Ugandan Gay Rights Activist Is Beaten to Death - U.S. Evangelicals Have Blood On Their Hands

The "Christians" who terrorize LGBT people in the U.S. and now Africa and other parts of the world are one and the same. Enough Is Enough!


Ugandan Gay Rights Activist Is Beaten to Death

By Jeffrey Gettleman for The New York Times:

NAIROBI, Kenya — David Kato knew he was a marked man.


As the most outspoken gay rights advocate in Uganda, a country where homophobia is so severe that Parliament is considering a bill to execute gay people, Mr. Kato had received a stream of death threats, his friends said. A few months ago, a Ugandan newspaper ran an antigay diatribe with Mr. Kato’s picture on the front page under a banner urging, “Hang Them.”

On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Kato was beaten to death with a hammer in his rough-and-tumble neighborhood. Police officials were quick to chalk up the motive to robbery, but members of the small and increasingly besieged gay community in Uganda suspect otherwise.

“David’s death is a result of the hatred planted in Uganda by U.S. evangelicals in 2009,” Val Kalende, the chairwoman of one of Uganda’s gay rights groups, said in a statement. “The Ugandan government and the so-called U.S. evangelicals must take responsibility for David’s blood.”

Ms. Kalende was referring to visits in March 2009 by a group of American evangelicals, who held rallies and workshops in Uganda discussing how to turn gay people straight, how gay men sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” intended to “defeat the marriage-based society.”


The Americans involved said they had no intention of stoking a violent reaction. But the antigay bill was drafted shortly thereafter. Some of the Ugandan politicians and preachers who wrote it had attended those sessions and said that they had discussed the legislation with the Americans.

After growing international pressure and threats from a few European countries to cut assistance — Uganda relies on hundreds of millions of dollars of aid — Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, indicated that the bill would be scrapped.

But more than a year later, that has not happened, and the legislation remains a simmering issue in Parliament. Some political analysts say the bill could be passed in the coming months, after a general election in February that is expected to return Mr. Museveni, who has been in office for 25 years, to power.

On Thursday, Don Schmierer, one of the American evangelicals who visited Uganda in 2009, said Mr. Kato’s death was “horrible.”

“Naturally, I don’t want anyone killed, but I don’t feel I had anything to do with that,” said Mr. Schmierer, who added that in Uganda he had focused on parenting skills. He also said that he had been a target of threats himself, recently receiving more than 600 messages of hate mail related to his visit.

“I spoke to help people,” he said, “and I’m getting bludgeoned from one end to the other.”

Many Africans view homosexuality as an immoral Western import, and the continent is full of harsh homophobic laws. In northern Nigeria, gay men can face death by stoning. In Kenya, which is considered one of the more Westernized nations in Africa, gay people can be sentenced to years in prison.

But Uganda seems to be on the front lines of this battle. Conservative Christian groups that espouse antigay beliefs have made great headway in this country and wield considerable influence. Uganda’s minister of ethics and integrity, James Nsaba Buturo, who describes himself as a devout Christian, has said, “Homosexuals can forget about human rights.”

At the same time, American groups that defend gay rights have also poured money into Uganda to help the beleaguered gay community.

In October, a Ugandan newspaper called Rolling Stone (with a circulation of roughly 2,000 and no connection to the American magazine) published an article that included photos and the whereabouts of gay men and lesbians, including several well-known activists like Mr. Kato.


The paper said homosexuals were raiding schools and recruiting children, a belief that is quite widespread in Uganda and has helped drive the homophobia.

Mr. Kato and a few other activists sued the paper and won. This month, Uganda’s High Court ordered Rolling Stone to pay hundreds of dollars in damages and to cease publishing the names of people it said were gay.

But the danger remained.

“I had to move houses,” said Stosh Mugisha, a woman who is going through a transition to become a man. “People tried to stone me. It’s so scary. And it’s getting worse.”

On Thursday, Giles Muhame, Rolling Stone’s managing editor, said he did not think that Mr. Kato’s killing had anything to do with what his paper had published.

“There is no need for anxiety or for hype,” he said. “We should not overblow the death of one.”

But that one man was considered a founding father of Uganda’s nascent gay rights movement. In an interview in 2009, Mr. Kato shared his life story, how he was raised in a conservative family where “we grew up brainwashed that it was wrong to be in love with a man.”

He was a high school teacher who had graduated from some of Uganda’s best schools, and he moved to South Africa in the mid-1990s, where he came out. A few years ago, he organized what he claimed was Uganda’s first gay rights news conference in Kampala, the capital, and said he was punched in the face and cracked in the nose by police officers soon afterward.

