Warren Throckmorton

Last week, The Atlantic broke the story about Michele Bachmann’s staffer, Peter Waldron, who was arrested in Uganda in 2006 on charges of possessing firearms illegally.  The Bachmann campaign credited Waldron with helping her win the Iowa straw poll vote on August 13. 
After The Atlantic story came out, there were several reports about Waldron with information about his background and an upcoming film about his experiences in Uganda. The title of the film is The Ultimate Price.
Shortly thereafter, I pointed out a reference on Waldron’s Facebook page to his next assignment: South Carolina. He also shared there that he saw Texas Governor Rick Perry as comparable to King Saul and Bachmann like  King David in the Old Testament. Bachmann is like David in that she has been anointed by God, according to Waldron. Those comments are now unavailable; the screen cap follows:

Now almost everything current related to Mr. Waldron has disappeared. His Facebook page is now private, and all that is left of his personal (peterewaldron.com) and movie promo (theultimatepricemovie.com) websites is the phrase, “under construction.” (See screen caps at the end of the post)
Once three video interviews were available on YouTube. Hosted by Hermann and Sharron Bailey, the interviews focused on his time in the Ugandan prison on weapons charges. These are now marked private (e.g, Part two) 
YouTube hosts two videos promoting the film about Waldron (The Ultimate Price). Now one of them (the 4 minute version) is marked private, while the two-minute version carries the disclaimer that the video is “unlisted.” For now, the embedding feature allows it to be shown, but it does not appear in YouTube search results.

Despite these disappearances, you can still get some Waldron at his Christian’s Restoring America’s Greatness (CRAG), this Facebook group dedicated to promoting CRAG,  Advancing America’s Freedom (co-founder), and this BlogTalkRadio podcast for his Contact America organization.
Several questions occur to me: Why remove these sites? Did he do it? Did the Bachmann campaign want him to do it? Is he still working for her in SC? Is there something troubling about the information being removed?
Given that Mr. Waldron believes Michele Bachmann is anointed by God to pursue to the Presidency, I hope the media start asking Bachmann some questions about what Waldron is telling evangelicals about her candidacy.
Screen caps: Peterewaldron.com, Theultimatepricemovie.com, Facebook comment

Late yesterday, Religion Dispatches posted my lengthy report on the anti-gay work of Family Watch International and the World Congress of Families.
I became curious about FWI when I saw that they had distanced their organization from Martin Ssempa. I reported way back in January 2010 that Ssempa was associated with the group. However, efforts then to get FWI to respond to the issue were ignored.  Recently, however, FWI made a change which according to Slater was a reflection of their belief that gays not be killed or beaten for being gay. She told me in the interview that FWI did not support violence, but take no position on other penalties.
The question that came to my mind was – “Isn’t removal of freedom and being cast in jail violence?”
Apparently, not violent enough.
I hope you will go read the report at RD.

Today, in the face of reports that Uganda’s Cabinet tossed out the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, Parliament spokesperson, Helen Kawesa, said that the bill “is in the Parliament now. It’s Parliament’s property.” She added the Cabinet ministers will “have to argue it out in the Parliament” since the bill is controlled by Parliament and has not yet had a vote.
Kawesa added, “If the Cabinet has issues with it, they will be brought in to the floor of the House.”
Currently, budget meetings are on the agenda but a budget is slated to get a vote by next Wednesday. After that, other business, including the anti-gay bill could be considered. As of now, according to Kawesa, there is no official action scheduled for the Anti-Homosexuality Bill but she said the bill could come up at any time after the budget has been passed.
In 2010, a Cabinet committee chaired by Adolf Mwesige called for removal of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill and made recommendations to enforce existing law. Those recommendations were detailed in a report to Parliament. Many observers believed at the time that the bill had been shelved. However, the bill remained under the jurisdiction of the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs committee. That committee then wrote a report recommending that the bill be passed. However, for reasons that remain unknown, the Parliament placed the bill on the daily agenda but then failed to act on the measure. Currently, the bill remains in the hands of Parliament and is one of several measures considered in the last session which is alive in this session.

Uganda’s Cabinet Minister’s have urged Parliament and MP David Bahati to drop the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, according to the Daily Monitor. Bahati declined to do so, saying the bill is now the property of Parliament. Here the entire story:

Cabinet has finally thrown out the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, 2009 on the advice of Mr Adolf Mwesige, the ruling party lawyer. However, Ndorwa West MP David Bahati, the architect of the Bill, insists the proposed legislation is now property of Parliament and that the Executive should stop “playing hide- and- seek games” on the matter.
The decision to throw out the Anti-Homosexuality Bill was made at a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday where Mr Mwesige, according to sources, told ministers that the Bill was unnecessary since government has a number of laws in place criminalising homosexual activities.
“We agreed that government should search the law archives and get some of the laws, enforce them rather than having another new piece of legislation,” a source said. “He [Mwesige] said the Bill is overtaken by events and that donors and other sections of the public were not comfortable.”
The Bill seeks to criminalise all same-sex relations in the country and proposes the death penalty for sodomy. Mr Bahati and his group maintain that the country should have stronger laws against homosexuality in order to protect the moral fabric that holds society intact.
“The future of this country’s children will be determined by the peoples’ representatives in Parliament,” Mr Bahati said during a phone interview on Saturday.

It is not clear whether or not this action will effectively kill the bill. In 2010, a Cabinet committee led by Adolf Mwesige recommended that the bill be dropped for essentially the same reasons. However, it was not dropped at that time, even though Mwesige was confident that it would be shelved.
Even though the bill might be slowed by the Cabinet’s reluctance to push ahead, Mwesige also called for enforcement of existing law (prohibition of unnatural carnal knowledge). If so, Uganda’s GLBT community could still face a worsening situation going forward.

While this is not a perfect statement (see this post for a critique), the AFA decided to oppose Bryan Fischer’s narrow view of the First Amendment. Earlier this week, the AFA issued the following statement.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM FOR ALL 
An American Family Association Policy Statement 
The American Family Association celebrates Religious Freedom for all people and for all beliefs as one of the foundational values that make the United States of America a great nation.  
Historical Background 
America’s Founders disagreed how broadly the First Amendment extended Freedom of Religion.  Since James Madison, known as the Father of the Bill of Rights, insured that the Congressional debates over the Bill of Rights were conducted in secret, Americans must look to later sources to understand the positions taken by their Founders.  Thomas Jefferson and Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, whom Madison appointed to the Supreme Court and who later founded Harvard Law School, openly debated over the place of Christianity in American law.  Jefferson advocated a broad view that that all religions, not merely variations of Christianity, were to be protected.  In his autobiography Jefferson wrote: 
[When] the [Virginia] bill for establishing religious freedom… was finally passed,… 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. 
Joseph Story stated a contradictory view in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States:  
The real object of the [First] amendment was, not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment, which should give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government.”  
Jefferson’s position has ultimately prevailed; under American law all religions enjoy freedom from government interference.  However Joseph Story’s view continues to have proponents, including Bryan Fischer, one of American Family Radio’s talk show hosts.   However, the American Family Association (“AFA”) officially sides with Jefferson on this question.   AFA is confident that the truth of Christianity will prevail whenever it is allowed to freely compete in the marketplace of ideas.  

In other words, on one of the fundamental issues the AFA speaks about, they have a spokesperson who takes the anachronistic view with which they disagree.
Now I would like to see the AFA come out and issue a statement regarding Bryan Fischer’s position on the nobility of displacing and eradicating indigenous people from the land. It appears that they now understand a little better that silence communicates consent. So now there are several statements they need work on.