Venango County's Diane Gramley (AFA of PA) Seems To Be A Scott Lively Wanna Be

Scott Lively, a pastor in Springfield, Mass., is facing an unprecedented lawsuit that alleges he persecuted gays in Uganda, committing a "crime against humanity," even as he takes credit for anti-gay legislation in Russia.

By Tony Dokoupil, Senior Writer, NBC News:

When President Vladimir Putin recently banned “homosexual propaganda” in Russia, he joined sides in a new global culture war: a struggle to stop the march of gay rights abroad even as advocates wave rainbow flags in America. Now, as the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics approach, both sides are bracing for unrest — and an American pastor is taking credit for the law that started it all.

Scott Lively is a hero to some, a demon to others and a joke to still more. From his home in Springfield, Mass., he runs Abiding Truth Ministries, a church dedicated to combating “the homosexual agenda,” and Holy Grounds Coffee Shop, where the faithful gather for java and Jesus. Lively also sermonizes overseas, promoting his books — most notably The Pink Swastika, which traces the Nazi Party to a gay bar — and portraying gay love as a “dark force” in human history responsible for the Inquisition, American slavery and the Holocaust.

Last month a federal judge allowed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit to proceed against Lively that alleges the pastor persecuted gays in Uganda and committed a potential “crime against humanity” — one that contributed to a bill that would have made homosexuality an act punishable by death. And yet the grey-haired 57-year-old has refused to quiet down.

On his blog this month, Lively praised Putin as “the defender of Christian civilization” for signing this summer a ban on information that treats being gay as valid or attractive — and traced the idea to his own tour of Russia in 2006-7. Last week, Lively suggested Russian officials foil gay activists planning to rainbow-bomb the Olympics by flying a rainbow banner over the games so “the global homosexual movement” would be reminded that “the rainbow belongs to God!”

In his first interview since a U.S. district court judge refused to dismiss the case against him, Lively shrugged off the lawsuit, touted his rising global influence and seemed to dare civil rights advocates to launch another assault on him. “Come what may, I will continue to advocate for the Biblical view of family until my final breath,” he pledged, because “we’re talking about civilization — good and evil being played out in the United States and all around the world.”

A global campaign against gay 'disorder'
Lively has reason to be a bit cocky. America may have “fallen to the gays,” he says, but much of the world still fears them and Lively is working to keep it that way.

In Moldova in 2011, according to Human Rights Watch, he helped several cities declare themselves “gay-free zones” and organized an “emergency” campaign to block a law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. In Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine and Belarus he met with politicians and pastors, fostering talk of new curbs on gay rights. Every place he goes, Lively says, his goal is to block the open expression of homosexuality, keep discrimination legal and make pro-gay advocacy a crime.

To whip up support for such policies, Lively simply shares his beliefs about gay people: They’re dangerous predators, even killers. And they caught this gay “disorder” through “an evil game of tag,” a chain of abuse in which gays recruit kids into sodomy just as they were once recruited. In this way homosexuality spreads like “a social cancer,” he claims, until nothing remains of the Christian world.

It’s unclear where Lively gets his virulent science, since study after study suggests homosexuality begins with biology not abuse, but his political strategy is easy to trace. It’s an export straight from the American culture wars of the 1990s, when Lively was communications director of the Oregon Citizens Alliance, then the largest anti-gay political group in America. OCA pioneered the idea of criminalizing gay advocacy, convincing more than a dozen Oregon suburbs to forbid anything that may “promote, encourage or facilitate homosexuality” — much as Putin has done in Russia.

“Yes, I think I influenced the Russian law,” Lively said. While some gay rights activists still think he’s just a laughingstock, Boris Dittrich, the director of LGBT advocacy for Human Rights Watch, tends to confirm Lively’s claims. Russia was plenty homophobic before Lively’s arrival but the American pastor appears to have given shape to that free-floating hatred, Dittrich said. As he passed through Russia’s regions, Lively met with politicians and bans on homosexual propaganda followed, spreading to more than a half-dozen areas before Putin swept them into a national standard.

