobbying report to prove it.  The resolution has been hung up in committee for the past four months so it seems it may have worked.

Just to be clear, FRC did not want Congress even to declare that Uganda’s intentions to kill or imprison gays was a bad thing.

I have no words for this one.

Hat Tip: Joe.My.God

Scott Lively, the anti-gay activist whose conference appearance precipitated Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009, is fighting back against the media’s “character assassination” of him.

In an email sent to supporters this week, Lively wrote:

Friends,

I’m looking for a good Christian media source to interview me on film on the Uganda issue for posting online.  I intend to get off defense and counter-attack the false witnesses with hard facts about Uganda and the dishonest way the media has addressed the story.  Please forward this to any pro-family journalists you know and ask them to contact me at sdllaw@gmail.com.

In the mean time, I have created a new category of news stories at DefendtheFamily.com under the title “Uganda.”  There are about 20 stories there now, going back to about 2003 which show the growing problem of pro-homosexual activism in that country, long before my 2009 seminar which is now being blamed for creating a climate of “homophobia” in Uganda. There are also numerous examples of liberal media propaganda about the anti-homosexuality bill.

If you happen to hear someone criticize me based on the intense, global anti-Scott Lively character assassination by these media, please refer them to our website, both to read the material there, but also to download Redeeming the Rainbow: A Christian Response to the “Gay” Agenda which was the source of all of my comments and teaching in Uganda.

Thanks for standing with me through the firestorm,

Dr. Scott Lively

The media hardly needs to assassinate his character. His own testimony is sufficient: he is in favor of the criminalization of homosexuality, and opposes the death penalty only on pragmatic grounds, not on principle, as Dr Warren Throckmorton points out. Lively’s preferred solution is “rehabilitation” – in other words, forced reparative therapy for homosexuals.

Scott Lively’s ugly words speak for themselves – and for his character.