Many observers have speculated about U.S. influence in Uganda, particularly relating to the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009. The obvious trigger for legislation this year was the ex-gay conference held in Kampala in March. Organized by Ugandan Stephen Langa, the conference featured presentations by Scott Lively, Caleb Brundidge and Don Schmierer. Lively and Brundidge addressed some members of the Ugandan parliament in a breakfast meeting on March 5. From minutes of the Ugandan Parliament:
THE SPEAKER: Thank you very much, hon. Minister. Hon. Members, this brings us to the end of today’s business.
Before we go, I have this communication to make. All Members are invited to an executive breakfast meeting seminar on the dangers of homosexuality. The theme is, “Exposing the truth about homosexuality and the homosexual agenda”. The meeting will take place in the Parliament Conference Hall tomorrow Thursday, 5th March starting at 7.30 a.m. to 9.00 a.m.
Guest speakers include Dr Scot Libley [sic – Scott Lively] of the United States, Caleb Lee [Brundidge] of the United States and Mr Stephen Langa of the Family Life Network. All Members are invited to attend and breakfast will be served. The House is adjourned until tomorrow at 2.30 p.m.
Lively’s collaboration with Stephen Langa goes back at least to 2002 when Lively traveled to Uganda twice. At the time, Lively sought to work with Campus Crusade for Christ but these plans fell through. He then turned to Stephen Langa who helped set up his trip.
I then called Stephen Langa, head of the Family Life Network and organizer of the highly successful conference against pornography and obscenity, at which I had spoken in March. He was enthusiastic, and offered to set up speaking events and media appearances on the anti-porn topic.
Lively also collaborated with Rev. Martin Ssempa during this visit.
Speaking of Ssempa, Rick Warren and Saddleback church have been raised as possible influences on the Anti-Homosexuality Bill due to a past connection with Ssempa; the Ugandan pastor collaborated with Saddleback until 2007. However, Rev. Warren recently made known his break with Ssempa via a statement to me on October 31. Ssempa recently commented on this break in an AFP news report.
Ssempa told AFP he was disappointed by a recent statement by American mega-Pastor Rick Warren, who delivered the convocation at US president Barack Obama’s Inauguration.
Warren did not mention the Anti-Homosexuality Bill specifically, but said he and his wife ended their relationship with Ssempa, “when we learned that his views and actions were in serious conflict with our own”.
Other American churches support Martin Ssempa (see here and here), but there is a more direct connection to the Ugandan Parliament. As noted in a New Vision report, an American organization called the College of Prayer was recently in Uganda to host prayer meetings and leadership training.
MEMBERS of Parliament have been warned against witchcraft and corrupt tendencies.
“You should not consult witchdoctors for success but instead seek help from God,” Dr. Fred Hartley, the president of the College of Prayer International, said.
“I know witchcraft is a big problem in Uganda but as MPs, you should be exemplary,” he said.
Hartley was speaking during a prayer meeting for parliamentarians at Fairway Hotel in Kampala on Tuesday….
After the prayer meeting, eight MPs were selected to be in the servant leadership team for Parliament for three years.
They included Ruth Tuma, Alice Alaso, Beatrice Lagada, Moses Ntahobari, Capt. Grace Kyomugisha, Benson Obua, David Bahati and the East African legislative assembly MP, Maj. Gen Mugisha Muntu.
On the website of the College of Prayer, one learns that this meeting was a part of a longer term relationship (this link does not work now, here is a screen capture of it.
The College of Prayer will have it’s first module in the Parliament of Uganda from October 31-November 1. Two members of Parliament were able to attend the African Summit this summer and will be encouraging their fellow members to attend. Fred Hartley and Mike and Lisa Plunket will be facilitating this module on “Lord, Teach Us to Pray.”
Following this COP there will be COP’s in the cities of Kampala and Gulu taking place November 2-4. Fred will be leading the one in Kampala for leading Pastors and Mike Plunket will be leading the one in Gulu. Mike will be graduating 1000 students who have completed three years of COP training. Continue to pray for God’s protection over the members of Parliament and their families, particularly for Honorable Bensen, Honorable David and Honorable Buturo. Pray as well for all the pastors and Christian leaders who will be attending each of these modules. Pray for the manifest presence of Christ to be in the midst of these meetings and for the Holy Spirit to guide each of their sessions.