Lively — who calls himself the “father” of Uganda’s anti-gay movement — also shared the first sharp details of his work in Eastern Europe and responded to the rise in hate crimes that seems to follow him around the globe.

'It's a war between Christians and homosexuals'
In 2006, Lively served as California state director of the American Family Association in Sacramento and fought the “homosexualization” of public schools. He befriended Alexey Ledyaev, charismatic pastor of New Generation, a Latvian megachurch with more than 200 branches worldwide. Together they founded Watchmen on the Walls, a network of activists who pledged to guard the Kingdom of Christ against the siege of homosexuality — and by fall of that year Lively was on a Watchmen trip to Russia.

He landed in Vladivostok, Russia’s largest port on the Pacific Ocean, boarding a train for a 22-hour journey north to Blagoveshchensk, a river city on the border of China. He recalled feeling “just like Dr. Zhivago! Red velvet curtains, a samovar at the end of each car, passing through endless birch forests.” For 10 days Lively used “Blago” as a hub, shuttling in and out of nearby communities, shouting Paul Revere-like warnings of a gay invasion.

By February 2007 he was back in the States in high spirits, bearing a 45-minute highlight reel that he screened at an OCA reunion in Portland. It repeatedly referred to gays as “terrorists,” showed members of the Watchmen interrupting a pride parade in Riga (with bags of feces, according media reports), and included a cross-national howl from a Latvian member of the Watchmen. “Your generation beat the Nazis, and our country beat the Communists,” the activist said. “Together we will defeat the homosexuals!”

A month or so later, Lively was back on the circuit, speaking at the World Congress of Families conference in Warsaw before hopping to Riga, his base for the next several months. He preached in churches, lectured in universities, took the podium at conferences. He sat down with pro-family leaders, pastors and a few members of parliament.

Old videos from the now-defunct Watchmen website reveal some highlights. A stop in Riga in May 2007, where Lively called gay rights “the most dangerous political movement in the world.” A three-day conference in Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia, in August. There Lively addressed an auditorium filled with 1,000 Christians, six ushers on hand to help with security and seating, the stage kitted out to look like a medieval wall. “There is a war that is going on in the world,” Lively said through a translator.

“There is a war that is waging across the entire face of the globe. It’s been waging in the United States for decades, and it’s been waging in Europe for decades. It’s a war between Christians and homosexuals.”  

Suit could decide fight to restore 'godliness to society' 
Regardless of whether Lively inspired Putin’s crackdown, he’s been accused of inspiring violence against gay people. He says he only preaches compassion – “love the sinner, hate the sin,” he likes to say – and although he gets blamed for it he didn’t actually support Uganda’s proposed death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality.” He believes gays should be pushed from public life, their “recovery” supported in private. And yet where Lively’s message goes, violence seems to follow.

In Oregon in 1992, a same-sex couple died when their house was firebombed during OCA’s campaign to declare homosexuality “abnormal, wrong, unnatural, and perverse.” In Sacramento in 2007, a gay man was called a “faggot” and punched to death by a stranger in a park. In Uganda in 2011, the country’s first openly gay man had his skull caved in. And right now in Russia and in the former Soviet states, there’s been a surge in homophobic vigilantism, including a torrent of shaming videos, some depicting gay teens being tortured by skinheads. Lively has not been linked to any of these crimes but we asked: Couldn’t his talk of predatory gays, “good and evil,” and “war” have played a role?

“Wow, that’s a leap,” said Lively, who sees his work as advocacy in the public interest, no different from campaigning against drunk drivers.

Others don’t think it’s a leap. “Words have consequences,” said Mark Potok, an editor at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization that gives Lively’s ministry a pin in its national map of “hate groups.”

Pamela Spees, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, the group pursuing Lively for alleged “crimes against humanity” in Uganda, said she is prepared to file a second lawsuit related to his work in Russia and the surrounding countries, assuming there’s evidence that Lively was “an architect of the persecutory program” there.

