Category: politics

Bahati says there is still a chance for Uganda's antigay bill

On Saturday, David Bahati called up his new best friend Melanie Nathan and told her that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill would be heard before the end of the 8th Parliament in May.

Today I immediately mentioned the confusion surrounding the status of the AHB in this eighth parliament.  I asked Mr. Bahati if it was true that the Bill has been scrapped and he asserted – “absolutely not” and that it is a matter still in the hands of the Parliament and that it can be passed at anytime.
The best update preceding this call can be found on the site of Warren Throckmorton, posted the following series of updates on his Blog Post: In Sum: On March 24, 2011 Throckmorton notes: “This afternoon I have heard from two sources in Uganda that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill (AHB) has been shelved…” Then on March 25th NTV Uganda provided a report noting that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill had yet to be decided, it was not shelved but that the Museveni administration spokesperson indicated that the criminalization of homosexuality in Uganda is sufficiently covered by other legislation.
David Bahati, as prime defender of the AHB spoke in the report that appeared on Throckmorton’s site , clearly noting his dissatisfaction with the idea that the law should remain as is for lack of clarity on certain issues that he believes ought to be specifically dealt with.
Today Mr. Bahati informed me categorically that the AHB has not been shelved and that he still hopes it will be “decided” by the 8th Parliament.  He informed me that the 8th Parliament will continue until the President is sworn in again in MAY 2011 to herald the new 9th Parliament, and that the AHB can be decided upon anytime up until then. He insisted it is still being considered by Committee.

I made several calls to Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee Stephen Tashobya, including one this morning. However, he did not answer, nor has he replied to emails. I know he was traveling some last week out of the country, so that may be some of the absence. However, I also wonder if the matter has been buttoned up by the Museveni administration. If so, Bahati may be placing himself at some risk by continuing to promote his bill.
My guess is that the bill is not going to get out of committee. We have yet to see the Marriage and Divorce Bill which is slated to take place before anything else from that committee. It seems highly unlikely that the AHB would be considered before the Marriage and Divorce Bill, given the promises made by the Speaker of the Parliament and Hon. Tashobya – the committee chair.

Bryan Fischer doubles down on Christianity as a state religion

Yesterday, Bryan Fischer doubled down on his view that the First Amendment does not recognize claims of non-Christian religions. He wrote:

The leftwing political websites lit up over my column of last week in which I took the position that the First Amendment provides no guarantees to practitioners of the Islamic faith, for the simple reason it wasn’t written to protect the free exercise of Islam. It was written to protect the free exercise of the Christian faith.

First of all, it was not only left wing blogs lighting up. Notably the Volokh Conspiracy knocked down Fischer’s strange moves. Eugene Volokh is not a left-winger and neither am I.
Fischer reaffirmed his view that the First Amendment only covers Christianity.

This view of the First Amendment is confirmed by a review of the debate surrounding the First Amendment in Congress in 1789. A re-reading of the all the entries in the congressional record of the debate over the First Amendment reveals no mention — zero, nada, zilch — of Islam.
Instead, as the Founders grappled with the wording of the First Amendment, they road-tested several variations, all of which make it clear that the objective here was specifically to protect the free exercise of the Christian faith.
Here are some of the alternative versions that were considered:

  • “Congress shall make no law establishing One Religious Sect or Society in preference to others.”
  • “Congress shall not make any law, infringing the rights of conscience or establishing any Religious Sect or Society.”
  • “Congress shall make no law establishing any particular denomination of religion in preference to another, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, nor shall the rights of conscience be infringed.”
  • “Congress shall make no law establishing articles of faith, or a mode of worship, or prohibiting the free exercise of religion…”
  • “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”

The last, of course, is the wording Congress finally chose and passed on to the states for their approval.

In my view, the context of the House of Representatives debate over the religion clause undermines Fischer’s conclusion that the Representatives only had Christianity in view. Here is a lengthy excerpt of discussion of James Madison’s proposed amendment regarding religious freedom. First the language as proposed on June 8, 1789:

The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed.

And then later in August, the House took up various amendments as a Committee of the Whole. As the matter was being developed, various suggestions were offered, some of which Fischer describes in his column. The following excerpt provides a look into Madison’s explanation of his amendment.

