Reuters (via Rod McCullom) reports that Uganda‘s Anti-Homosexuality Bill is likely to pass with only minor changes.
While the death penalty may be reduced to life imprisonment for sexually active, LGBT or HIV-positive Ugandans, the bill is expected to retain punishment of relatives, doctors, and pastors who fail to report a suspected same-sex-attracted person to the authorities.
If the legislation passes, and if the president does not veto, this will have happened because U.S. evangelical Rick Warren, the Ugandan Catholic Church, and the Anglican Communion refuse to intervene with their close friends President Museveni and inquisition “ethics” minister David Bahati to reject the legislation.
It will happen because Exodus International board member Don Schmierer, U.S. ex-gay activist Scott Lively, and ex-gay Richard Cohen‘s protege Caleb Lee Brundidge all co-launched the legislative campaign in March 2009; because Lively supports the amended legislation; and because Exodus refused to speak out against the legislation until the campaign was seven months old.
And it will happen because, despite Secretary of State Hillary Clinton‘s efforts, world powers — with the exception of Sweden — may not have made it sufficiently clear to Ugandans that the country will lose its foreign aid — which comprises one-third of the government’s annual budget — if it proceeds with this uncivilized and immoral legislation in any form.
The next step may be for world powers to boycott Uganda’s growing oil-export market, which is gradually displacing the nation’s need for foreign aid. But at a time when the United States is willing to befriend the Islamist terror sponsors of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and to spend trillions to control Iraq’s oil supply, it seems unlikely that world powers would turn down oil in order to save the lives of African homosexuals.