And that’s why the case against Lively is so important, gay-rights activists say. As the Olympics draw nearer and the boycotts and homophobic backlash continue, Putin will be the guy paraded down the world’s front pages and social media feeds. But Lively may be the secret agent to watch.

If he loses his lawsuit he could be prohibited from spreading his message abroad, a terrible precedent for other anti-gay crusaders. However if he wins, he emerges stronger than ever, the self-described “hero” of an expanding fight to restore “godliness to society,” as he puts it – or else “pull as many people as possible into the lifeboat before the ship goes down.”

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U.S. Religious Conservatives LOVE Authoritarianism When It Validates Their Anti-Gay Extremism

by David Crary, Associated Press - July 7, 2013:

As the hub of the Soviet Union, Russia was reviled for rights abuses by many U.S. conservatives during the Cold War. Now some are voicing support and admiration as Russian authorities crack down on gay-rights activism.

The latest step drawing praise from social conservatives is a bill signed into law Sunday by President Vladimir Putin that would impose hefty fines for holding gay pride rallies or providing information about the gay community to minors.

"You admire some of the things they're doing in Russia against propaganda," said Austin Ruse, president of the U.S.-based Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. "On the other hand, you know it would be impossible to do that here."

Ruse, whose institute is seeking accreditation at the United Nations, plans to travel to Russia this summer to meet with government officials and civic leaders.

"We want to let them know they do in fact have support among American NGOs (non-governmental organizations) on social issues," he said.

Among others commending Russia's anti-gay efforts was Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality.

"Russians do not want to follow America's reckless and decadent promotion of gender confusion, sexual perversion, and anti-biblical ideologies to youth," LaBarbera said on his website.

In a sign of Russia's evolving stature among some U.S. social conservatives, the Illinois-based World Congress of Families plans to hold its eighth international conference at the Kremlin's Palace of Congresses in Moscow next year. Past conferences in Europe, Mexico and Australia have brought together opponents of abortion and same-sex marriage from dozens of countries.

"The Kremlin used to be a no-no for conservatives," said Larry Jacobs, managing director of the World Congress. "We're going to redeem that building."

The website for the September 2014 conference declares that Russia, "with its historic commitment to deep spirituality and morality, can be a hope for the natural family supporters from all over the world."

Jacobs, in an interview, drew a link between Russia's disapproval of homosexuality and its worries about a population decline.

"They've got a problem with marriage rates and fertility, and it doesn't help if you're encouraging non-reproductive behavior," he said.

Abortion remains legal in Russia through the first 12 weeks of pregnancy — a contrast to the general view of most U.S. social conservatives that abortion should be outlawed. However, the current abortion law — passed in 2011 — is more restrictive than its predecessor.

There's little doubt that Russians, overall, are far less supportive of gay rights than Americans. According to a Pew Research Center survey released June 4, only 16 percent of Russians said homosexuality should be accepted by society, compared to 60 percent in the U.S., and 80 percent or higher in Canada, Spain and Germany. However, there's less support for gay rights in some Eastern European countries, and even in Western Europe the issue can fuel conflict, as evidenced by recent clashes in France between far-right protesters and police over a new gay-marriage law.

The Obama administration has said it would make gay rights an important part of its foreign policy, raising the possibility that countries viewed as discriminating against gays could suffer consequences.

Secretary of State John Kerry outlined this approach on June 19 at a gay pride event at the State Department. He did not mention Russia by name, though he spoke disapprovingly of "anti-propaganda laws in Eastern Europe" that are targeting gay-rights demonstrators.

"We just have to keep standing up for tolerance and for diversity," Kerry said.

The Russian bill has been assailed by gay-rights and human-rights groups in the U.S.

"The admiration of some American conservatives for the repressive Russian policies regarding gay rights are quite simply the words of snake-oil salesmen," said Roberta Sklar of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.

