Category: politics

Ugandan MP says new anti-gay bill could be law soon

After a tumultuous end to business in the last session involving the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, the current Ninth Parliament of Uganda continues to organize itself for business. Last week, committees were formed and rules or order are being devised.  Jockeying for power and influence occupy the efforts of those in the ruling party and those in the opposition.
Lawmaking is probably a month away but one legislator is predicting that a re-introduced Anti-Homosexuality Bill will be law within two months. Otto Odonga, a member of the committee which Legal and Parliamentary Affairs committee in the 8th and now again in the 9th Parliament told me via Skype that he expects David Bahati to reintroduce the bill as soon as possible. He predicted that the bill will come to the floor of Parliament as soon as rules allow.
“It will be expedited this time around and passed within one, maybe two months time,” the MP said. Odonga also told me that Stephen Tashobya, the chair of the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs committee, was re-appointed to that same post in the new Parliament. While Bahati will need to start from scratch on the bill, the committee will be able to use the report issued last session as a basis for their work this time around. That report called for minimal changes and retained the death penalty for certain offenses. Odonga said the bill has wide support in the Parliament.
As a follow up on a prior story, Odonga also said that David Bahati was selected to be the coordinator of the Parliamentary Prayer Fellowship.

David Barton on John Adams – The Holy Ghost letter

During his appearance on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, David Barton claimed that John Adams believed in the Trinity and avoided discussing the meaning of John Adams letter to Benjamin Rush where Adams invokes the Holy Ghost. Last week, I noted that John Adams denied the Trinity in correspondence to Thomas Jefferson, who also denied it. In this post, I take up the letter from John Adams to Benjamin Rush where Adams discusses the Holy Ghost. On the Daily Show, Jon Stewart read a portion of the letter to Barton which referred to the Holy Ghost. The transcript of that segment is below. Elsewhere, Barton has written that the Holy Ghost letter is in some way related to Benjamin Rush’s effort to reconcile Adams and Jefferson. This post refers to what Adams was really saying in his letter to Rush and the next post takes up the reconciliation between Adams and Jefferson.
Here again is a transcript of the exchange between between Barton and Stewart where Barton makes his claims:

Stewart: Do you think people would be more comfortable with you if they felt like you were consistently looking to extend historical context and — because there are a lot of critics out there who say you cherry-pick your religious facts, take them out of context — your historical facts — to use them to bolster your argument.
Barton: They’ve never proven that. They’ve claimed that. Show me some documentation where it’s taken out of context. They’ve never provided that. They complain about it.
Stewart: Didn’t they say the John Adams quote, where you talk about, he says, “We were inspired by Divinity.”
Barton: No, I don’t recall him saying that. Have you got the quote?
Stewart: Yeah, let me see if I can find it. [consults notes] Okay, here it is. Here is what you wrote in your book about what Adams said, endorsing the Church being involved in the State: “The Holy Ghost carries on the whole Christian system in this earth. Not a baptism, not a marriage, not a sacrament can be administered, but by the Holy Ghost, who is transmitted from age to age by laying the hands of the bishop upon the heads of candidates for the ministry. […] There is no authority, civil or religious; there can be no legitimate government, but what is administered by the Holy Ghost. There can be no salvation without it; all without it is rebellion and perdition, or in more orthodox words, damnation.” That’s the quote that you used in your book.
Barton: Now, I have the original John Adams letter with me off the set. I brought the original. See, I posted that online; how can I misquote it when I put the whole thing up there. That’s the only John Adams letter in the world that he wrote on that day to that person, and that’s what’s in it. I posted that where everybody can see it, and that’s what we do with our documents.
Stewart: But you have then the sentence after the one, which is: “Although this is all artifice and cunning —”
Barton: Oh, the entire letter is posted. The entire letter is posted.
Stewart: But you can see that the next sentence shows that he’s being sarcastic in that passage.
Barton: Not in — no, not at all. You read the entire letter, Jon — now, see, they’ve given you their critique of it.
Stewart: But how could he say the Holy Ghost — I mean, this man was a Unitarian; why would he claim the Holy Ghost sincerely?
Barton: You know what a Unitarian was then?
Stewart: Yeah, someone who didn’t believe in the Trinity.
Barton: No, no. Not until 1839, long after his death. It did not become —
Stewart: So John Adams believed in the Holy Ghost?
Barton: He believed in the Trinity, and that’s where Unitarian —

