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In this original BTB Investigation, we unveil the tragic story of Kirk Murphy, a four-year-old boy who was treated for “cross-gender disturbance” in 1970 by a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. This story is a stark reminder that there are severe and damaging consequences when therapists try to ensure that boys will be boys.

Slouching Towards Kampala: Uganda’s Deadly Embrace of Hate

When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.

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Paul Cameron’s World

In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.

From the Inside: Focus on the Family’s “Love Won Out”

On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.

Prologue: Why I Went To “Love Won Out”
Part 1: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Part 2: Parents Struggle With “No Exceptions”
Part 3: A Whole New Dialect
Part 4: It Depends On How The Meaning of the Word "Change" Changes
Part 5: A Candid Explanation For "Change"

 

The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing The Myths

At last, the truth can now be told.

Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!

And don't miss our companion report, How To Write An Anti-Gay Tract In Fifteen Easy Steps.

Testing The Premise: Are Gays A Threat To Our Children?

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Review: The Gay Report

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Daniel Fetty Doesn’t Count

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Scott Lively Issues Statement On Uganda

Jim Burroway

December 11th, 2009
L-R: Unidentified woman, American holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, International Healing Foundation's Caleb Brundidge, Exodus International boardmember Don Schmierer, Family Life Network (Uganda)'s Stephen Langa, at the time of the March 2009 anti-gay conference in Uganda.

L-R: Unidentified woman, American holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, International Healing Foundation's Caleb Brundidge, Exodus International boardmember Don Schmierer, Family Life Network (Uganda)'s Stephen Langa, at the time of the March 2009 anti-gay conference in Uganda.

Today, Scott Lively, one of three American anti-gay activists who participated in an anti-gay conference last March in Kampala, decided to drop his two cents’ worth on the Uganda debacle that he helped to create. In a statement posted on his Defend The Family web site, Lively says that he’s against the death penalty. But he also supports the rationale and hatred that is driving that proposal, while excusing his own actions and repeating his earlier suggestion that Uganda institute forced conversion therapy instead.

Lively begins his piece by recounting the story behind Uganda’s Martyrs Day, an official holiday which marks the deaths of 22 young men who refused to submit to rape by King Mwanga II of Buganda between 1885 and 1887. Lively is not to first to equate predatory rape with consensual relationships of affection between people of the same gender, and he won’t be the last. But he uses this canard to claim that “By official count 22 young men were executed under Uganda’s law on homosexuality.”

Such is the state of bigotry in Uganda that conflating homosexuality with rape is so commonplace that it has become a part of the national lore, and such is Lively’s eagerness to exploit that hatred to justify his actions. Lively’s statement builds on the image of all gays being predatory by spreading the oft-repeated rumors circulating in Uganda that wealthy foreigners are “converting” Uganda’s youth to a lifetime of homosexuality through the influence of wealth. And what does he think should be done about it?

Scott Lively speaking at a 2007 Watchmen On the Walls conference in Riga, Latvia

Scott Lively speaking at a 2007 Watchmen On the Walls conference in Riga, Latvia

Let me be absolutely clear. I do not support the proposed anti-homosexuality law as written. It does not emphasize rehabilitation over punishment and the punishment that it calls for is unacceptably harsh. However, if the offending sections were sufficiently modified, the proposed law would represent an encouraging step in the right direction. As one of the first laws of this century to recognize that the destructiveness of the “gay” agenda warrants opposition by government, it would deserve support from Christian believers and other advocates of marriage-based culture around the world.

Saddleback Pastor Rick Warren is now on record as saying that Christian leaders have a moral responsibility to oppose Uganda’s proposed Anti-Homosexuality Act. Warren goes further, saying, “I oppose the criminalization of homosexuality. The freedom to make moral choices is endowed by God.” This sets Lively in direct opposition to the most respected Evangelical pastor in the nation, and it leaves Uganda with a very clear choice. They can either do the Christian thing and drop the Anti-Homosexuality Act, or they can remove some of the most outrageous provisions and still be aligned with one of the world’s most venomous anti-gay Holocaust revisionists. That’s quite a position to be in.

Click here to see BTB’s complete coverage of the past year’s anti-gay developments in Uganda.

Comments

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John
December 11th, 2009 | LINK

Lively says that he is opposed to the death penalty. I guess that just applies to the Ugandan government. He didn’t seem too opposed to the murder of a young man in Sacramento for no other reason than he was gay.

When the death penalty is meted out vigilante style by thugs from his Watchment on the Walls hate group, it isn’t quite so objectionable to Lively.

Brady
December 11th, 2009 | LINK

Does anyone have support for the rapes by King Mwanga? All I have found is that they were killed because of their religious beliefs. Not that that isn’t terrible, but I can’t find any support for Lively’s description of Martyr Days.