"They have lost their footing on U.S. soil and are trying to breathe life into a dying ideology abroad," she said.

Two other groups, the Human Rights Campaign and Human Rights Watch, have called on the International Olympic Committee to speak out against the bill as Russia makes final preparations to host the Winter Olympics in Sochi next year.

"This draft law is clearly incompatible with the Olympic Charter's promotion of 'human dignity,' as well as a blatant violation of Russia's international legal obligations to guarantee nondiscrimination," Human Rights Watch said in a letter to the IOC.

Stefano Gennarini, a colleague of Austin Ruse's at Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, suggested in a blog post that criticisms of the bill in the West were "hyperbole" and defended it as a reasonable effort to protect children.

"Russians have consistently denied homosexual groups parade permits, sparing its children and the public at large the ludicrous and disturbing behavior on show in the squares and streets of Europe and America," Gennarini wrote

He characterized the bill's proposed fines as a tax on public displays of affection by homosexuals, adding that "$155 is hardly unmanageable for homosexuals who want to kiss in public," he wrote.

Gennarini, in an interview, said it would be "imprudent" for U.S. diplomats to criticize Russia's efforts to curtail gay-rights activism. He said people in other regions — notably Africa and the Islamic world — might look to the Russia as a positive example when considering laws of their own.

Scott Lively, a Massachusetts-based evangelical lawyer and activist, conducted a 50-city speaking tour of Russia in 2007, and says the current bill reflects policies that he advocated at the time.

At the end of his tour, Lively released a "Letter to the Russian People," and he redistributed it this month after the parliament vote.

"The purpose of my visit was to bring a warning about the homosexual political movement which has done much damage to my country," he wrote in the letter. "This is a very fast-growing social cancer that will destroy the family foundations of your society if you do not take immediate, effective action to stop it."

Lively advocated training therapists in the techniques of helping gay people "recover" from same-sex attraction and he urged Russia to criminalize the public advocacy of homosexuality.

"Russia could become a model pro-family society," he wrote. "If this were to occur, I believe people from the West would begin to emigrate to Russia in the same way that Russians used to emigrate to the United States and Europe."

Lively has been sued in U.S. federal court by a Uganda-based gay-rights group, accusing him of persecuting gays in that East African country.

The suit — which Lively is seeking to have dismissed — contends that he was a key figure in consultations in Uganda that produced tough anti-gay legislation in 2009. The initial version of the bill called for the death penalty in some cases of gay sex, although the author of the measure — which remains pending — says he has removed the death penalty provision.

Lively said he would like to see efforts in the U.S. to discourage all sexual activity outside of marriage, but doubted efforts to restrict gay activism could make headway here.

"Russians, even after glasnost, are comfortable with an authoritarian style," he said. "That wouldn't work in the United States."

The War on Gays: American Christian Zealots Promote Bigotry Abroad

from The Economist - May 4, 2013:

IT MIGHT seem only a nasty coincidence. As gay rights advance in the West—France and New Zealand are the latest countries to legalise same-sex marriage—homophobia is on the rise elsewhere. But these apparently contradictory trends may be related. Confounded at home, a crusading squad of American conservative Christians are taking the fight abroad.


In an unusual case, brought under the Alien Tort Statute, a judge in Massachusetts is pondering a claim by Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), a gay-rights group, against Scott Lively, a preacher and co-author of “The Pink Swastika” (which argues that Nazism was fuelled by homosexuality). Mr Lively visited Uganda in 2009, meeting politicians, appearing on television, and sharing his theories about homosexuals’ recruitment of youngsters.

Shortly afterwards a Ugandan MP introduced a parliamentary bill that would stiffen existing penalties for homosexual behaviour; among other drastic measures it mandated the death sentence for “aggravated” homosexuality. Amid a burst of anti-gay vitriol, and headlines such as “Hang Them, They Are After Our Kids”, a gay activist was murdered. SMUG alleges that, on this occasion and previously, Mr Lively conspired to persecute Ugandan homosexuals. He says he advocated therapy and prevention, not harsh punishments.

