Tag: anti-homosexuality bill 2009

Uganda’s clergy calls on Parliament to pass the Anti-Homosexuality Bill

I have written a headline like that several times since 2009. However, in 2012, the calls still come:

In a statement, the bishops called for the review of the Constitution to reduce the excessive powers enjoyed by the President.

Orombi said there is need to enact a law to protect the sitting President from being bombarded by the people asking him to address issues that can be solved by the relevant institutions.

“The President cannot do everything. We want the relevant government institutions to be allowed to do their work instead of everyone asking the President to solve their problems,” he added.

The religious leaders called on Parliament to expedite the passing of the Anti-homosexuality Bill into law to combat same-sex marriages which threats the moral fabric of the Ugandan society.

They also urged government to do everything in its power to get to the bottom of the causes of nodding disease, with the view of wiping it out to save the people in the north where it has so far killed over 200 children since 2009 when it broke out.

The Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga in a speech read for by Bahati said the Church should continue advising the political leaders objectively.

I suspect David Bahati asked for and received a call from Orombi to tout his bill. This statement is a sign that the clergy and Bahati have not given up on it.

Oklahoma City Church to host Scott Lively

As unbelievable as that sounds, Draper Park Christian Church is hosting Scott Lively for a weekend of seminars April 27-29, 2012.

On the church Facebook page, they prep their congregants with an article from MassResistance.

Upcoming DPCC keynote speaker featured in this article…thanks Stephen Black of First Stone Ministries. Church, the Lord said “Be alert and ready for service!”. This Christian lawyer Dr. Lively needs our fervent, effectual, righteous prayers.

It is not clear what the role of Stephen Black and First Stone Ministries is. If that Exodus affiliate has anything to do with this appearance, they would be flying directly in the face of the policy of the national Exodus ministry, who denounced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill as well as Lively’s role in Uganda. They also removed Lively’s article about the Pink Swastika from their website.

I want to believe that the Draper Park people don’t understand what they are getting into. They read information from MassResistance calling Lively a martyr, but they will not hear Lively’s real message until he is inside their doors.

Most likely, he will tell them that the Holocaust was animated by homosexuals and gays want to recruit their children. He may tell them that he doesn’t support forced therapy, but he won’t tell them what would happen to gays who refuse state-sponsored ex-gay therapy. He might tell them that he didn’t support the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill but he might not be as candid as he was with Mariana Van Zeller here:

 

He might tell the church what he thinks causes homosexuality, as he did below to the Ugandans in 2009, but he probably won’t tell them that both Exodus and NARTH have removed his articles from their websites.

I know there other Christians of conservative theology who are grieved by this.  It is sad when Christians are tricked into thinking they are fighting evil when instead they mislead and misrepresent. Mr. Lively, as a Holocaust revisionist, should not have a platform in a Christian venue.

For more on the distortions and misleading presentation that is the Pink Swatiska, see this link.

Gay Staffer Says Invisible Children is Not Anti-Gay

In a post dated March 19, Vice-President for Business Operations at Invisible Children, Chris Sarette, says IC is not an anti-gay organization. Sarette has some credibility on this statement since he came out as gay in 2007. In the post, Sarette wrote:

Invisible Children has attracted supporters, employees and board members who otherwise might sit on opposite sides of the aisle. The Invisible Children community’s common conviction that people are people, and the actions that back it up, are one of the reasons that I finally came out as a gay man in 2007.

Invisible Children’s Kony2012 campaign brought international scrutiny recently when they helped make Uganda and Kony trends on Twitter. Just last week, Right Wing Watch wondered aloud about a possible link between Martin Ssempa, infamous anti-gay minister in Uganda, and the Invisible Children organization because of a video posted in 2005 by students at Grove City College (where I teach). As I understand it the visits were not coordinated and there was no connection between IC and Ssempa. However, the RWW piece speculated that such a link might be possible because of the visits.

Without specifically mentioned the false attribution of a connection, Sarette pays tribute to inclusive nature of the IC organization.

Personally, it’s difficult for me to see Invisible Children maligned as anti-gay because it’s simply untrue. This is the group of people that encouraged me to embrace my sexual identity and I have experienced the acceptance, not just tolerance, of everyone in the organization. And having just celebrated my fourth anniversary with my partner, I’m so happy that I did.

I have spoken with the current student leadership of Project Okello here and I am confident that there has never been coordination between Ssempa and IC. Furthermore, when the Project Okello leaders learned of Ssempa’s anti-gay advocacy, they ceased all contact with him.

I see that RWW has posted an update from IC which is a good start. I do hope that the RWW author will take steps to get that word out to the other bloggers who posted on the subject.

WND: Lively sued over “biblically based beliefs”

Of course, WorldNetDaily would weigh in on the lawsuit against Scott Lively. As usual, WND slants the matter to misinform their audience. The article by Bob Unruh tells readers that Lively is being sued over

his biblically based religious beliefs that homosexuality is a sin, and his statements about his beliefs.

If you read the suit, you will find that the other people who went to Uganda with Lively (Don Schmierer and Caleb Brundidge) are not being sued. Those guys put out some misinformation too and indicated their belief that homosexuality is a sin but did not tell the audience that gays animated the Jewish Holocaust and were probably behind the Rwandan genocide as well. Those men did not tell the Ugandan audience that the best way to overcome public sympathy for gays is to portray gays as recruiters and threats to children.

Where does the Bible say that homosexuality is responsible for the Holocaust? For the Rwandan genocide? That gays are pedophiles? Are those Biblically based beliefs?

Even if one disagrees with the suit, the truth is that Lively is not being sued for his beliefs that homosexuality is a sin. There are many evangelicals who believe that in the U.S. and in Uganda who also abhor the Anti-Homosexuality Bill and tell the truth about their GLBT fellow citizens.

Lively is quoted extensively in the article but the bringers of the suit are not interviewed. When the lawsuit is cited, Unruh neglects to cite Lively comments and actions that are the basis of the suit. Here is one sugar coated example:

The lawsuit cites Lively’s visits to Uganda in 2002 to campaign against pornography at a conference to illustrate his responsibility for subsequent violence, as well as the Ugandan proposal to make illegal the publishing of pornography for the purpose of promoting homosexuality.

A WND reader would get the impression that Lively was combating porn in Uganda and/or that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill was about stopping gay porn. At the least, WND should link to the suit, but of course, they don’t.

For those interested, the suit is here.

 

Change.org petition asking Citibank and Barclays to condemn Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill now has over 20,000 signatures

I really didn’t expect that many but this petition which began with a goal of 200 now has over 20,000 signers.

UPDATE: As of 9:20pm, the petition has over 85,000 signatures.