The two named sponsors of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 in the Parliament are David Bahati and Benson Obua-Ogwal. In the executive branch, the prime voice has been Nsaba Butoro. Note that the College of Prayer specifically mentions these men for recognition. This recent Ugandan visit followed a meeting in April which was described on the College of Prayer website:
Note that the College of Prayer has entered into a three year agreement to “facilitate the College of Prayer” for Parliament. In February, 2010, another bill supporter, Apostle Julius Oyet will speak at a Leadership Training meeting in Atlanta at the Lilburn Alliance Church, a church affiliated with the Christian & Missionary Alliance and pastored by Fred Hartley, the president of the College of Prayer. MP Benson Obua is one of those featured on the page who recommend the event.
Rev. Oyet was present with Rev. Ssempa and Rev. Langa when the first motion was made to allow introduction of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill back in April.
Let us hear from hon. Bahati. In connection with the motion he is moving, we have in the gallery Apostle Julius Peter Oyet, Vice-President of the Born Again Federation; Pastor Dr Martin Sempa of the Family Policy Centre; Stephen Langa, Family Life Network; hon. Godfrey Nyakaana; the Mayor of Kampala City Council.
This American organization has the closest contact with those responsible for the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of any I have been able to discover. Over the past several days, I have talked a couple of times to College of Prayer president Fred Hartley to inquire about the relationship between his organization and the Ugandan legislators.
Rev. Hartley wanted to make it clear that he and the College of Prayer are not politically motivated. Hartley told me that they are in Uganda to lead the Parliament and other leaders in “Christian discipleship.” Because of that focus, Hartley told me that he “can’t take responsibility for their decisions.”
Regarding the co-sponsors of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, David Bahati and Benson Obua and the Minister of Ethics and Integrity, Nsaba Buturo, Rev. Hartley had only good to say. He told me that they are “men of integrity” who “want to do what is right.”
Regarding the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, Rev. Hartley told me that he has a hard copy of the bill he received in July from David Bahati. He declined to send me a copy because he said that Bahati told him that such copies were unauthorized. Rev. Hartley acknowledged that the copy he has seen is different than the copy of the bill I sent to him (I sent a copy I was given by Martin Ssempa). Rev. Hartley believes that I may be laboring under a false idea of what the bill actually says. Hartley told me that David Bahati told him last week that many accounts of what is actually in the bill are “grossly distorted.”
While Rev. Hartley believes that the copy of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill I have is incorrect, I must differ. Here is a copy that was published by the Uganda Gazette.
I was sent a copy by Martin Ssempa that was compiled just before it went to the Uganda Gazette. They are the essentially the same which was confirmed to me by an individual in Uganda who would be in a position to know. Once a bill is published in the Uganda Gazette (the official publication for all legislation), it is available for public discussion and review.
At present, it seems that Rev. Hartley believes that the bill is not as bad as critics say it is. He is working with the impression that the current bill is not an accurate version and believes his friends Bahati, Buturo and Obua. I am unable to reconcile these conflicting claims. Clearly, I have evidence that the bill I have seen as confirmed is accurate and has been published by the Uganda Gazette .
It remains to be seen what Rev. Hartley and the College of Prayer will do when they discover that the bill in Parliament is what critics say it is. My hope is that they will use their influence for good. Time is of the essence. According to Rev. Hartley, Bahati and company want the bill voted on by the end of 2009.
For a bill to become law in Uganda, it must be read in the Parliament three times before a vote. The tabling of a bill must be approved first by Parliament before it is published and read. This happened on April 29, 2009. The bill was printed in the Uganda Gazette on September 25, and was first read on October 14. It was then referred to committee and will soon have a second reading. At least 14 days must pass until the third reading a vote.
See this link for the Parliamentary discussion of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill when the “Motion for a Resolution of Parliament to present a Private Members Bill” was made. At that time, David Bahati won the opportunity from Parliament to introduce the bill.
Lynn David said:
Well said.
Prove it. Gays the world over may have the support of several GLBT organizations in the west, but I very much doubt the monetary support is anywhere near the monetary contribuations by mainline, evangelical or pentacostal religious sects. Your gay-money meme is most likely a made-up factoid of the local anti-gays.
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I know I have never donated any monies to any gay organization which listed any overseas organization as a receiver of their aid in their financial statements. I have however given to Catholic organizations which support the building of schools & hospitals, aiding agriculture and digging water wells in African countries with Catholic populations.
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Now I suspect that most funds to the religious are given to mostly support agriculture, and building schools, hospitals, and churches. Religious aid organizations in the Americas, Australia and Europe generally don’t hand out money to oppress or imprison people concerning their freedom of speech or their love interests and that includes gays and lesbians. Even the ministry Exodus International which deals in helping gays and lesbians live in accord with Biblical traditions does not support laws denying free speech or imprisoning gays for their sexuality as the Bahati bill does. But then so also, neither does the Roman Catholic Church.