Friends said that Mr. Kato had recently put an alarm system in his house and was killed by an acquaintance, someone who had been inside several times before and was seen by neighbors on Wednesday. Mr. Kato’s neighborhood on the outskirts of Kampala is known as a rough one, where several people have recently been beaten to death with iron bars.

Judith Nabakooba, a police spokeswoman, said Mr. Kato’s death did not appear to be a hate crime, though the investigation had just started. “It looks like theft, as some things were stolen,” Ms. Nabakooba said.

But Nikki Mawanda, a friend who was born female and lives as a man, said: “This is a clear signal. You don’t know who’s going to do it to you.”

Mr. Kato was in his mid-40s, his friends said. He was a fast talker, fidgety, bespectacled, slightly built and constantly checking over his shoulder, even in the envelope of darkness of an empty lot near a disco, where he was interviewed in 2009.

He said then that he wanted to be a “good human rights defender, not a dead one, but an alive one.”

Must-See Film: Oregon Then - Pennsylvania Now?

This Sundance-award winning film from 1995, titled "Ballot Measure 9," is an important and must-see account of the dangers of right wing, dehumanizing, anti-GLBT rhetoric in any age.

It may be about Oregon back in 1992, but it feels an awful lot like Pennsylvania today.

It's definitely worthy of being put on your NetFlix queue!



Here's a review of the film by Janet Maslin for the New York Times in 1995:

In her no-frills documentary about the bitter fight over Oregon's 1992 anti-gay ballot initiative, Heather MacDonald examines the many faces of prejudice. There is the schoolboy who declares, "Never liked them, never will," although he says he doesn't know any homosexuals. There is the woman who frets that "they could persuade one of my grandchildren to become a homosexual." There is the authoritative-sounding man interviewed on television who says it is a fact that 28 percent of homosexuals have performed sodomy with more than 1,000 partners. There is the grandmotherly lady who shakes her head and says, "It's just not human for people to act that way."

And there are the political organizers dedicated to capitalizing on such sentiments as fiercely as they can. "Ballot Measure 9" witnesses the escalating battle between gay rights advocates, who were clearly caught off guard by the vehemence of their enemies, and the extremely well-organized forces of the religious right. Lon Mabon, the chairman of the Oregon Citizens Alliance and a leader of the movement to prevent and revoke laws banning anti-gay discrimination, speaks with typical single-mindedness in describing the fight as "a simple battle between good and evil."

Since Ms. MacDonald makes no pretense of even-handedness, she readily shows Mr. Mabon in a disparaging light. But the scenes in which he voices his opinions in small, half-empty rooms are dangerously misleading because the Citizens Alliance efforts proved so effective. "Ballot Measure 9" is best watched as a cautionary study of why this group was able to find such strength in numbers, and what to expect from similar local ballot referendums that have since cropped up other states. It also sees beyond the statistics and finds vivid, sometimes disturbing human dimensions on both sides of this struggle.

"Ballot Measure 9," which opens today at the Film Forum, exposes not only rhetoric but also the more vicious aspects of its subject matter. The fight began at the level of semantics, with the alliance defining gay rights as "special rights" and exploiting the sense of privilege that implied. On the "No on 9" side, there were bumper stickers reading "Civil Rights Are Special."

Opponents of Ballot Measure 9 were quick to identify a larger threat to individual freedoms within the alliance's campaigning, and their cause galvanized representatives of many different minority groups. Ms. MacDonald notes that the Ku Klux Klan was instrumental in passing an anti-Catholic school statute in the 1920's in Oregon (it was quickly overturned), and that conflicts like the present one are not unknown there. One by-product of the Ballot Measure 9 fight, according to Portland's chief of police and other speakers, has been a sharp increase in anti-gay violence in the state.

Using straightforward video camerawork that still captures the expansive beauty of the state, Ms. MacDonald documents some of these violent acts. Her film describes arson, petty acts of sabotage and even attacks on trees and animals as part of the pre-election activity in 1992. She also films ugly graffiti in a Roman Catholic church and plays back the voices of obscene phone callers. And she presents Mr. Mabon's opinion on this subject: "I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the hate crimes -- in fact, I know a lot of the hate crimes -- are perpetrated by the homosexual community as a media tool."

One of the lasting messages of "Ballot Measure 9," which won the audience award for best documentary at this year's Sundance Film Festival, is that the effectiveness of media tools should never be underestimated. The Citizens Alliance's lurid descriptions of homosexuals, from talk of coprophilia to flaming Mardi Gras-type parade scenes, had a strong impact. Ballot Measure 9 lost by a 57 percent-43 percent margin, but many of the "No on 9" voters were over 60; the initiative had stronger support from voters in their 30's and 40's. Similar measures have passed the electoral test not only in Colorado and Cincinnati but in many Oregon communities since the 1992 election.

