Box Turtle Bulletin

In Their Own Words: Ugandans Talk About LGBT People

This email just popped into my inbox:

Mr. Burroway and Mr. Kincaid – I have followed your coverage of the homosexuality issue in Uganda on Box Turtle Bulletin for some time. I traveled to Uganda this April to film a short documentary about this issue through a grant from the journalism school at Northwestern University. My interest was to profile the Ugandan activists and their role in this struggle. The film is now viewable online, and I thought you (and your readers) may be interested.

Alyssa Eisenstein has put together an amazing video. For the past year and a half, we have heard from so many prominent and powerful people from all over the world weigh in on the Uganda’s proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill. But it has been extremely difficult to hear directly from ordinary Ugandans, whether they are LGBT people or otherwise. This video, at only fifteen minutes, provides an incredible revelation to those of us who have been watching these events unfold from so far away.

This should be mandatory watching.

Breaking the Chains from Alyssa Eisenstein on Vimeo.

Ugandan MP Confirms “The Family’s” Connection to Anti-Homosexuality Bill

This confirms the reporting that Jeff Sharlet has recently done. Speaking to a reporter from Uganda’s The Independent, MP David Bahati, sponsor of the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill, confirmed the role of the secretive U.S.-based evangelical group known as The Fellowship or The Family:

In an interview with The Independent, MP David Bahati cited his membership in a Ugandan chapter of “The Fellowship” or “The Family”, a U.S.-based Christian political organization, as the key impetus behind the new bill. Every Thursday the members of the local division of The Fellowship, which include a close circle of Ugandan MPs and religious leaders (led by Ssempa), meet to discuss “how to use godly principles to influence public policy.” About a year and a half ago, Bahati reveals, it was decided in one such meeting that the legal framework as it stands was incapable of addressing the urgency of the problem of homosexuality in Uganda. Bahati was chosen and happily volunteered to be at the forefront of developing new legislation.

This matches what Sharlet wrote for the September issue of The Advocate:

When I asked Bahati if there was any connection between the Family in Uganda (where it’s called the Fellowship) and his antigay legislation, he seemed puzzled by the question. “I do not know what you mean, ‘connection,'” he said. “There is no ‘connection.’ They are the same thing. The bill is the Fellowship. It was our idea.”

…When [Family member Bob] Hunter told me his theory of advocacy — reaching out to “the little group around the president” instead of the dictator himself, “the nail on the wall” instead of the man in the presidential portrait, I thought he meant Bahati’s Parliament Fellowship group, which meets on Thursdays. No, Hunter said; “the Friday group is really the power group.” Bahati’s group includes some 60 legislators, and it’s responsible for much of the “morality” legislation that comes out of the Ugandan parliament, but to Hunter it’s secondary. The Friday group, just three or four influential people, “they are the ones we’d go to if we really needed something done.” The leader, he said, is an American named Tim Kreutter, the head of a network of youth homes, schools, and a leadership academy, one replicated in several other countries and designed to create a new generation of African leaders. Bahati, who calls Kreutter his mentor, is one of them.

Bahati also told Sharlet that many American evangelicals secretly support his draconian legislation even when they condemn it publicly. He repeated that assertion to The Independent’s reporter as well:

Even foreign governments like Canada, which have been very active in expressing criticism of the bill, secretly support it, claims Bahati: “Deep in their hearts, [Canadians] don’t support homosexuality.”

A man identified as a gay rights activist in Uganda, Major Rubaramira Ruranga, offers this interesting explanation of why homophobia has caught on so widely:

Major Ruranga argues that, in contrast to Western society, Ugandan society places intense value on communal attachment, even when this comes at the expense of individual expression. As a result, he says, “religion has become more of a culture than a faith.” Instead of promoting sincere belief, the religious establishment promotes outward conformity to standards adhered to by the larger group. In the case of Uganda’s Christian community, Ruranga suggests, the hatred of gays has become one of these unquestioned group standards.

But it was not always so. According to Ruranga, the anti-gay movement in Uganda only gained traction in the 1990s in large part as a reaction to a perceivable rise in gay pride, activism, and the unprecedented occurrence of public disclosures of homosexuality in the Ugandan media. The religious establishment decided this was dangerous and instigated a backlash.

It is not clear how much of a role the U.S. based Fellowship had in fomenting that backlash, but what is certain is that it is now fully supportive of it. According to Bahati, one American Pentecostal friend recently lamented to him that “I wish we [in the U.S.] had done what you are doing thirty years ago; we would be much better off.”

AFAN arrogantly dismisses concerns about CRCC

There is nothing like public criticism to encourage a response. And after Change.org and the Red Ribbon Army and a number of others began to increase a call for explanation, Aid For AIDS Nevada has finally given the weakest of responses to Dr. Throckmorton for why they have not severed ties with Canyon Ridge Christian Church.

We do not partner with Canyon Ridge. In fact, we are simply a recipient of their donations in support of our lifesaving, essential programming for individuals surviving HIV/AIDS…we are not able to cease a partnership that does not exist.