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However, religious figures who are hard-line supports of the bill, such as Oyet, Ssempa & others, do receive support for many other aspects of their ministries not at all related to or intended for the oppression of gays and lesbians and yet that benign support most assuredly allows them to continue their more sinister endeavors of oppression. And that has been the very point of many of the posts by Dr Throckmorton.
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Mr Gay Uganda,
Please stop expressing fake indignation. I am sure that Kampala-based pro-gay puppet advocacy groups receive money from their foreign sponsors which is probably 20 times more than the amount gifted to the evangelicals by their own foreign friends. Pro-gay puppet advocates even have the support of key Western governments and a bevy of compromised international agencies. So your own side of the gay struggle is even better equipped materially to fight the anti-gay side. You know as well as I do that even if outsiders were not involved in supporting or opposing gayism, it will still be strongly resisted by the Ugandan people (and by extension, most Africans). This is the reason that the less materially endowed anti-gay side will win eventually. I am not even an evangelical, but I strongly identify with popular wish to remove your poisonous ideology from the limited public space that it currently occupies. Please enjoy the spotlight while it lasts. I hope your friends in the Euro-American Gay Lobby are preparing a nice pad for you in San Francisco because you may need it in the future. Enough said for now…
What is wrong with “fighting AIDS” in Uganda and the medicalisation of poverty?
Shocking un-cut footage from Brent Leung’s documentary “House of Numbers” reveals truth about AIDS as told by Dr. Luc Montagnier. AIDS can be reversed. Nutrition is the answer. Hear it straight from the co-discoverer of “HIV”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQoNW7lOnT4
You mean that fanatically anti-gay people lie? Who would ever have thought it?
Warren, you’ve come a long way. You’ve maintained your integrity. Some who in the past you have “hung out” with professionally, and with excellent reasons for doing that, never had any to begin with. I know that you know that now, but I think that you still would like to disbelieve the scale of the problem. I know I’d like to disbelieve it too, I have an irrational faith that most people, even those I most disagree with, are genuinely trying to do the right thing as they see it. But sometimes the evidence that they’re not is overwhelming.
The rabid homophobia comes first: they then use whatever reasoning is most convenient, be it religious or otherwise, to justify that. That means twisting Christian teaching into pretzels at times. But because they’re seen as “christian”, they get support from the genuine variety, some of whom should know better. I don’t mean you, I mean many in various established churches.
The hard part is that these folks actually think they are doing God’s work. I have been a Christian since I was 10, I’m now 41 and Christians are really beginning to scare me. I mean it’s almost like the next step is internment camps. Really, who has the “secret agenda”.
Warren, I know that we don’t agree on everything going on within the “gay debate” but thank you for what you do.
David
I think even Alan might agree with that. Someone once compared his job to “herding cats”. 🙂
I found and posted that comment back in March. It doesn’t mean that someone’s stated public views cannot mask a different privately-held view.
That would be because all of it came out of the mouth of Don Schmierer while they flew across the Atlantic. Didn’t you read what the man wrote about his experience with Schmierer. Schmierer apparently even gifted the guy with his book; so they had a discussion that went to some depth about homosexuality, Exodus, and Africa.
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Howard Ahmanson gives money to Exodus. Don Schmierer is a Program Officer at Howard Ahmanson’s Fieldstead & Company. Don Schmierer is on the board of Exodus International. Don Schmierer is the money-man’s man on the Exodus board. Howard Ahmanson was providing the funds to Nigeria’s Akinola and Uganda’s Orombi to destabilize the Episcopal Church in America (aka ECUSA) and attempted take-overs of Church properties, including his former church in California which failed in the courts (Ahmanson supposedly now attends a Presbyterian Church). Howard Ahmanson has been concerned with matters in Africa for the 5-10 years.
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Don Schmierer is a devotee of Scott Lively’s and likely so too, is Howard Ahmanson. That is circumstantial evidence as to why the reference to The Pink Swastika was on the Exodus website. Question: would Alan Chambers have ever had put that book on the Exodus site as a reference? My answer is, ‘I don’t think so.’
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As president of Exodus, Alan Chambers does not appear to be fully in charge nor make all the policy of the ministry. He could be nothing but a figurehead, a ‘former homosexual,’ who can stand up in America and make his case and say they are not out to change anyone who doesn’t want to be change. He can claim not to be political. But there are others in Exodus International who will be covertly political, if not in America, then on other continents, such as Africa. They believe Lively’s Pink Swastika to be true; in other words, they elevate a lie into their needful truth and there is only one reason for that.