"Ballot Measure 9" shines a searchlight on these events and takes a sharp, galvanizing look at what they mean.

Setting The Stage For Tragedy

This Sounds Too Eerily Close To Home Here In Pennsylvania.


from Truth Wins Out:

On Sunday, The New York Times featured a chilling article on how fundamentalist Christians stalked, harassed and ultimately murdered Wichita abortion provider George Tiller, who they taunted with the nickname, "Tiller the Baby Killer."


A lone gunman, who used the e-mail name "ServantofMessiah", shot Tiller while he ushered at Reformation Lutheran Church, where he and his wife were active members. Prior to Tiller's assassination, the "loving" faithful had put bullets in his arms and bombed his clinic.

Unfortunately, with Tiller's controversial clinic finally out of business, the lesson for the loony may be that legal force is more effective than lobbying. In the Times article, Mark Geitzen, chairman of the Kansas Coalition for Life, expressed this sentiment when he said during a phone conversation, "God has his own way...but you can't say our prayers weren't answered."

Tiller's death vividly illustrates the danger posed by the violent language and imagery used by fanatics, who believe they are personally entrusted to enforce God's will. What concerns me is that the aggressive tactics used against abortion providers are slowly seeping into the anti-gay movement.

As the wider culture becomes more accepting, homophobes are growing increasingly frustrated, which has led to bolder and more confrontational actions. Are anti-gay leaders egging on unstable followers to attack gay people or provoking gays to defend themselves so they can manufacture martyrdom and justify retaliation?

At the Dore Alley Fair in San Francisco last weekend, a number of muscular Christians wearing Jesus shirts reportedly tried to march through the event thumping Bibles and waving signs.


In Charlotte, Dr. Michael Brown, (pictured left) the founder of the Coalition of Conscience, organized several hundred followers in red shirts (top picture) to descend like uninvited locusts on Charlotte Pride last week under the banner, "God Has a Better Way."

Aside from the pompous name of their demonstration, the protesters confronted gay people and browbeat them with cherry picked Bible verses. Brown's ostensible reason for marshaling the troops was to introduce Pride attendees to his angry version of God.

But, of course, the notion that gay people in conservative North Carolina needed Brown to educate them about religious fundamentalism was farcical. Indeed, many of the people at Pride had only found personal acceptance after long journeys to reconcile their spirituality and sexuality.

No, Brown was really there to besiege Charlotte's gay residents with his hostile hordes. His group's in-your-face presence was designed to disrupt peaceful assembly and make Pride attendees feel guilty and uncomfortable so that they might skip future gay events.


Fortunately, the pious proselytizers were on their best behavior after the militant writings and actions of Brown came under intense scrutiny by local Q-Notes editor Matt Comer. In his research, Comer found that Brown started his FIRE School of Ministry to "raise up a holy army of uncompromising spirit-filled radicals who will shake an entire generation with the gospel of Jesus by life or death."

In a vacuum, such religious language may be viewed as a relatively benign rhetorical flourish. However, when followers are portrayed as holy warriors in a life and death struggle against a minority group that is falsely accused of working to undermine freedom of religion, the seeds of potential disaster are intentionally being sown.

In advertising his rally, Brown proclaimed that the "hour is urgent" and that Christians must "turn back the tide of homosexual activism." In a written statement following his intolerance invasion of Pride, Brown wrote, "Enough is enough to the destructive goals of gay activism...we say it stops in Charlotte."

Most alarming are these charlatans' deliberate perpetuation of paranoia by trumpeting alleged religious persecution that exists only in their warped minds. For example, in his statement Brown accused gay people of "trying to put Christians in the closet." And, he capped it off by saying that gay people are "tampering with the foundations of human society."

Brown tries to cover his tracks by sprinkling his apocalyptic rhetoric with calls for non-violence. Good orators, however, understand the principle of "layering" messages. If in one sentence you speak of violence and in the next of non-violence, the listener will almost always embrace the words that support his or her belief system.

Dr. Brown isn't naïve and surely understands that the GLBT masses will not retreat into the closet unless events conspire to make coming out a blood sport. Short of extreme bullying and brutality he'll never accomplish his lost cause of "stopping" progress on gay rights in Charlotte.

Brown, of course, doesn't actually have to make an overt pitch for mayhem. Simply by inciting his flock he is setting the stage for future tragedy. It is time for Brown and his comrades to abort their increasingly hostile and combative tactics before it leads to more wanton death in the name of abundant life.