Religion and sexuality – Page 131

Uganda: The other shoe drops

According to this article from Ugandan news source, New Vision, a bill was introduced and then tabled in the Ugandan parliament yesterday.

The bill would make homosexual relations with someone under 18 punishable by the death penalty.

Here’s more:

The Bill, entitled the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009, also states that anyone who commits the offence of homosexuality will be liable to life imprisonment.

This was already the case under the current Penal Code Act.

However, it gives a broader definition of the offence of homosexuality.

A person charged with the offence will have to undergo a mandatory medical examination to ascertain his or her HIV status.

The bill further states that anybody who “attempts to commit the offence” is liable to imprisonment for seven years.

“The same applies to anybody who “aids, abets, counsels or procures another to engage in acts of homosexuality” or anybody who keeps a house or room for the purpose of homosexuality.

The bill also proposes stiff sentences for people promoting homosexuality.

They risk a fine of sh100m or prison sentences of five to seven years.

This applies to people who produce, publish or distribute pornographic material for purposes of promoting homosexuality, fund or sponsor homosexuality.

Where the offender is a business or NGO, its certificate of registration will be cancelled and the director will be liable to seven years in prison.

Failure to disclose the offence within 24 hours of knowledge makes somebody liable to a maximum sh5m fine or imprisonment of up to three years.

This chilling development was promised by those who promoted the ex-gay conference back in the Spring which featured three Americans, Scott Lively, Don Schmeirer and Caleb Brundidge. Lively backed measures to keep homosexuality illegal at the time.

This bill would make ex-gay ministry such as promoted by the conference impossible as just knowing about someone who is gay could lead to fines or imprisonment.

For previous posts, click here.

Another article on the bill. Boxturtlebulletin has the text of the bill. Here is a plank justifying the harsh measures:

This legislation further recognizes the fact that same sex attraction is not an innate and immutable characteristic and that people who experience this mental disorder can and have changed to a heterosexual orientation. It also recognizes that because homosexuals are not born that way, but develop this disorder based on experiences and environmental conditions, it is preventable, especially among young people who are most vulnerable to recruitment into the homosexual lifestyle.

I don’t think one’s view of etiology matters in the context of freedom. Determined or not, people are free to engage in relationships as adults and of course the state should protect minors. However, it now seems clearer than ever that the ex-gay conference was designed to give the government cover for the line of thinking presented in this bill. All involved in the ex-gay conference presented out-dated, easily falsified information in the Kampala conference. All involved have refused to bring their theories under the scrutiny of science and research. What if the Americans who went to Uganda presented accurate information about homosexuality to the Ugandan authorities? Would the authors of this bill been able to present this inadequate view of etiology unchallenged?

UPDATE from the BBC:

Michael Glatze writes again; removes inflammatory comment from blog

Michael Glatze is back and according to one of the blog posts he left up, he is ready to “rumble.”

Glatze caused quite a stir in July, 2007 when he announced that the former Young Gay America editor had gone straight. He was interviewed by NARTH’s Joe Nicolosi in addition to being featured by various socially conservative groups.

If you clicked the first link above, you went to a WorldNetDaily article by Glatze where he gives an update of his life since he first left his work as an advocate for gay youth.

The second link is to his blog which is a recent effort. However, he has already removed most of the posts prior to today. ExGayWatch early this morning posted a link to the blog where inflammatory statements were posted. The most troubling was the one titled, “I really can’t stand that man” (see below):

In case it is difficult to read the picture, here is the quote: “Have I mentioned lately how utterly *disgusting* Obama is? And, yes, it’s because he’s black. God, help us all.”

I asked Glatze if he wanted to offer comment. He said the following in an email response:

Yes, I can. I was talking with some friends about Jimmy Carter’s recent comments along the lines of that anybody who disagrees with Obama is a racist. My friend posted that on my blog, as sarcasm.

Warren, I am about fed-up with the “race card” being pulled, any time someone so much as *suggests* that Obama may not be doing something right. It’s getting to the point, where people are literally losing their minds trying to speak up, trying to have their voices heard. You don’t know how many friends I have who feel crippled, in a country that has its foundations in the notion of freedom and – more importantly – liberty.

You’ll see a quote on my little blog – now – that says, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” It’s a quote by George Orwell. I’m trying to do my small part, in the midst of all this insanity, to find integrity.

No, I’m not happy with the current administration. No, I don’t hate Obama because he’s black. What I do hate is evil, and many of the things he has done I would consider evil.

