Box Turtle Bulletin

US Tax Dollars Funding African Anti-Gay Extremists

Last January, BTB’s Timothy Kincaid highlighted the fact that some of Africa’s most ardent anti-gay extremists have received funding from the U.S. government to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa. Among those receiving funds from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is Uganda’s Martin Ssempa, who lead a public anti-gay vigilante campaign through the streets of Kampala demanding that the government “arrest all homos.”

Last week, Richard J. Rosendall, writing for the Bay Windows observed where some of the PEPFAR funding goes:

Charles Francis, a disillusioned former Bush appointee to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, seeks a course correction from the new president and Congress. He wrote to me last week about the need to reverse the Bush legacy that includes alliances with violent homophobes like Ugandan pastor Martin Ssempa and born-again Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza. The latter’s ruling party organized a March 6 demonstration in Bujumbura in which thousands of people demanded the criminalization of homosexuality.

“Today,” Francis writes, “we see this wave growing dangerously across the continent, from Senegal, where AIDS activists are now imprisoned, to Nigeria, where lawmakers want to jail gay people merely for living together, to Uganda, where three Americans recently held a public seminar on the ‘Homosexual Agenda.’ It is time to put a ‘hold’ on PEPFAR until Congress can demand the transparency and the necessary reform for this program.”

Our tax dollars are lining the pockets of those who don’t just promote prejudice and hatred, but who even would have us dead, exiled, or imprisoned for life. PEPFAR needs to be scrapped or exhaustively overhauled to include accountability and transparency, and which demands accountability and transparency on the part of its recipients. Ssempa must not receive one more cent of my tax money. Or yours.

[Hat tip: Michael Airhart]

Meghan McCain Supports Same-Sex Marriage

There were a lot of voices which remained silent in 2008 concerning same-sex marriage, voices we could have used. But I suppose it would be too much to expect John McCain’s daughter to say something like this during the height of the presidential campaign. But still…

If she had said this during the campaign, I would have called her statement courageous. But right now, I’m not so sure that description fits when there’s nothing on the line to lose. But what this does mean that when the issue comes back up (and I’m sure it will), hers will be one more of the many voices joining our side while the opposition continues to shrink. This is what the available polling tells us. This is also the lesson we take when we compare the results of Prop 8 to the results of Prop 22 in 2000. In those nine years the yes vote shrank from 61% to 52%. And it will continue to shrink.

Vermont Senate Votes For Marriage

WCAX-TV reports:

The Vermont Senate has given overwhelming approval to same-sex marriage.

The bill passed just before 6 p.m. Monday on a vote of 26 to 4.

And now on to the House.

Quip of the Day

In a Letter to the Editor printed in the Salt Lake Tribune, Christian England concluded as follows:

You may think we’re out to convert your children and run the world, but we’re not the ones with missionaries.

Schmierer’s & Lively’s Uganda Talks Continue to Reverberate

We mentioned earlier that there would be a follow-up meeting for the anti-gay conference held by three American activists, including Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively and Exodus board member Don Schmierer. A follow-up meeting was called for March 15. The anonymous blogger Gay Uganda has posted an eyewitness account of that meeting.

Stephen Langa, of the Kampala-based Family Life Network was the principal speaker at the follow-up meeting. For the first part of his talk, he channeled the false pseudoscience of Exodus Board member Don Schmierer and Richard Cohen, a so-called “coach” who has been banned for life by the American Counseling Association. Gay Uganda’s anonymous eyewitness reported:

In his presentation Stephan Langa said homosexuality is not about sex, it is about the search for a fatherly or motherly figure. Children with bad parenting end up becoming homosexuals as they search for mother’s or father’s love.

He also mentioned another cause of homosexuality as child abuse; he said that the homosexuals he has counseled have been abused as children. He sited broken families as another cause of homosexuality.

He mentioned domineering mothers and abusive fathers as another cause of homosexuality, as well as negligent father who are emotionally off with children. Exposure to pornography as another cause of homosexuality.

He said some people are lured into homosexuality by money and other social favors

Rebellion, he said some children become homosexuals because they want to be rebellious, noting that homosexuality is some kind of rebellion.

He also said same sex attraction is a disorder and quoted: Richard Cohen MA. He emphasized the point that all homosexuals can change since all disorders can be changed. Homosexuality is not genetical, it is a learned behavior and what is learned can be unlearned. (Richard Cohen MA.)