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I’m sure if you asked them, people at Exodus would say they are one medium-sized, happy family; however, this information seems to say that there exists in Exodus a split between the mildly-conservative ‘former homosexuals’ and the more staunchly conservative people who hold the purse strings.
Good points. I seriously doubt that Exodus wants to “keep Uganda anti-gay”. I think the trip was misguided, but well-intentioned — I think he probably wanted to share hope for the struggling homosexual that change is possible — and that he really was kinda clueless about “what was on the ground” there. I think they know better now and I pray that they will be much more cautious. I think they will be.
You and I did the same little search, Eddy.
Actually…..
When I googled “Howard Ahmanson Exodus” in search of his alleged ‘funding’ role, I happened on the same quote that you furnished on the other thread and thought that it was far more applicable on this one! Go, Google, Go!
I made my comments (from which Eddy quoted above) on the wrong thread. How’d I do that? Is it Monday or something?
Hey, I could write something up for ya. LOL.
Loving the ‘spin’….
From the passenger on the plane:
From Ahmanson:
Where the spin? Passenger assuming that Exodus is flush with cash because it’s funded by Ahmanson. This makes it sound like the majority of Exodus’ operating expenses come from Ahmanson. Yet, Ahmanson has only said that he has donated to Exodus…no indication of amount.
I gave $10 to the Human Rights Campaign once. Waiting for the headline: Human Rights Campaign Funded by Eddy.
BTW: How does passenger know that Africa is ‘a big focus’ for Exodus? How does passenger know that Exodus wants to keep Uganda ‘anti-gay’?
its true so many pple in uganda jst hear abt it and they think its all that easy to copy up but belive me life is so hard and its that why we need strong help and suport.
Oh…. while we are at it…. THAT is exporting sexuality issues.
What is it going to look like if someone comes up with a newspaper headline saying:
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AMERICAN HOWARD AHMANSON FUNDS UGANDAN GAY GENOCIDE
Exodus International MInistries Implicated
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Is stopping that the only reason Exodus might have finally come around?
You can delete this one Warren, but I just had to push your red button on it.
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I guess the moral of the story is be careful of the pig-headed ideas you espouse at 35,000 feet (or anywhere) it may end up on the Internet for all to see.
His grandfather was Fred A. Hartley of Taft-Hartley Act infamy to stop union shops.
Likely to become a methodology important in Uganda for de-gaying people.
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And while we are going over old news items, I have something to report about Don Schmierer, Exodus and Ahmanson/Fieldstead. It is a smoking gun. I have found someone who says that Don Schmierer agrees with the premise of Scott Lively’s The Pink Swastika. It comes from a ski forum post from Australia, dated 14 March 2009:
He says “this guy” because he includes a picture of Don Schmierer. Do we now know that Exodus in the personage of Don Schmierer at the very least is more to blame for this than we previously thought? Certainly, this explains Schmierer’s deference to Scott Lively concerning some questions.
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This poster’s offhand statements seem to confirm the connection that I had earlier posted concerning Howard Ahmanson, Fieldstead, and Don Schmierer, who works at Fieldstead – and possibly the Anglican Church in the personage of Orombi. It is not too far a stretch of the imagination to wonder if the Fred Hartley’s College of Prayer is also an Ahmanson grantee. Fieldstead, as a private contributor, need not report all of its contributions and only has a representative sample on its website.
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I think we can now understand why Steven Langa was surprised by the Exodus letter. Perhap even his Family Life Network is funded by Ahmanson/Fieldstead? Honestly, I don’t think I am being too conspiratorial here. And I think statements made by Randy Thomas, Alan Chambers and Don Schmierer (via Randy Thomas in the Exodus blog) have been prevarications in the least.
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I guess I cant stop getting angry at all this.
I mean, didnt know how perverse the influence was. Didnt know how deep it all went. But, it is a matter of fact that this is all too believable. These things do happen in Uganda.
And, I guess in the rest of Africa.
And, you are correct. Many out there believe that the bill is not as ‘harsh’ as it is. Martin Ssempa is going around promoting that falsehood. I dont know why, but the gentleman seems not well acquinted with truth.
Even in Uganda, I have to ask people whether they have read the bill. Unfortunately, few have read it. All that they think of it is that it is the ‘Anti-Homosexuality bill.’ And, as such, it needs their unconditional support.
gug