Which still does not answer my questions: “please let me know whether you will continue to allow CRCC to participate in your organization and to display their organization’s name” and just why have you not responded to expressed concerns. And, especially, why have you deleted comments on your Facebook page from now half a dozen or so different activists who simply want answers.

The Red Ribbon Army is wondering something even more basic: “why Aid for AIDS of Nevada is unwilling to condemn Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill.” You’d think that would be a no-brainer.

But maybe AFAN doesn’t really care what you think; they don’t really need to. Two-thirds of their funding is from governmental sources and only about 17% of their annual budget comes from the AIDS Walk – and the majority of that is from corporate sponsors.

NY Times: 17 states support marriage equality

The New York Times released a graph in which they claim that 17 states have support for marriage equality at 50% or higher. I think that’s a pipe dream; the polls I’ve seen simply don’t support it.

But, nonetheless, there is value to be found in looking at the progress made in the past decade and a half. And even if their numbers are off by 5 to 10 percent, there are still a sizable number of states that either support equality or soon will.

Ottawa Police disclosed that gay man transmitted “infectious disease”

Gay groups in Ottawa are furious with the police for releasing information about a gay man’s sexual health, so furious in fact that they are refusing funds from a police fundraiser. (Citizen)

Several groups in Ottawa’s gay community will refuse funds to be raised by police at a pancake breakfast Monday, in protest over how officers publicly identified an HIV-positive man.

In an unusual move that infuriated the gay community, police publicly released a photo of Steven Paul Boone, 29, charged in May with aggravated sexual assault. Police say he failed to disclose his HIV status to another Ottawa man who contracted the disease after the two had unprotected sex several times.

The story began in May when Boone was arrested. (CBC)

Steven Paul Boone, 29, remained in custody Friday after being charged with nine counts of aggravated sexual assault, said an Ottawa police news release.

The charges were laid after another man alleged in April that he contracted an infectious disease after sexual contact with Boone in late January and early February. Police said they could not disclose the nature of the disease, including whether it was HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Although the police did not specifically state that the infectious disease was HIV, advocates felt that releasing the man’s photo was inappropriate.

By releasing the photo, [Brent Bauer, of the Ottawa Gay Men’s Wellness Initiative] said, police invaded Boone’s privacy, and spread fear among gays, who might now hesitate to get tested for AIDS.

Okay, to see if I have Bauer’s logic correct, he thinks that because a man who failed to disclose his HIV-positive to sexual partners was exposed by the police, therefore people will not want to get tested.

Oddly enough, that theory was put to the practical test. And failed spectacularly. What Bauer is not acknowledging is that between the photo being released and the pancake breakfast something else happened: five additional victims came forward. (Citizen)

A 29-year-old man accused of failing to disclose his HIV-positive to sexual partners has had his charges upgraded to include attempted murder.

The four counts of attempted murder were laid against Steven Paul Boone in relation to four of his alleged victims. Boone has also been charged with four counts of administering a noxious substance — HIV — to the four men.

Here we have a guy with at least six victims, four of which seroconverted. And Boone did not disclose his status to any of them even though, as it turns out, he had known of his HIV status for at least a year. And it is at least a reasonable assumption that three of them would not have known to get tested if the police had not released this guy’s picture.

Studies regularly confirm that – because most people are not despicable vermin like Boone – the biggest contributor to the continued spread of HIV is ignorance of one’s status. Not only are most HIV+ people responsible, but medications can reduce viral loads to the point where it might not be possible to pass on the virus.

But if these men had not seen Boone’s picture, they may not have gotten tested before endangering others.

I can appreciate that the community in Ottawa is offended in that they believe the police are not considering their complaint about the privacy rights of those who are HIV positive. And I appreciate the value of clear guidelines that protect the privacy of the innocent. But I find the defense of Boone to be difficult to fathom.

I have long been an advocate for those impacted by HIV/AIDS. I was privy to the early debates over confidential v. anonymous testing and I am still not convinced that names-based reporting is the most effective policy (or at least not as it is currently administered).

But I believe we should be doing everything in our power to stop the continued spread of HIV within our community. That should drive our policies and our sympathies and if that means that we put the interests of the uninfected – even the irresponsible uninfected – ahead of those who are deliberately endangering others, I have no problem with that.

I don’t wish to threaten the privacy of the vast majority of responsible HIV positive people who would never dream of doing anything that would pass on this virus. But people like Boone are a danger and a threat to the members of our community and we are fools if we put their interests before our own.

Cancer medication may be effective against HIV

Angina medicine made Pfizer a fortune when it was discovered to cause erections and Merck was delighted when they discovered that their prostate drug could regrow hair. So it would not surprise me if a cure for HIV were to be found to exist already posing with as having an entirely different purpose altogether.

