Related: How Might Hillary Clinton’s Exit Impact Uganda Kill-the-Gays Bill?
Last week, the U.S. Christian-Right website LifeSiteNews falsely reported that Canada had denied visas to Ugandan lawmakers due to their supposed opposition to marriage equality. (TWO wrote about this false claim.)
This week, the world was reminded of the actual reason for visa denial — and reminded, also, that Uganda has one of the world’s worst human-rights records:
Having delivered an antigay tirade in Canada, Uganda’s Speaker of the Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, returned home Monday and vowed to hold a vote on that country’s three-year-old legislation to execute homosexuals and silence family members and human-rights advocates.
Kadaga’s antigay rampage coincides with the premiere in the United Kingdom and Paris of Call Me Kuchu, a documentary of African antigay violence and the 2011 murder of Uganda LGBT activist David Kato (pictured).
Uganda’s kill-the-gays campaign was launched following a 2009 conference that was led by visiting U.S. ex-gay activists. Alongside this legislative campaign, some of Uganda’s violently antigay media conducted a campaign of extrajudicial violence, publishing hit lists of suspected LGBT Ugandans. One consequence: Kato’s murder.
Uganda’s Daily Monitor reports that Kadaga’s press briefing this week “was organised by religious leaders, former Ethics and Integrity Minister Nsaba Buturo and the mover of the Bill, Mr David Bahati, all of whom are pushing for the enactment of the anti-homosexuality Bill.
“A large procession comprising members of different Pentecostal churches, Makerere University students and boda boda cyclists camped at the airport from 10am to after midnight when Ms Kadaga emerged to greet them as they ululated and waved placards appreciating her boldness in Canada.”
The renewed push for the Anti-Homosexuality Bill jeopardizes a portion of the $200 million that Uganda receives each year from U.S. taxpayers. Antigay Uganda churches receive a large chunk of that aid for programs that were originally intended to combat HIV/AIDS, and these churches receive millions more in aid from the U.S. Christian Right.
African news channel NTV reported on Kadaga’s effort to reboot the kill-the-gays campaign:
U.S. Christian professor Warren Throckmorton notes that Uganda’s Parliament reacted by passing a resolution in support of Kadaga’s actions.
LifeSiteNews, meanwhile, has given the renewed kill-the-gays bill a silent nod of support — by declining to inform its readers of Ugandan leaders’ lethal intentions. And U.S. ex-gay hardliners are likewise declining to speak out against Uganda’s campaign to execute homosexuals. This is to be expected: Ex-gay hardliners supported the conference which launched the campaign, and successfully deterred the now-moderate Exodus from retracting that support until more than a year later.
Veteran ex-gay and antigay activists Robert Gagnon, Anne Paulk, Stephen Black, David Kyle Foster, Frank Worthen, Andy Comiskey, and others severed ties with Exodus International and formed the new Restored Hope Network this year, after Exodus withdrew its support for criminalization and stopped damning gay Christians to eternal hellfire.
The hardline Restored Hope Network’s doctrinal statement support offers no support of homosexuals’ right to life, liberty, or justice; RHN leaders have declined to respond when asked via Twitter and Facebook whether they support or oppose Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill specifically, or human rights generally for those whom RHN condemns to hell.
Related information:
Box Turtle Bulletin:
Uganda Parliament May Vote On Anti-Homosexuality Bill By Christmas
LGBT Ugandans speak out:
Our duty to tell the truth about being gay in Uganda
The media-facilitated murder of David Kato:
Call me Kuchu: The life and death of a gay rights campaigner
Why the United States subsidizes and arms Uganda:
The CIA in Africa and Somalia: A Strategic Analysis
Some of Restored Hope Network’s hard-line ex-gays on Twitter:
Anne Paulk
Andy Comiskey
Stephen Black
