New York Times editorial:
Uganda’s government, which has a shameful record of discrimination against gay men and lesbians, is now considering legislation that would impose the death sentence for homosexual behavior. The United States and others need to make clear to the Ugandan government that such barbarism is intolerable and will make it an international pariah.
Corruption and repression — including violence against women and children and abuse of prisoners — are rife in Uganda. According to The Times’s Jeffrey Gettleman, officially sanctioned homophobia is particularly acute. Gay Ugandans are tormented with beatings, blackmail, death threats and what has been described as “correctional rape.”
The government’s venom is chilling: “Homosexuals can forget about human rights,” James Nsaba Buturo, who holds the cynically titled position of minister of ethics and integrity, said recently.
What makes this even worse is that three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” gays and lesbians have been widely discredited in the United States, helped feed this hatred. Scott Lively, Caleb Lee Brundidge and Don Schmierer gave a series of talks in Uganda last March to thousands of police officers, teachers and politicians in which, according to participants and audio recordings, they claimed that gays and lesbians are a threat to Bible-based family values.
Now the three Americans are saying they had no intention of provoking the anger that, just one month later, led to the introduction of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009. You can’t preach hate and not accept responsibility for the way that hate is manifested.
We don’t have much hope that they will atone for their acts. But right now the American government, and others, should make clear to Uganda that if this legislation becomes law, it will lose millions of dollars in foreign aid and be shunned globally.
5 comments:
As an Evangelical Christian, I deplore and oppose the Ugandan law and have stated so publicly. Since I was not present for these talks, I cannot comment on what they said but the groups you make mention of were all founded and run by former homosexuals. Now I realize this presents a problem for the Gay community since it raises the question of 'preference' vs. 'orientation'; yet, because one wants to turn from sin, that does not make them hateful. We are all sinners and still fail. I would not call someone who preached against divorce hsteful because divorce is caused by the sin nature; even thoough I have been divorced.
Hmmm Dymunr, Your perspective seems a little warped. There is no such thing as a "former homosexual."
But there are many, many who have seriously harmed by an industry of bigotry that spends waaaay too much time and effort to cajole people to "change" their natural orientation to conform with sick and dangerous interpretations of some religious belief.
Please, if you're engaged in such efforts, stop the abuse.
http://endbigotryinvenangocounty.blogspot.com/2010/01/more-on-ex-gay-movement-scott-lively.html
Hate sometimes begets getting your assed kicked by a drag queen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNGw9mCxCug
dymunr,
Just because someone stops having sex with other men does not make them ex-gay.
Sometimes it just makes the frustrated....
OR..... BISEXUAL.
Pray all you like,but you know what you're thinking about when you jerk off.
Lie all you like about it, but you know what gets you hard.
Avoid sex all you like, but like Diane Gramely, your frustrated urges will find other ways of expression, and that usually means either turning into a pompous prig or a hateful basher.
Who are you to determine the sins of other people? The lack of faith in some of you Christians is astonishing.
You do the work of your God as if your God needs your help.
Pretentious wouldn't you say?
If you don't like homosexuality, then don't have any homosexual sex, and leave the rest of us the fuck alone!
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