These discredited theories, of course, run counter to a significant body of science which has investigated various aspects of the origins of homosexuality. But then, as Dr. Warren Throckmorton, who defends the right of practitioners to offer sexual identity therapy, points out, “This coalition is not dedicated to ministry but political engagement.”

And an important part of the political movement’s tactics has been to emphasize heavily the allegations that children are recruited into the “homosexual lifestyle” through sexual abuse. These allegations were on prominent display at the follow-up meeting. In the clearest use of the allegation, Langa repeated Lively’s fanciful history of the gay rights movement:

He talked about Henry Garber, who was a German American soldier in 1924, that Henry Garber sodomized Champ Simmons and Champ Simmons Sodomized Harry Hay. Then Harry Hay started the whole gay movement that gays follow to date. Source: The PINK SWASTIKA – Dr. Scott Lively.

Scott Lively

One might be forgiven if they thought that Langa had grossly overly simplified Lively’s history. But on page 150 of The Pink Swastika, Lively provides almost exactly this perverse “genealogy” in just two short sentences: “This ‘peculiar fact’ was that the man who recruited (Harry) Hay into homosexuality (at age seventeen), Champ Simmons, was himself seduced by a former member of the SHR. In a perverse sort of way, then, it seems appropriate that Hay would become known as ‘The Father of the Modern Gay Movement’.” (The SHR, or The Society of Human Rights, was founded in Chicago by Henry Gerber.)

Langa’s presentation of “the gay agenda” followed on these same lines, with repeated emphasis on the false link between homosexuality and child sexual abuse. The so-called agenda began with, “They focus on who they are and what they want. They are after your children.” And it ended with, “They don’t care about you adults they want your sons and your daughters.” The repeated warning of being “after your children,” is especially troubling given that it was an incessant refrain in past Ugandan anti-gay vigilante campaigns. Reactions from the audience, therefore were predictable:

We should investigate homosexuality in Uganda

…Recruit people to become activities against homosexuality, in this case people with in the audience volunteered to be members….Find out what or who is making homosexuality prominent in Uganda.

There are many dangers and anti – social behaviors in schools which are not talked about. This was mentioned while refereeing to head teachers / teachers who are homosexuals. An emphasis that homosexual teachers should be stopped from teaching.

Participants emphasized life career developments and moral uprightness in schools The need for a strategic plan to train, teachers to identify children practicing homosexuality. The laws on homosexuality are weak, hence the need to strengthen these laws.

Parents were encouraged to participant in law making decisions in Uganda so that to strengthen the laws on homosexuality

To establish a unit at Police to deal with homosexuality

At one point in the meeting, there was this disturbing development:

…During the reactions a prominent pastor also said that they have been talking with an ex gay activist who has given them a five year plan for the gay agenda in Uganda. And they have submitted this plan to the ministry concerned, that they await reactions.

Exodus Board member Don Schmierer, a speaker at the anti-gay conference in Uganda

Is Exodus Board member Don Schmierer the “ex gay activist” with a five year plan? Exodus has been recklessly silent over their board member’s involvement in the conference alongside a well-known holocaust revisionist and two-time entrant on the SPLC’s hate groups list. And Exodus’ silence continues to facilitate the chain of events that their board member has set into motion, events which may well lead to increased dangers for LGBT citizens of Uganda. Already, in this account the tensions appear to be close to the boiling point:

A participant asked a liberal question on issues of sexuality: You have associated homosexuality with all evils, defiles, child molesters etc don’t you think that also heterosexuals defile or molest our children why don’t you address this issue as well. He was answered: We are here to talk about homosexuality, do not divert us. After this question he was intimated, almost thrown out of the meeting.

The meeting ended with calls to “tighten the law on homosexuality.” One participant told the audience that parliament was drafting a new law that “will be tough on homosexuals.” Conviction of homosexual acts in Uganda already carry the threat of a life sentence. Another meeting was called for yesterday, March 22.

Don Schmierer and Scott Lively have set in motion a chain of events which have not yet played themselves out. And Exodus remains irresponsibly silent as these events continue to unfold. We will continue to watch events in Uganda very closely, and we will hold Exodus accountable for their role in lending their name to legitimize these developments.

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

Asylum Judge: Gay Man “Was Never Physically Harmed” By Rape

How many women’s groups would remain silent over a case like this?

Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, has asked the Obama administration to grant asylum to a gay man who married an American citizen in Massachusetts and was later forced to return to Brazil.

The man, Genesio Oliveira, has been separated from his husband, Tim Coco, since August 2007, when he left the country after his request for asylum and an appeal were denied.

Mr. Oliveira asked for asylum in 2002, saying he was raped and attacked by a physician as a teenager in Brazil and feared persecution because of his sexuality. The Associated Press does not typically name rape victims, but Mr. Oliveira has spoken openly about his case.

In a letter sent Thursday to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., Mr. Kerry said that Immigration Judge Francis L. Cramer had found Mr. Oliveira’s testimony to be credible and his fear of living in Brazil genuine. However, the judge denied the asylum claim, saying he “was never physically harmed” by the rape, the letter said. Mr. Kerry called the ruling “outrageous.”

Genesio now lives in a small apartment in Brazil, just blocks away from the man who raped him. He mostly stays in the apartment, afraid to go out.

Sen. Kerry has co-sponsored the Uniting American Families Act, which would allow gays and lesbians from other countries to become permanent residents in the U.S. based on their permanent relationship status with an American citizen.

Portia De Rossi Apologizes to Everyone Harmed By Her Marriage

It’s about time somebody spoke up:

Vermont Senate Judiciary Approves Civil Marriage

From the A/P:

A state Senate committee unanimously approved a gay marriage bill on Friday, moving Vermont one step closer to allowing same-sex couples to legally wed.

“It provides … gay and lesbian couples the same rights that I have as a married heterosexual,” said Sen. John Campbell, vice chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and chief sponsor of the bill.

The measure would replace Vermont’s first-in-the-nation civil unions law with one that allows marriage of same-sex partners beginning Sept. 1.

For some reason, Vermont seems to be the only state who’s website does not give one immediate access to the member of various committees so I can’t report on to what extent this was a bi-partisan decision. However, we know that at least one Republican voted yes.

Friday’s committee vote followed the panel’s rejection of an amendment proposed by Sen. Kevin Mullin, R-Rutland, that would have put the gay marriage question to a statewide referendum next March. After the amendment was defeated, Mullin joined his colleagues in voting 5-0 for the bill.

Should there be sufficient bi-partisan support, Republican Governor Jim Douglas may feel it best to sign the bill.

Jamaica’s Anti-Gay Laws Lead to Increased HIV

Jamaica, perhaps the most homophobic spot in the Americas, still retains anti-“buggery” laws. And, unlike some countries who have laws that are more for message than for punishment, Jamaican society enforces these prescriptions by means of mob violence and murder.

Needless to say, fear of exposure is not conducive to steady, monogamous, mutually-supportive relationships. Instead, those societies that threaten the lives and freedoms of gay persons lead to hidden individuals furtively seeking sexual release and then fleeing into the shadows. Many seek to hide behind a public heterosexual front and live a double life.

This is healthy for neither the individuals nor the society. And Jamaica is a prime illustration. According to a 2008 study by the Caribbean HIV & AIDS Alliance (CHAA) (Jamaica Gleaner):

31.8 per cent of gay men in Jamaica are living with HIV. Another 8.5 per cent were found with chlamidia, 2.5 per cent had gonorrhoea and 5.5 per cent had syphilis.

These are shocking rates of infection. And the reason for them does not lie solely in the secret, furtive, shameful nature of the brief liasons. Rather, they are compounded by a society in which seeking medical care in an honest fashion can gat you killed. As a UNICEF worker reported in 2007,

Beaten, stoned, thrown out and even killed are the prices some people face just for being HIV positive in Jamaica.

CHAA lays the blame for the shocking rates of HIV and other infectious disease at the feet of homophobia and mistreatment. Not only are MSM frightened to seek medical care, they are fearful of HIV/AIDS groups that seek to help them. This leaves gay men, in particular, at great risk for transmission of a potentially life threatening disease (MedicalNewsToday).

Devon Cammock, the targeted intervention coordinator at the Jamaica AIDS Support for Life, said that MSM tend to hide their sexuality even from other members of the MSM community, which makes it difficult to conduct programs that are needed in the community.

Should there be among you some so callous as to think that this is just a “gay disease” and that they are just getting what they deserve (an attitude that is not limited to places like Jamaica), you may wish to consider that homophobic laws and culture are a danger to everyone.