This episode is part of a wider campaign. Other preachers, such as Lou Engle, a fundamentalist pastor at a megachurch in Kansas, have also been to Uganda. A new documentary, “God Loves Uganda”, depicts co-ordination between the visitors, resident missionaries and American-trained Ugandan priests. Offshoots of the American Centre for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a group founded by the televangelist Pat Robertson, in Kenya and Zimbabwe, are said to have resisted gay-friendly changes to their constitutions. (The ACLJ insists it “does not export an agenda”.)

In Africa campaigners adopt the language of anti-colonialism, portraying gay rights, and even homosexuality itself, as Western impositions; opponents counter that the criminalisation of gay sex is itself largely a legacy of empire. But the rhetoric and tactics are flexible. The Americans are happy, when necessary, to co-operate with like-minded Roman Catholic and Orthodox believers, which barely count as Christian in the eyes of extreme Protestants. Hardline Islamists are tacit allies too.

In the former Soviet Union, where homosexuality has mostly been legalised, the emphasis is on preventing its “promotion”. Here, says Julie Dorf of the Council for Global Equality, a lobby group based in Washington, DC, American efforts are feeding prejudice and anti-gay legislation.

Two bills trundling through Ukraine’s parliament, for example, would criminalise gay “propaganda” (a similar bill is on the stocks in Russia’s Duma). To be sure, indigenous hostility (sometimes violent) towards homosexuality abounds. But Jim Mulcahy, a retired priest now ministering to gays in Ukraine, thinks the anti-gay lobby’s resources and multimedia techniques bespeak American involvement.

Both Paul Cameron, an American psychologist who likens homosexuality to drug use, and Mr Lively, have toured eastern Europe. Gay activists in Moldova say that outsiders’ influence helped to reduce the prominence of sexuality in a recent anti-discrimination law. In Latvia Mr Lively fraternised with a church whose members have harassed gay-pride marches.

A third front is the Caribbean and Central America. Caleb Orozco of UNIBAM, a gay-rights group in Belize, is arguing in court that its criminalisation of homosexual sex violates the constitution. According to Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Centre, an American civil-rights watchdog, a coalition of churches resisting the move is supported by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), another American outfit. (The ADF, like Mr Engle, could not be reached for comment.) Belize’s most prominent anti-gay cleric is American; his church is affiliated to a ministry in Arizona, whose leader has urged believers to raise the dead in morgues. Mr Orozco has been threatened and attacked with a bottle.

Collateral Damage


The American fundamentalists see themselves as defending biblical values and stemming degeneracy. Abroad, the policies they advance in that cause are often more extreme than those they espouse at home (though Mr Lively would like to “re-criminalise adultery, fornication and homosexuality” in America, too, albeit as minor misdemeanours). Several would like to usher in a global theocracy.

In America exponents of such ideas are liable to be dismissed as cranks and bigots; for their part they regard their own country as morally lost. But on their travels abroad they receive a respectful hearing, addressing parliaments and appearing on mainstream television.

That sort of reception boosts morale, but can offer practical benefits, too. Influence, visibility and access, in countries where (as the faithful see it) righteousness remains unvanquished, all help with fund-raising. The activists often traverse the same circuit, in what could be seen as a kind of competition.

The arguments they deploy make the connection between the changes in the West and the pushback elsewhere explicit. Anti-discrimination laws and other liberalising reforms are evidence of a worldwide secular conspiracy, against which Africa, or eastern Europe, or the Caribbean must fortify themselves. Occasional rebukes by the American government about persecution of gays abroad only prove the conspiracy’s power. Some clues suggest that the itinerants’ real focus is elsewhere. Their sound and fury about issues such as gay marriage and adoption may resonate in America, yet have little relevance in countries where even private homosexual acts are illegal.