Mr. Madison said, he apprehended the meaning of the words to be, that Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any manner contrary to their conscience. Whether the words are necessary or not, he did not mean to say, but they had been required by some of the State Conventions, who seemed to entertain an opinion that under the clause of the Constitution, which gave power to Congress to make all laws necessary and proper to carry into execution the Constitution, and the laws made under it, enabled them to make laws of such a nature as might infringe the rights of conscience and establish a national religion; to prevent these effects he presumed the amendment was intended, and he thought it as well expressed as the nature of the language would admit.

The new government would not establish a religion, would not prefer one, and would not compel citizens to worship contrary to conscience. These rights are individual rights, not granted to a particular religion, but instead to citizens directly. The amendment was not written to protect any religion, Christian or otherwise.
Then the Representative from Connecticut spoke to what he perceived to be unintended consequences.

Mr. Huntington said that he feared, with the gentleman first up on this subject, that the words might be taken in such latitude as to be extremely hurtful to the cause of religion. He understood the amendment to mean what had been expressed by the gentleman from Virginia; but others might find it convenient to put another construction upon it. The ministers of their congregations to the Eastward were maintained by the contributions of those who belonged to their society; the expense of building meetinghouses was contributed in the same manner. These things were regulated by by-laws. If an action was brought before a Federal Court on any of these cases, the person who had neglected to perform his engagements could not be compelled to do it; for a support of ministers, or building of places of worship might be construed into a religious establishment.
By the charter of Rhode Island, no religion could be established by law; he could give a history of the effects of such a regulation; indeed the people were now enjoying the blessed fruits of it. He hoped, therefore, the amendment would be made in such a way as to secure the rights of conscience, and a free exercise of the rights of religion, but not to patronize those who professed no religion at all.

There is debate about what Huntington meant here. Perhaps he was hoping to protect the ability of religious groups to exact offerings from those who had committed to pay, even if they no longer professed religion. However, what seems clearer is Huntington’s positive reference to Rhode Island. Rhode Island was a leader in establishing religious freedom of conscience. In Rhode Island, all faiths were welcome to exercise belief, following the teaching of Roger Williams. Williams wrote in his “A Plea for Religious Liberty:”

Sixthly, it is the will and command of God that (since the coming of his Son the Lord Jesus) a permission of the most paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or antichristian consciences and worships, be granted to all men in all nations and countries; and they are only to be fought against with that sword which is only (in soul matters) able to conquer, to wit, the sword of God’s Spirit, the Word of God.

If we are to understand the intent of the First Amendment via what some Representatives said, then it seems important to go further and capture more of the context. Along with the refusal of the first Congress to allow religious tests, Madison’s Amendment provided strong protection for individual conscience without regard to membership in a religious group, such as Christianity. By Fischer’s logic, the Representatives favored Christianity as a religion, the very thing the Amendment expressly prohibited.
Please note that the evidences of Christianity found by Fischer in his reading of the Congressional debate do not cite Christianity. In fact, the phrases he believes prove that the Constitution only protects versions of Christianity (denomination of religion, religious sect, etc.) were not kept in the final amendment. Even if some legislators only wanted to protect Christian sects, the final wording did not do so.
Furthermore, direct references to Christianity were not a part of the debate on Madison’s amendment. In fact, there is a perfectly good word for Christianity that was not used in any versions of the First Amendment – that word is Christianity. Instead, those debating Madison’s amendment stuck with the general word religion.
Finally, let me examine one additional precursor to the debate on religious freedom. The Virginia legislature passed a law regarding religious freedom in 1786. You can read the entire statute here. Of interest to understand the thinking of Jefferson and other legislators on religious freedom is an amendment to the statute which ultimately failed. Thomas Jefferson in his collected works, tells the story: 

The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word “Jesus Christ,” so that it should read, “a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.

Fischer apparently refers to the Virginia case in his column but dismisses the relevance of it.

Some critics have pointed to the religious liberty plank in the Virginia constitution, and the statement of some of its advocates at the time that it specifically provided for the free exercise of Islam as well as Buddhism and Hinduism. But this only illustrates my point, because that has to do with religious expression in a state constitution, not the federal constitution.