In Jamaica, only those who are most brave (or most suicidal) dare identify as gay. So to track health issues they use the term “men who have sex with men (MSM)”. And CHAA has found that MSM are indeed living a double life – and a dangerous one :

Some 27.7 per cent [of MSM] reported having two or more sexual partners in the last four weeks; 25.9 per cent had a new partner in the past four weeks; 28.8 per cent had a female partner in the past four weeks; 15.9 per cent live with a female partner; and 33.8 per cent had two or more female partners in the past 12 months.

But Jamaica’s culture of violence and hatred is not softened by unknowing victims. Rather, their homophobia is so strong it spreads to non-gay persons who have become HIV infected. Take the story of 20 year old Katie.

In the year and a half she has known she’s infected, Katie has struggled through a lot. When she discovered her status, the boyfriend she was living with threw her out along with her daughter, who is currently four and whose father tragically died the same year she was born.

After being thrown out by a boyfriend she went to live with her father, where the situation got worse. There, her step-mum spread rumours that she had AIDS and would point her out on the streets, a very dangerous act considering the destructive discrimination she could face.

Although it’s still a mystery how she got infected, it’s one Katie is in no hurry to solve, “it really doesn’t matter to me anymore because I have my daughter and it would really hurt me and her if I started searching for who I got infected by”.

Katie gets little sympathy in Jamaica. Those persons who are gay and invested with HIV get none.

Unless the Jamaican leaders – be they civil, religious, cultural, or community – become willing to let go of their own fear and hatred and say, “enough is enough”, this nation will continue to wallow in crime and disease, clinging only to its animus and self-righteousness, until the freedom-loving nations of the world want nothing to do with her.

Irony Alert

Congressman Dan Lungren (R-CA) is outraged over Congress passing a special 90% tax for those who at A.I.G who received large bonuses.  Rep. Lungren Says that not only is the special tax unconstitutional, but it’s inherrently unfair because “you can’t punish a group because you don’t like them.”

Let me tell you if we overturn the Constitution to show our outrage, no single American is safe. Because in the future what we will do is say, we have a precedent that when we have an unpopular group, when we have a group that deserves some punishment, we won’t go through the real laws.

Lungren voted for Prop 8.

[Hat tip: Rum, Romanism and Rebellion]

Californians Against Hate: Mormon-Established “Front Group” Handled Early Prop 8 Finances

Fred Karger of Californians Against Hate has been leading the legal battle to force the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) to reveal its full involvement in California’s Yes on 8 campaign as required by state law. Karger filed a supplemental complaint on Wednesday with California’s Fair Political Practices committee charging that the Mormon church failed to reveal its earlier involvement in Prop 8, particularly through a front organization they had set up called the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) in the summer of 2007. This front group is similar to one the LDS church set up in Hawaii ten years earlier.

Karger charges that while early donations by several prominent Catholic doners were reported as required by law (Including hotel owner Doug Manchester [125,000], Terry Caster and his family who own A-1 Self Storage [$283,000], car dealer [Robert Hoehn [$25,000] and the Knights of Columbus [$250,000]), none of the early Mormon contributors are listed. Karger asks:

Did they do polling as they did in Hawaii? Did the Church incur legal bills as they did in Hawaii? How about travel expenses, as in Hawaii? What about staff time, as they reported after the fact in California? These expenses should be easy to identify as a part of the current investigation.

The Mormon Church engages in extensive record keeping. All requests for funds are assigned an 11 digit Cost Center Number (i.e. 123-4567-899). Cost Center records should be readily available for 2007 and 2008, which would show all the money spent to create NOM. Additionally, the Mormon Church maintains records on its “Historical Material Management System” (HMMS).

Mormon Elders M. Russell Ballard, Quentin L. Cook and L. Whitney Clayton were all working on California’s Proposition 8 and their files and records should be able to substantiate these charges.
The Mormon Church should have disclosed all non monetary contributions made during the relevant reporting periods.

Documentation related to the LDS church’s activities have been uploaded to a new web site established by Fred Karger at Mormongate.com.

Karger filed his original complaint on November 13, 2008, charging that the LDS church had failed to report its monetary and non-monetary contributions to the passage of Proposition 8. The following day, the Mormon Church spokesman Scott Trotter responded through the LDS-owned newspaper, the Deseret News, that the allegations were “false” and that the complaint had “many errors and misstatements.” But on January 30, 2009, the Mormon church revealed that it was they who had lied about their financial involvement in the Prop 8 campaign.