Even with his explanation, this is still very troubling. Readers can decide if they feel the explanation is sufficient. There was no apology, no recognition that the “sarcasm” was incredibly offensive and incendiary. I suspect that WND did not know about this and will be interested to see if they leave the Glatze articles on their site.

UPDATE: Glatze added the previous posts he deleted back to his blog.

APA Monitor on the APA sexual orientation and therapy report

The current American Psychological Association Monitor briefly reports on the August report from the Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation. Not much new here for regular readers of the blog. The big news in my view was the treatment of religion which did not get as much coverage as the discouragement of change therapies.

The article ends with quotes from NARTH’s Julie Hamilton and me.

Warren Throckmorton, PhD, an associate professor of psychology and fellow at the Center for Vision and Values at Grove City College in Grove City, Pa., described the task force’s work as a “well-done effort.”

“I felt the treatment of religion was very respectful, and in doing so, it created space for clients of conservative religious faith to explore the reality of their sexual orientation, while maintaining their faith commitments,” said Throckmorton, who researches sexual orientation and homosexuality and writes about such issues from a Christian perspective.

Julie Harren Hamilton, PhD, president of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), said she appreciated what she described as the task force’s recognition that clients have a right to self-determination, and its respect for religious diversity. But she disagreed with the task force’s main conclusions, and charged that the task force was composed only of members opposed to sexual orientation change efforts.

“We believe that if the task force had been more neutral in their approach, they could have arrived at only one conclusion, that homosexuality is not invariably fixed in all people, that some people can and do change,” she said.

Some people may change something but there is little evidence which would allow more than guesses about what the potent elements in any such change might be. The NARTH review found that all kinds of approaches reported some degree of change. Can they all be right? In such a situation, a more plausible guess might be that there was some common element of the clients and/or the therapy that could be involved. And as Jones and Yarhouse suggested in the discussion section of their APA report, perhaps sexual identity is a better concept to consider when discussing categorical change. If someone shifts a Kinsey point or two, one might feel satisfied with this and justified in considering themselves to have changed.

As I have noted, the distance between opposing views may be narrowing significantly.

PFOX wants libraries to heart Alfie’s Home

At least, I think Alfie’s Home is the book meant by the following PFOX (Parents and Friends of Exgays) news release:

“Ex-gay books are also not made available in many community public libraries,” said Griggs. “The libraries in West Bend and Beaver Dam, Wisconsin will not accept our donation of an ex-gay book for children, although these libraries circulate several picture books with gay themes for children.”

I wrote to ask PFOX if Alfie’s Home by Richard Cohen is the book they tried to donate. They have not answered as yet. I do know that they have donated it elsewhere. It was offered to the Ex-gay Educators Caucus during the 2004 National Education Association convention as a possible giveaway to people who stopped by the booth. However, all involved refused to provide it and gave the books back.

Classically Liberal has an expose of the book with most of it in pictures. Essentially the book depicts the reparative view of how people become and un-become gay. It also contains a creepy and unnecessary drawing of a boy in bed with a man. I would not want my son to read it.

The book is offensive on at least two levels. For gays, it reduces their experience to bad fathers and sexual abuse. For those who have been sexually abused, it makes becoming gay the real tragedy of the book, not the abuse. There may be a sensitive way to tackle these issues, but this is not it.

I think any number of ex-gay books could be made available simply for information and research purposes. But please, not this one.

Reflections on what we share in common

(This post from occasional contributor, clinical psychologist David Blakeslee, covers some similar territory as conservative gay blogger, GayPatriot on the Kevin Jennings controversy.)

I have been a bit agitated lately, it is probably my own problem, but instead of being internally ruminative about such sensations I decided to find some object to focus these feelings on. It didn’t take long, all I had to do was visit Warren’s blog . There I could find a few outlandish assumptions, hypocritical comments and distortions of fact to justify ventilation. Apparently that was not satisfactory enough, so I am writing this posting after a couple of years of absence (Warren, I don’t know how you do this day in and day out, your energy and integrity are deeply appreciated).

Rationalization, minimization, and justification are not scientific arguments; they are psychological defenses to ward off anxiety. Sometimes they are so effective that we feel quite calm when a grave injustice, which we should agonize about, has occurred. Instead of tossing and turning at night, struggling with headaches and pacing the floor, we sleep quite soundly. Sometimes they are so effective that the weak and the vulnerable are left without an outraged and strong protector; instead they get a philosopher, who through his mental games ends up functionally being a passive collaborator with a predator.

Are gay teens vulnerable? Absolutely.

And just to whom are they vulnerable? Continue reading “Reflections on what we share in common”