Kapya Kaoma, an Anglican priest from Zambia who works for Political Research Associates, a liberal think-tank in Boston, observes that the campaigners face a powerful progressive lobby at home, but in east Africa their adversaries are isolated and weak. The suffering of homosexuals in such places, he says, is “collateral damage” in America’s culture wars.

U.S. Evangelicals Influence Uganda Anti-Gay Push

KAMPALA (Reuters) - Peter, 23, used to enjoy hitting Kampala's bars with his boyfriend until a draft bill dubbed "kill the gays" forced him into hiding.

"I'm so, so afraid. I just live indoors," he says, sitting in the semi-darkness of the cramped two-room dwelling where he has lived since his family and friends turned on him after the bill was introduced in 2009.

In this conservative east African country, the bill that initially proposed hanging gays has pitted veteran President Yoweri Museveni's government against two influential but opposing forces: the evangelical church and western donors.

Existing legislation already outlaws gay sex. The new legislation introduced by David Bahati, a backbench lawmaker in Museveni's ruling National Resistance Movement party, would go much further.

It would prohibit the "promotion" of gay rights and punish anyone who "funds or sponsors homosexuality" or "abets homosexuality".

Denounced as "odious" by U.S. President Barack Obama, the first draft, which threatened the death sentence for what it called "aggravated homosexuality", languished in parliament for two years, never making it to the chamber's debating floor.

Bahati re-introduced a mildly watered-down second draft in February and is confident of a "yes" vote even though the bill's progress has stalled at committee level.

The death sentence clause is gone, as is the demand Ugandans report gays to the authorities, he told Reuters.

But the damage has been done, gay rights campaigners in Uganda say. A vitriolic homophobia is rising in Ugandan society, they say, pointing to the meteoric rise of the evangelical church as a driving force.

In the most recent clampdown, Uganda said last week it was banning 38 non-governmental organizations it accused of promoting homosexuality.

Two days before the announcement, police raided a gay rights conference outside Kampala, briefly detaining activists from around east Africa.

"Things were much better before the evangelical movement," said Frank Mugisha, director of the gay rights group Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG). He accuses Uganda's born-again pastors of spreading propaganda, including that homosexuals are "recruiting" young children.

EVANGELICAL INFLUENCE

Mugisha and other prominent gay rights campaigners say Bahati's initial bill was introduced directly after a March 2009 conference in Kampala that hosted representatives from the U.S. "ex-gay" movement.

U.S. evangelical pastor Scott Lively, who spoke at the conference, said it focused on the "recovery from homosexuality" and warned Ugandans the gay movement sought to "homosexualise society" and undermine the institution of marriage.

Ugandan activists have filed a civil complaint against Lively in the United States, alleging he incited the persecution of gays in Uganda, violating international law.

A former lawyer who is now pastor of the Redemption Gate Missionary Society in Springfield, Massachusetts, Lively said his legal team has filed a motion to dismiss the complaint.

"The narrative of their case is that my speaking against homosexuality in Uganda led to a climate of hate and fear that led the government to take actions they wouldn't otherwise have taken," he told Reuters.

"The list of things they have put in their complaint do not amount to anything close to crimes against humanity."

Lively said he received a copy of the draft anti-gay bill from an anti-gay activist in Uganda ahead of its introduction, and disagreed with language included in it.

"It was very harsh," he said, referring to the proposal to execute homosexuals.

Lively, a reformed alcoholic who sees homosexuality as a "behavioral disorder" akin to alcoholism, said he sent back alternative language urging a focus on prevention and rehabilitation.

Some of Uganda's pastors have been some of the bill's most outspoken supporters.

"Would you accept that a thief should be licensed, that a prostitute should be licensed? There is no difference between a thief, a robber, a prostitute and a homosexual," said Pastor Joseph Serwadda, who heads Kampala's 6,000 member-strong Victory Christian Centre Church.

A wave of persecution followed the introduction of Bahati's bill.

One local publication, Rolling Stone, embarked on a campaign to out Ugandan gays, publishing photos of more than two dozen of them and their names, sometimes under the banner "Hang them".