Jim Burroway
December 11th, 2009 | LINK

Brady, that is a very good question. When I did a quick search, I found the rape story on all the anti-gay web sites, but not on the very few web sites I looked at that were dedicated to saints and martyrs, but had no other axe to grind.

I’m swamped today, and perhaps BTB readers can help me out on this. How about it gang? Links in comments will be very helpful, and maybe we’ll have a post whose author is “the BTB Gang” exploring this story a bit more.

Trovore
December 11th, 2009 | LINK

Given that they were stupid enough to conceive of the ‘Kill Gays’ bill in the first place? I vote they’ll side with the Holocaust revisionist.

Timothy Kincaid
December 11th, 2009 | LINK

Unfortunately, when given “love thy neighbor” and “hate thy neighbor” as two equally “Christian” options, far too often hate wins out.

Brady
December 11th, 2009 | LINK

Jim- thanks for the response. Just looked around more and found just what you found–references on anti-gay websites but nothing on neutral sites.

Timothy Kincaid
December 11th, 2009 | LINK

From Time Magazine 7/17/64

The Uganda martyrs are the largest group of lay saints ever canonized by the Catholic Church at one time and the first Bantu Africans publicly honored by the church.†About half of the martyrs —some known only by their first names —were youthful pages in the court of Buganda’s pagan King Mwanga, and were speared to death after they refused his homosexual advances. The other saints include Bugandan nobles, a potter and a shipbuilder, who were burned or beheaded when they refused to revert from Christianity to spirit-worship. In all, about 200 Catholic and Protestant converts died for Christianity during Mwanga’s persecution; the missionary order of White Fathers, who converted the Ugandans to Catholicism, promoted the cause of only those whose martyrdom was unquestionably due to religion.

From the Dictionary of African Christian Biography:

After the fire in the royal palace on February 22, 1886, Mwanga moved the court temporarily to his hunting lodge at Munyonyo on the shore of Lake Victoria. Here Lwanga continued to protect the pages from the King’s homosexual advances and to prepare them for possible martyrdom. By this time, Mwanga had obtained the consent of his chiefs for a massacre of the Christians. Meanwhile, Lwanga himself baptized five of the most promising catechumens. On May 26, watched by Lourdel, the pages entered the royal courtyard to receive judgement. Once again, they were called upon to confess their faith. This they did, declaring that they were ready to die rather than to deny it. Mwanga ordered them all, sixteen Catholics and ten Anglicans, to be burnt alive at Namugongo.

From the Uganda Martyr’s Shrine website

The first martyr to die was King’s major domo and leader of all Christians, Joseph Mukasa Balikuddembe, on 15th November 1885. He was killed because he had pleaded to King Mwanga to abandon the vice of homosexuality and not to kill Bishop Hannington, an Anglican missionary who had entered Buganda from Busoga (the backdoor of Buganda kingdom).

From that time he became angry with all Christians as they all refused to give in to his sinful demands and were persuading all other pages to do the same. On 25th May, 1886, King Mwanga ordered for a number of Christians to be brought before him and he passed on them the death penalty. 20 of the 22 martyrs were killed between 26th May 1886 and 3rd June 1886.

It would appear that Mwanga’s sexual predation was noted and considered a factor in the decision to kill the martyrs. This has become a strong part of the story, though it appears that the actual cause of the martyrdom was their faith.

Additionally, it was not all 22 who were pages.

Yet again, Scott Lively’s version of events is factually inaccurate. But at least he’s consistent that way.

fannie
December 11th, 2009 | LINK

Actually, since Lively claims not to support the Uganda bill as it is currently written, if Uganda passes this bill they won’t even the support of a virulently anti-gay Holocaust revisionist. That, truly, would be quite a position to be in.

William
December 11th, 2009 | LINK

Just an extra bit of information. In 2003 the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition) issued its statement “Considerations regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions between Homosexual Persons” in 2003, in which it condemned ANY legal recognition of gay relationships, no matter by what term such relationships were designated, as “contrary to the common good”, and urged all politicians who professed the Roman Catholic faith to oppose any proposals in their own countries to introduce such legal recognition and to campaign for an end to such legal recognition in countries where it was already in force.

Above the signature of Cardinal Ratzinger (then Prefect of the CDF and now Pope Benedict) appear these words:

“Rome, from the Offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, June 3, 2003, Memorial of Saint Charles Lwanga and his Companions, Martyrs.”

Timothy Kincaid
December 11th, 2009 | LINK

It’s interesting that the “young men” who Lively claims were sodomized were older than the king.

Mwanga II was 17 or 18 in June 1886. The martys ranged in age between 18 and 25.

This does not make Mwanga’s sexual predation any less heinous, but it does seem to contradict some anti-gay websites that seek to use this story to try and equate homosexuality to pedophilia and sexual predation on children.