David Barton does indeed have the original letter from John Adams to Benjamin Rush in his collection and has a picture of it on his website. Stewart asserts that Adams’ use of the terms “artifice and cunning” was sarcasm toward the belief that the Holy Ghost sets up governmental and religious authorities. Barton said Stewart was wrong. However, Stewart did not press Barton to say what he thought Adams meant. Too bad, because I would like to hear Barton’s explaination of Adams’ statements in context.
This letter is important to Barton. In a related article, Barton claims that Adams references to the Holy Ghost were in some way a reply to Benjamin Rush’s wish that Adams and Thomas Jefferson would reconcile their differences. An examination of the series of letters in 1809 makes this assertion very unlikely.
This issue has been visited in depth by Chris Rodda (this video, this article, and then her book – now free on her website– are must reads) and then lately by Messiah College historian John Fea (this post and his book are also must reads). In addition to consulting these resources, I also looked at the original sources myself. In short, Barton has taken correspondence between John Adams and Benjamin Rush, and selectively quoted from those letters to create a fiction, one which he repeated on Jon Stewart’s program. This post provides evidence to contradict Barton’s claims.
To understand the various claims about Adams, Rush and the Holy Ghost, one must read the relevant series of letters between Adams and Rush. Three of these letters are easily available on the internet; the other one, from Rush to Adams dated December 5, 1809, I reproduce below. Rush and Adams were good friends and exchanged warm and friendly correspondence often. In his letter to Adams on October 17, 1809, Rush used the device of a dream to express his wish that Adams and Thomas Jefferson would again resume communications. Read all four letters here.
Continue reading “David Barton on John Adams – The Holy Ghost letter”

Barton: Gender bending honorable during Revolutionary War

On Glen Beck’s show on Friday, David Barton said:

BECK: On that program, what took a lot of viewers by surprise was that some women actually served in the military during the American Revolution.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BECK: I have to ask you about this handsome lady.
BARTON: 1782, she wanted to do something for her country. She dressed like a man and went and enlisted.
Now, what’s interesting is she’s 22 years old at the time and other guys in the army, I always kid her about, you never shave. You’re just a kid. Of course, she didn’t shave. She’s a lady.
She got wounded in a battle up at West Point and she treated the wound herself so no one would find out what her gender was.
BECK: Holy cow.
BARTON: She later, in Philadelphia, came up with a really high fever, almost unconscious and so the physician had to check her and at that time, find out what her gender was. So, when they found out her gender, they quietly moved her out of Army. But General Henry Knox is the one that gave her an honorable discharge out of the Army at West Point.
BECK: Wow.
BARTON: She ends up with a military pension because she served as a soldier. And if you were a soldier, you got the pension so pretty cool story.

But let’s not have any of that now…

President Obama's Aunt graduates from Unification church seminary

In news you might not see elsewhere…
President Obama’s Aunt, the Rev. Margaret Obama from Kenya, graduated recently from the Unificationist Theological Seminary according to a statement on the church’s website.

Rev. Margaret Obama (right)Friends, family and fellow students enthusiastically applauded as twenty-two students received their diplomas at the 35th commencement ceremony of the Unification Theological Seminary (UTS) at its New York City campus on Thursday, May 19, 2011. The 15 students receiving their Masters in Religious Education included Rev. Margaret Obama from Kaisumu, Kenya, U.S. President Barack Obama’s aunt, who wrote her thesis on “Religious Education to Support Orphaned Teen Girls in Kenya: a Curriculum.” Rev. Obama has told friends that she will spend the coming year doing pastoral care in service to her local church, the Church of the Incarnation, in Jersey City, New Jersey.

“I learned so many good things at UTS,” Rev. Obama told Familyfed.org. “Many churches concentrate on taking care of their own, but the Unification community focuses upon serving those outside their own group,” she said. “They [the Unificationists] cherish family values, making husbands, wives and children the priorities, and I believe that by promoting family values, they are building world peace, because peace in the family easily extends to the larger world,” she told familyfed.org in a telephone interview. Rev. Obama says that she became involved with Unificationists after attending seminars of the Women’s Federation for World Peace in Kenya in 2005.

The Church of the Incarnation is an Episcopal church. The Unification church describes itself as follows from the website:

The Unification Church is comprised of families striving to embody the ideal of true love and to establish a world of peace and unity among all peoples, races, and religions as envisioned by Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Members of the Unification Church accept and follow Reverend Moon’s particular religious teaching, the Divine Principle.

Unificationists believe that Rev. and Mrs. Moon are the true manifestations of the masculine and feminine elements of God.
After the election of the President, high level Unificationist touted meetings between Moon (True Father) and Obama, and even said Michelle Obama was involved in their movement. One follower claimed this on a Unificationist website:

Rev. Yang came on the second last day and explained about Father’s life, concluding with some exciting new information. The newly elected United States’ president, Barack Obama, has been attending ACLC conferences and has apparently met with Father on several occasions. Even just before the elections, he attended a prayer breakfast. His wife is involved with our movement as well. This is a new revolution, now that Obama has become president; Father wants to eradicate all barriers between races.

I should add that there is no confirmation that any of those claims are true. Unificationists are keen on political connections and once used the Dirksen Senate building as the site of the coronation of the Moons as the King and Queen of Peace. They then use these real and implied connections as means to paint a skewed narrative to the faithful. I suspect the graduation of Ms. Obama will be added to the narrative of the Obama’s as supporters of the Moon’s place as True Parents.