"People didn't pay much attention before. When the bill came out, they started noticing gays," said Peter, whose three-year relationship ended when his partner became afraid to be associated with him after another tabloid outed Peter's roommate.

Peter's extended family called a meeting when they got suspicious.

"My sisters, my brothers, my aunties, my uncles, my grandpas, everybody needed me to change. They asked, ‘What seduced you to do that?'," Peter said.

"(They said) if I didn't change from what I am to what they called normal, I should just get out of the family."

He withdrew from the outside world. Home alone for hours at a time, Peter reads the Bible he keeps by his bed for comfort. A wall decoration reads: "Jesus cares".

PRAYED FOR HELP

While the proposed legislation has pushed many like Peter underground, for others it had the opposite effect.

"Biggie" Ssenfuka knew she was attracted to women from the age of seven. When she read the word lesbian in a dictionary, she says she immediately recognized herself.

Raised a Christian, Ssenfuka prayed to God and fasted in a desperate bid to alter her sexuality. She burned every letter she had received from other girls and tried dating a man.

"But still I didn't change. I woke up and told myself this is life, be what you want to be and let people say what they want to say," said Ssenfuka, who sports dreadlocks and baggy, boyish jeans.

"People thought that homosexuals are these beasts ... they didn't expect people from next door," said Ssenfuka.

The 29-year-old finally came out of the closet in 2009 after the bill was introduced. "I said, now I am going to be open."

Still, activists like Ssenfuka are in the minority. The majority of gays are too afraid to go public.

Sitting in an open-air bar in Kampala on a Saturday afternoon is her girlfriend of one year, a woman with long braids who has children from a previous relationship.

Asked about her relationship with Ssenfuka, Patience was evasive. "I'm not exactly her friend," she said, and refused to elaborate.

Ssenfuka and Patience are careful not to act like a couple openly.

"It's tricky. You have to watch out, especially in public. You can't just kiss, you can't just touch and be happy," Ssenfuka said.

"BLACKMAIL"

The bill's floundering in parliament since 2009 signals Museveni is reluctant to proceed.

Stephen Tashobya, who chairs the parliamentary legal affairs committee tasked with scrutinizing the bill before a vote, said the committee had been "busy with other affairs".

"The president made general remarks sometime back, more than a year ago, (that) he didn't think that the bill was very urgent," Tashobya said.

The one-time rebel leader is widely regarded as a shrewd political operator who knows how to curry favor from Western powers, as he has by sending troops to Somalia, and when feathers ought not be ruffled.

John Nagenda, among Museveni's top advisers, told Reuters the president believed it was evil to indulge in homosexual acts.

"But on the other hand ... while he himself doesn't agree with it himself, he thinks that there must be a fair way of going about (things)," Nagenda said.

Museveni's gripe, Nagenda said, was with donors threatening to cut aid to impose moral values.

"It treats us like children," he said.

In October, British Prime Minister David Cameron threatened to cut aid to countries that did not respect gay rights. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton followed up in December.

"That is blackmailing, that is neo-colonialist and oppression. Attaching sharing of resources to a lifestyle of people is completely unacceptable," said Uganda's Minister of Ethics and Integrity Simon Lokodo.

"If you want to give (aid), you give it irrespective of our customs and cultures."

London appears to have since softened its rhetoric. The British High Commission in Kampala told Reuters in a statement that the UK government had no plans to cut aid in connection with the bill.

However, the statement also said Britain's diplomats were raising concerns over the proposed legislation "at the most senior level of the Ugandan government".

Bahati is optimistic his bill will prevail in parliament.

"There is no amount of pressure, no amount of dirty tricks, that will prevent the parliament of Uganda from protecting the children of Uganda," he said.

"We are not in the trade of values."

Preach Love Not Hate

One Day, The Voices of Those in Venango County Who Have Lived Too Long in the Shadows, In Fear and Isolation, Due to Anti-LGBT Bigotry, Harassment, and Discrimination Will Also Rise Up Against Those Who Promote Division and Hate.