While the application is indeed limited to Virginia, this passage does speak to Fischer’s contention that the Founders meant Christianity when they said religion. Jefferson and no doubt fellow Virginian Madison had the broader view of religion as an expression of individual liberty of conscience.
Ultimately, in my opinion, Fischer’s effort to prove that the First Amendment establishes Christianity as a state religion fails.

Gingrich does a McCain, will he get the same result?

In 2008, John McCain sought and won the endorsement of megachurch pastor John Hagee. However, within months, McCain rejected the endorsement  principally because of unflattering remarks made by Hagee about Catholics. 
Now fast forward to 2011 and GOP candidate lookalike Newt Gingrich is courting Hagee’s congregation. Christian Post has the story:

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich spoke Sunday at a Texas megachurch where he railed against secularism and called for the defense of the nation’s Christian values.
Gingrich, who shows signs that he is interested in the GOP presidential nomination although he has yet to officially declare his candidacy, told thousands of conservative evangelical Christians at Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, that liberal college professors and mainstream media are turning America into a godless society.
He called on evangelical voters to protect the nation’s Christian roots and its freedoms, citing prayers of past U.S. presidents and the Declaration of Independence.
“I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they’re (Gingrich’s grandchildren) my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American,” said Gingrich, according to Politico.

Hagee vowed never to support a candidate again after the McCain debacle and he may not do so. However, this does not stop Gingrich from seeking favor. Aren’t historians supposed to learn something from history?

Volokh Conspiracy on Bryan Fischer's views of the First Amendment

Last Friday, Eugene Volokh analyzed Bryan Fischer’s claims about the First Amendment and found them wanting.  You’ll remember Mr. Fischer, I’m sure; I have written about his views a few times. Last week, Fischer said:

Islam has no fundamental First Amendment claims, for the simple reason that it was not written to protect the religion of Islam. Islam is entitled only to the religious liberty we extend to it out of courtesy. While there certainly ought to be a presumption of religious liberty for non-Christian religious traditions in America, the Founders were not writing a suicide pact when they wrote the First Amendment. 

By referring to non-Christian religious traditions as those to which liberty is extended by courtesy and not fundamental right, Fischer extends his vision much wider than ever before. I addressed Fischer’s claims here. A more authoritative legal source is Mr. Volokh who wrote:

Actually, both the First Amendment and the No Religious Test Clause of the original Constitution were quite deliberately written to cover all religions. Many state constitutions of the era did limit their protection to Protestants (New Jersey, North Carolina, and Vermont) or Christians (Delaware, Maryland, and Massachusetts). Some others (New Hampshire and South Carolina) provided for funding of Protestant or Christian teaching, or more broadly established Protestantism, but did not limit religious freedom protections or office-holding.
But the U.S. Constitution did not have any such limitation. James Iredell, later one of the first Justices of the Supreme Court, specifically defended the No Religious Test Clause on precisely these grounds:

I consider the clause under consideration as one of the strongest proofs that could be adduced, that it was the intention of those who formed this system to establish a general religious liberty in America…. 

But it is objected that the people of America may, perhaps, choose representatives who have no religion at all, and that pagans and Mahometans may be admitted into offices. But how is it possible to exclude any set of men, without taking away that principle of religious freedom which we ourselves so warmly contend for? This is the foundation on which persecution has been raised in every part of the world. The people in power were always right, and every body else wrong. If you admit the least difference, the door to persecution is opened.

To get the rest of the good, read the remainder of the post at Volokh Conspiracy.

Christianity Today’s website contradicts Timothy Shah’s CT conspiracy article

Since October, 2009, there have been a number of flawed articles about Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill, but none more flawed than the one currently up on the website of Christianity Today, by Timothy Shah. I have written here and here to demonstrate just a few of the problems, but I want to address some of them again with more information.

First, in reference again to this Shah authored statement:

But the legislation has received widespread attention not primarily because of its draconian provisions, whose very harshness has repelled virtually all of Uganda’s major political and religious leaders—including the President, the Catholic Bishops Conference, and a parliamentary committee that recommended the bill be thrown out as unconstitutional, effectively stopping it in its tracks. Instead, a major reason for the attention focused on the bill is that many believe it is the fruit of American evangelical homophobia.

