June 23rd, 2010
TheCall’s Lou Engle has been trying to have it both ways in addressing questions of whether he supports Uganda’s draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill. These questions were especially pertinent when it was announced that Engle would be putting on one of his TheCall rallies in Kampala last May. Engle issued a statement denying that he was going there to promote the bill.
We then learned through multiple sources that he had, in fact, promoted the bill at the rally. He was surrounded on stage with key supporters of the bill: Pastor Julius Oyet; the bill’s sponsor, MB David Bahati; and Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo. Engle later issued another statement saying he regretted promoting the bill at the rally, but in contradiction to eyewitness accounts, Engle protested that the bill’s promotion took place after he left.
Current TV’s Vanguard reporter Mariana van Zeller’s outstanding documentary, “Missionaries of Hate,” explored the relationship between American Evangelicals and the rising anti-gay campaigns that have been taking place in Uganda over the past year. Engle’s TheCall Uganda appeared briefly in that documentary. Today, Mariana posted an extended clip of what Engle said at that rally.
And I went through a personal wrestling in my own heart whether we should come here and join you. We know that Uganda has been under tremendous pressure in the church. We felt that same pressure. But I felt like the call was to come and join with the church in Uganda to encourage you, that in the nation you are showing courage to take a stand for righteousness in the earth. [Applause]
Jesus is a merciful savior today for everyone trapped in sin. But he is also the architect of society and the great governor of the universe. Establish marriage between a man and a woman from the beginning so that society would be preserved and read right and it would be for the well-being of the children.
And so we’ve come here to join you to pray that your government would have wisdom to uphold righteousness in this land. We are restraining, trying to restrain an agenda that’s going to hurt the nation and hurt families. Right now that homosexual agenda is sweeping into our education system, and parents are losing their rights over the education of their children. I believe there’s only one hope. Help us God! Help us! But I believe Uganda has suddenly become ground zero, not because they asked for it, but God brought you to make a statement and a stand for righteousness.
Keep in mind, Engle said this right after Oyet took the stage to call for the bill’s passage, and Engle was immediately followed by Buturo, who also called on the Parliament to pass the bill. It’s no surprise that Oyet and Bahati left the rally ecstatic in the belief that they had Engle’s full support. I don’t see how anybody watching could have walked away from the rally with any other conclusion. Engle fully supported the bill, and that his support was so strong that he he felt that “the call was to come and join with the church in Uganda to encourage you.”
And now we have Engle’s more recent statement saying he supports criminalization. The only thing he criticize now is the death penalty. But even there, he believes that the death penalty is biblically sound. That’s not exactly a rousing denunciation. Not nearly as rousing as the full-bore, no-exceptions support he gave to the people of Uganda.
Uganda’s latest American kill-the-gays bill supporter is now in St. Louis, where he has been speaking nightly at the Gateway House of Prayer on S. Lindbergh Blvd. in the western St. Louis suburb of Rock Hill. He will be speaking every night through July 12.
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Regan DuCasse
June 23rd, 2010
This is Africa. Where a majority of countries recycle the poverty, lack of autonomy for females and illiteracy for the same, drives the pandemic that HIV/AIDS has become.
Heterosexuals are not immune to HIV/AIDS and females in particular are subject to the vagaries of the male dominance and ignorance, in which such punishment or fear of reprisals are NOT in effect.
That there are girls as young as 8-9 years old, married to grown men by force shows that this stubborn conceit that homosexuals endanger children is bullshit on a cracker.
These girls end up dying or deformed from premature child bearing, and with diseases as well.
This intellectual disconnect that focuses on gay men as a societal problem, and not the exceptional ignorance regarding females, gender, sexual orientation and medical access and education on STD’s is an abomination unto itself.
The missionary zeal that maintains this crap is as well. And Americans shouldn’t be in the midst of it, making it worse.
Once again, it’s females and gay people who will suffer the consequences of this arrogance.
Just another aspect of what I keep saying that females and homosexuals are the most repressed and violated human beings in the world.
And those who entitle themselves as the world’s ‘moral warriors’ don’t even question that that could be the result of the spiritual and moral failures of men, and not directives from God.
Priya Lynn
June 23rd, 2010
Regan said “This intellectual disconnect that focuses on gay men as a societal problem, and not the exceptional ignorance regarding females, gender, sexual orientation and medical access and education on STD’s is an abomination unto itself.”.
Excellent point Regan – I never thought of that. What incredible hypocrisy.
AJD
June 23rd, 2010
Of all the crazy evangelicals, Lou Engle competes with Scott Lively in my mind for the title of creepiest of them all.
His bigotry, histrionic preaching style and the extreme emotions he elicits from the crowd combine to form one of the closest things you can find to a Nuremberg rally.
I’ve long been of the opinion that right-wing evangelicalism is the modern U.S. equivalent to European fascism in the 1930s, and I think Lou Engle substantiates that opinion well.
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