So, While Watching This Video, Imagine, Just Imagine, That Moment by Substituting Vengango County's Own Hate Group, the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, in the Place of this Video's Target, Scott Lively and his Abiding Truth Ministry.



"Scott Lively is one of the most outspoken leaders of the anti-gay movement both nationally and internationally. He is more than just hateful rhetoric; he has played a major role in legislating the criminalization of homosexuality here in the U.S. and in Uganda. Today Occupy Springfield marched on his "Holy Grounds" coffee shop demanding a stop to this hatred. It is appalling that this bizarre little hate cult is operating right on State St across from STCC! Check out the video as we run into Lively and his oddball collection of confused Tea-hadists who put their Libertarian routine aside for a day to get in a little old fashioned homophobia,& Beck following nuts who ironically think everyone left of lunatic right is with the defunct ACORN. A few garden variety kooks with the direct line to Jesus round out the squad. Hopefully you'll be as outraged as we are after hearing his "sermon" of violent hatred today."

Hope Over Hate in Springfield, MA

"Out In The Silence" Screening to Shine Light on Springfield Hate Group

A special screening of OUT IN THE SILENCE, the acclaimed documentary about courageous Venango County residents fighting against homophobia and the forces behind the anti-gay bigotry and discrimination that continue to plague conservative small town America, is the Kick-Off event for a Week of Pride celebrations in Springfield, MA.


The free community event takes place on Wed., June 8 at 6:00 pm at Springfield Technical Community College's Scibelli Hall Theater. The screening will be followed by a dynamic town hall-style dialogue featuring members of the Springfield Pride Committee and filmmaker Joe Wilson.

While Wilson is thrilled to be a part of the Pride celebrations, the event has additional significance to him because Springfield is home to Abiding Truth Ministries, an anti-gay “hate group” much like the American Family Association of Pennsylvania (AFA), the organization at the heart of the challenges he documented in OUT IN THE SILENCE.

“Time and time again I've seen how these extremist groups stoke the fires of hatred and bigotry in small towns and rural communities, and I understand the importance of challenging them on their own turf,” said Wilson. “This event in Springfield will help to shine light on, and counter the dirty deeds of, one of the worst of the worst.”


Springfield's Abiding Truth Ministries was founded by Scott Lively, a notorious religious right activist known for his provocative anti-gay activities, including the discredited claim that “the Nazi Party was entirely controlled by militaristic homosexuals,” work on an Oregon ballot measure to have homosexuality codified as “abnormal behavior,” and travels in Eastern Europe and Uganda to assert that “homosexuality is a personality disorder and an evil institution” worthy of the death penalty. In 2008, Lively launched an effort to “re-Christianize” Springfield. Shortly thereafter, his Abiding Truth Ministries, like the American Family Association, was put on the Southern Poverty Law Center's official “hate group” watch list.

OUT IN THE SILENCE shows Wilson being drawn back to his small Pennsylvania hometown to share the story of a teenager tormented at school because he is gay, and the struggle the teen's mother goes through to get school authorities to do something about it. In the film, Wilson also strikes up an unexpected friendship with a conservative evangelical pastor, and follows the trials and tribulations of a local lesbian couple who can catalyze the rust-belt town’s economic revitalization if they find community acceptance. Intertwined with these heartfelt stories is Wilson's exploration of the role that the Venango County-based chapter of the American Family Association plays in stoking anti-gay bigotry in the town. At once wrenching, entertaining, and inspiring, the film ultimately shows the individual and community transformations that are possible when people, on all sides of these challenging issues, speak out and take the time to get to know one another.

OUT IN THE SILENCE was produced in association with the Sundance Institute and Penn State Public Broadcasting, premiered at the 2010 Human Rights Watch International Film Festival in New York, and won an Emmy Award for Achievement in Documentary.

A press kit and more information about OUT IN THE SILENCE are available on the film's website: http://OutintheSilence.com