I asked to write a rebuttal but CT declined. About an hour ago, I posted this comment:

I encourage readers of Timothy Shah’s article to read the articles provided by Christianity Today on page three. Although incomplete, these articles accurately contradict several of the claims made by Shah. For instance, Shah says that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill repelled “virtually all of Uganda’s major political and religious leaders…” However, on CT’s website, Ugandan Bishop David Zac Niringiye told Sarah Pulliam Bailey:

How are Ugandan Christians generally responding to this legislation?

This is not just a Christian response. I can certainly say the objectives of the bill have the total support of most of Uganda, not just Christians, but also Muslims and Roman Catholics. It would not be right to talk about how Christians feel. They’re all agreed on the objectives. There will be a difference of opinion on the details of the bill. Space does not permit a detailed fact-based rebuttal which is why CT should allow one.

Bishop Niringiye’s response is linked after the Shah article and can be read here. He adds as if to make the point clear (but not clear enough for Timothy Shah):

Bailey: Do you know how Christians are responding to the penalties in this bill?

Niringiye: The point I’m making is that Christians in the country, including other people in the culture, really support the objectives of the bill. When it comes to the issue of the death penalty, there is as much debate over the death penalty as there are different Christian persuasions. The discussion on the death penalty [in this bill] needs to be separated from, Is the death penalty [ever] an acceptable sentence? I am sure there are American Christians or others in the world who will say the death penalty is an acceptable sentence. There will be Christians in Uganda who will say the death penalty is an acceptable sentence. There will be Christians in Uganda who will say no, the death penalty is not an acceptable sentence for any offense.

The CT website also has articles which demonstrate the division among American Christians over the issues raised by the AHB. For instance, this one by Sarah Pulliam Bailey notes that American Christians were troubled by the bill and took various positions on criminalization. Shah reduces the narrative to a left versus Christian conflict, ignoring the opposition among Christians around the world to what most Ugandan leaders were supporting in the name of Jesus.

Shah completely ignores that David Bahati told the media that he did indeed have evangelical supporters in the US. He declined to name them but I named a few here. Moreover, Lou Engle went to Uganda in May, 2010 and told the Ugandans alongside religious and political leaders that Uganda was “ground zero” in the culture war. He later acknowledged favoring the criminalization of homosexuality. Bahati, Nsaba Buturo and Julius Oyet all felt supported by Engle’s visit. The left did not make that up.

Shah’s vision is woefully inadequate to suggest that  American opposition was triggered solely by perceptions of “American homophobia.” What completes the picture is to understand that the American opposition was not exclusively from the New York Times (which actually came late to the issue) and the left, but also with vigor from American evangelicals contending with Ugandan and other American evangelicals that the AHB was wrong.

Shah mentions the Fellowship, the evangelical group which David Bahati aligns with in Uganda, but fails to examine the significance of the fact that the Fellowship’s American leadership condemned the AHB. The platform used by both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to condemn the AHB was the National Prayer Breakfast in February, 2010. The National Prayer Breakfast is organized by the Fellowship.

I was in the African Suite at the Washington Hilton watching the speeches by Obama and Clinton. After the NPB ceremonies were done, a spirited discussion broke out in the room involving myself and the Ugandan delegation. Only one Ugandan spoke against the bill, while three were vigorous in their support for it.

In his attempt to make a case for a conspiracy, Shah comes too close to engaging in one. He clearly wants to beat up on Jeff Sharlet, who incidentally helped get the Fellowship’s Bob Hunter on the Rachel Maddow Show to condemn the AHB, but makes an irresponsible claim to do so. Shah writes:

He [Sharlet] further suggests that American “fundamentalists” such as Rick Warren harbor a genocidal “motive” because they aim at the “eradication of homosexuality” and so countenance the murder of open homosexuals such as David Kato.

I have the book C-Street and also asked Sharlet if he has ever suggested that “fundamentalists such as Rick Warren…countenance the murder of open homosexuals.” It is not in the book and Sharlet tells me that he has never linked fundamentalists with the murder of David Kato. In his book, Sharlet says Bahati and Warren both believe homosexuality is wrong, and in that sense favor the eradication of homosexuality, but he notes that Warren’s approach is religious and curative while Bahati’s bill proposes darker ends. Sharlet does not say Warren wants gays killed and it is irresponsible to suggest it.

There is much more to say, but a read of the CT website on Uganda will quickly reveal how problematic it is. I will pick this up in another post soon…