CORRECTION: Video Determined To Be From Iraq, Victims Likely Weren’t Gay

So, that video that Gays Without Borders posted of gay Iranians being tossed from a rooftop appears to have been something very different.  It was of Iraqi troops being “disciplined” during the Saddam era. The video was part of footage first shown in a CNN report in 2003.

I’ve updated the original post with the full details, including a timeline of how the video ended up on Gays Without Borders. I apologize for the error.

Shhhh! If We Don’t Talk About Them, Maybe They’ll Go Away

Tenn. Rep. Stacy Campfield (R-Knoxville)

If a Tennessee state lawmaker has his way, teachers won’t be allowed to discuss homosexuality in any way, shape or form. For the second year in a row, Tennessee Rep. Stacey Campfield (R-Knoxville) filed his “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which would essentially ban teachers from talkng about gay people:

I think our teachers need to stick with reading, writing, and arithmetic,” Campfield said. “It confuses a lot of children that are already in a difficult part of life, and it’s a very complex issue.”

Students who are expected to understand chemistry, trigonometry and “The Lady Or The Tiger” can handle complex subjects. Chris Sanders, with the Tennessee Equality Project, points out the bill’s far-reaching infringement not just on free speech rights, but on education itself:

“The problem with this bill is it would have a chilling effect on even being able to discuss the bill itself, and both sides of the bill in an 8th grade class where you are learning to write essays,” Sanders said.

Wiser heads prevailed and the Education Committee decided to hold off voting on the bill for another year to give it time for “more study.”

Two Charged in Gay Jamaican’s Murder

The Jamaica Star is reporting a rare occurrence in that country: two men were charged in the murder of a gay man:

Two men charged with the murder of a man whose decomposing body was recently found in Havendale, St.Andrew, are accused of killing the man because it was believed that he was gay, the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate’s Court heard.

Charged with murder are Dwayne Gordon, 23, and Andy Williams.

The allegations are that Gordon was being interviewed by the police as a possible witness to the crime. His statement however turned into a confession. He reportedly told the police that on February 23, he and Williams stabbed Dane Harris several times.

There is one element in this case worth watching: the possible introduction of the “gay panic” defense. There also appears to be an element of possible wrongdoing on the part of the police:

The body of the deceased was found on February 26. Gordon told the court that Williams was just a contractor he had met through a relative. When asked if the statement he gave to the police was false, he told the court that the police told him to sign a document and then he saw them writing.

This appears to have been a particularly grisly murder. According to an earlier report, Dane Harris’ decomposing body was discovered with multiple stab wounds. Both hands had been severed from his body and were missing.

CORRECTION: Video Determined To Be From Iraq, Victims Likely Weren’t Gay (Was: Video of Iranian Gays Thrown From Roof)

This disturbing video comes to us via Gays Without Borders. It’s how one country deals with the “crime” of homosexuality. This video shows Iranian gay men being thrown off of a rooftop as their sentence for homosexuality.  According to Gays Without Borders, this video purported to show Iranian gay men being thrown off the roof of a building as punishment. They apparently found the video on the French-language Iran-Resist.org web site, posted on Feb 21, 2009. Iran-Resist.org, in turn, appears to have obtained that video from IranPressNews, which published a story containing that video on Feb 20, 2009.  Gays Without Borders posted the video on March 5.

However, thanks to Steven Milerton we’ve been able to confirm that the video appeared much earlier in a 2003 CNN report, which showed troops from Iraq’s Fedayeen Saddam throwing soldiers off the roof in order to “instill discipline.”

A few hours before Steven left his comment, I posed a question asking Gays Without Borders to provide information as to the video’s authenticity. That’s how I got the two links to IRanPressNews and Iran-Resist.org. I am now attempting to notify Gays Without Borders about what appears to be the actual source of the video. 

Gays Without Borders has posted the video twice, once at the link where we first noticed it, and again as an introduction to a reprinted opinion piece by UK LGBT advocate Peter Tatchell. (Tatchell’s original article does not include the video.)

Meanwhile, we have removed the misidentified video from BTB. We regret the error.

Update: Gays Without Borders has now taken down the video from their web site.