Priya Lynn
December 11th, 2009 | LINK

What outrages me about this is the totally unjustified usage of an incident over 100 years ago to justify attacks on those who had nothing to do with it. So typical of a liar like Lively to bring this up as though it were justification for the current abuse of gays.

----
December 11th, 2009 | LINK

Maybe Mwanga was onto something by fearing Christianity: it would corrupt the minds of its people, and it did. Japan successfully banned it for hundreds of years and it’s doing pretty fine today.

wackadoodle
December 11th, 2009 | LINK

This sets Lively in direct opposition to the most respected Evangelical pastor in the nation, and it leaves Uganda with a very clear choice.

It leaves him opposed to Warren’s BS political maneuvering, not Warren’s actual beliefs. They both want gay people dead. Thats why these ‘denouncements’ only come after media pressure and are halfassed tripe that does nothing to address the real basis for this bill:

The LIES pushed by warren and his ilk about homosexuality being a choice, not a ‘civil right’, them being ravenous perverts, them being anti-christian…
He refuses to address any of that, just afew sentences on it being wrong to imprison them, dwarfed by him talking about himself or the church. Nothing about the REASONS Ugandans think its right to imprison them.

Timothy Kincaid
December 11th, 2009 | LINK

Scott Lively:

During the past decade or so, Uganda has been one of the few countries of the world that has firmly resisted the enormous power and relentless pressure of the international “gay” lobby, while other developing nations such as South Africa and Brazil have been systematically homosexualized. This is one of the reasons that Uganda’s AIDS rate went from the highest to the lowest in Africa during this same time period.

Washington Post article about Brazil

A working partnership with prostitutes, health officials here say, is a key reason that the country’s AIDS prevention and treatment programs are considered by the United Nations to be the most successful in the developing world. There are at least 600,000 people infected with HIV in Brazil — but that is only half the number predicted by the World Bank a decade ago.

“When we started in the 1980s, our projected AIDS rates were exactly the same as Africa’s, but now it’s a completely different story,” said Mariangela Simao, deputy director of Brazil’s national HIV-AIDS program in Brasilia. “I’m convinced it’s a result of the way the government has responded. We provide information and resources, and don’t enter into moral or religious issues.”

William
December 11th, 2009 | LINK

There goes Scott Lively again with that word “homosexualized”. In fact he describes the nations of the West generally as being “homosexualized”. What the hell is it supposed to mean? That all or most of the people of those nations are now homosexual? I have to say that I haven’t noticed it. Has anyone else – apart from Scott Lively, that is?

Michael Bussee
December 11th, 2009 | LINK

For what it’s worth, Alan Chambers just posted this on the Facebook group: “Hey Michael, thanks for asking me to weigh in on the “forced therapy” issue. I am NOT for forced therapy for gay and lesbian people. While no one chooses their attractions I do believe that it is everyone’s God given right to choose what you do with those attractions (consenting adults). I believe that those who are conflicted by their faith and feelings have the right to choose therapy and those who aren’t conflicted shouldn’t be forced into anything. Hope that clears up the question of where I stand on this.”

Edwin
December 11th, 2009 | LINK

It’s to bad that so many people that are supposed to be christians preach nothing but HATE. They are all living their lives like an ostrich with their haeds in the sand and hope things will change to what they want.
How they think that they are going to heaven I don’t understand. They need to quit judging people, that is what GOD does and at the rate they are going satan is going to have a lot of people to keep the fire’s going.
So many idiots running around loose.
They think we should believe what they say is the truth.
Good
As
You
!

Lynn David
December 12th, 2009 | LINK

Scott Lively also signed the Manhattan Declaration. See #17 on the additional signers page, at:
http://www.manhattandeclaration.org/sign/addtional-signers

Andrea Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition signed just before him. I wonder how the original signers feel now that they are brothers with an SPLC hate organizaation.

Ephilei
December 12th, 2009 | LINK

At this point, I don’t care that Lively is probably lying and I don’t care what homophobia is raging in his heart. I just want this bill to die. Thus, this post is beautiful news.

Ben in Oakland
December 12th, 2009 | LINK

Well, it’s nice to know that according to this story, homsoexuality was not a western introduction to those nice virignal hetero africans hwo were just minding their own business when they got colonized.

Truth Wins Out - Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy [sic] in Media Doubles Down on Support for Ugandan Anti-Gay Genocide Bill
February 12th, 2010 | LINK

[...] when they keep the general parameters of the story correctly intact, they lie.  Here are the actual details of the Martyr’s Day history.  The young men were killed for their Catholic faith.  The [...]

Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy [sic] in Media Doubles Down on Support for Ugandan Anti-Gay Genocide Bill « Queer Hatred
February 16th, 2010 | LINK

[...] when they keep the general parameters of the story correctly intact, they lie.  Here are the actual details of the Martyr’s Day history.  The young men were killed for their Christian faith.  The [...]

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