And early testing suggests that possibly two cancer drugs may well be such a find. Louis Mansky, Ph.D., and Christine Clouser, Ph.D., of the Institute for Molecular Virology and School of Dentistry, along with medicinal chemist Steven Patterson, Ph.D., from the Center for Drug Design, decided to think outside the box. Instead of fighting the mutation of the HIV virus in the body, they decided to do the opposite. (Science Daily)

The two drugs, decitabine and gemcitabine — both FDA approved and currently used in pre-cancer and cancer therapy — were found to eliminate HIV infection in the mouse model by causing the virus to mutate itself to death — an outcome researchers dubbed “lethal mutagenesis.”

This is a landmark finding in HIV research because it is the first time this novel approach has been used to attack the deadly virus without causing toxic side effects.

Let’s hope for continued success.

Aid for AIDS Nevada ignores concerns about linkage to Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” Bill

As we have previously discussed, Canyon Ridge Christian Church is a Las Vegas megachurch which has been providing financial support for Uganda’s “kill-the-gays bill” cheerleading pastor Martin Ssempa. And previous efforts to encourage the church to either disavow Ssempa or at least oppose the incarceration of gay people in Uganda have come to no avail.

Neither protests nor the public disassociation by the Southern Nevada Health District has dissuaded CRCC from financial and moral support for Ssempa. But it did lead the pastor, Kevin Odor, to obfuscate the nature of the bill in a special presentation to his church as well as to dismiss concerns by self-righteously reminding his flock of thousands that they care about people with AIDS, as evidenced by their participation in the local AIDS Walk.

And, indeed, it seems that 74 church members signed up and perhaps even put on CRCC t-shirts and walked in the AIDS Walk sponsored by Aid for AIDS Nevada. However, considering that only 12 actually raised a cent and that the total which went to AFAN was $1,385, it is rather difficult for me to believe that their primary motivation was the care and concern for people living with HIV/AIDS. Rather, it seems as though CRCC has found a very inexpensive way in which to appear to care about their community without actually having to exert much effort.

I commend those who raise money for HIV/AIDS issues. But I don’t have much use for those who use HIV/AIDS infected individuals as a platform to advance their own personal image. And it was with this in mind that I wrote the following letter to Aid for AIDS Nevada.

I have recently become aware that Canyon Ridge Christian Church sponsors a team during your AIDSwalk. I further understand that CRCC displays their church name and logo on the shirts worn by their team members.

I wish to caution you that this may be extremely offensive to other participants who either are gay or who believe that gay people should not be jailed and executed.

Canyon Ridge Christian Church is one of the most prominent sponsors of Ugandan minister Martin Ssempa. And Ssempa is the primary champion of a bill before the Ugandan legislature that would:

* make it illegal for gay people to congregate

* institute a lifetime sentence for engaging in “homosexual acts”, which include “crimes” so slight as holding hands

* institute a death sentence for certain gay people, including:
* * when one partner is HIV positive, regardless of consent or protection
* * “repeat offenders”, which would include any same-sex couples
* * when one partner is a minor, regardless of the age of the other partner

* make it a crime for family members not to turn over gay people to the police

For the full text, please see http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2009/10/15/15609
For a comprehensive understanding of the events leading to and contributing to this bill, please see http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/slouching-toward-kampala

Canyon Ridge has been made aware of the law. They consulted with Ssempa and were told that it only applied to pedophiles and those who intentionally spread HIV.

Ssempa has two messages, one for Uganda and one for their American sponsors. CRCC was provided with evidence of the language of the bill and that Ssempa was targeting gay people, not molesters. This information is readily available on the internet.

CRCC has refused to:

* Break ties with Ssempa
* Read the bill
* Condemn the bill
* Oppose the criminalization of homosexuality
* Oppose the incarceration of gay people

Instead they gave a lecture to their church (which was completely false), justifying their support for Ssempa and the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009 (which is still before the legislature).

I very much care about whether gay people in Uganda are executed for being gay. I am not alone.

Actually, many conservative evangelical Christians are concerned about this issue and several have renounced the bill and Ssempa’s involvement including Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church and author of A Purpose Driven Life, and Joyce Meyer, author and international televangelist.

Of course, the condemnation is not restricted to conservative evangelicals. A number of mainline churches (the Episcopal Church, for example) and political leaders have weighed in. Barack Obama, the President of the United States, and Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, have condemned this bill. The governments of Sweden and the United Kingdom have officially condemned the bill and warned about international sanctions.

In fact, virtually every decent person or organization that comes to know about the bill opposes it and its sponsors. Except for Canyon Ridge Christian Church.

So please understand that when your AIDSwalk includes CRCC, it is not their faith that is shocking. It is not that they are conservative.

Rather, it is that you have a participant in your event who stands virtually alone in refusing to condemn the incarceration and execution of people for being gay.

This is such an extreme position that the Southern Nevada Health District found it necessary to cease any outreach at the church. They found it not only offensive, but that their support for Ssempa served to endanger gay Ugandans and to harm and hinder the efforts to fight HIV in that country.

I understand that others have brought this situation to your attention, but have not been successful in determining your stance. As I am a writer for a website that has been successful in getting the information about the bill out to the public and which has a large readership and close connections to gay media, they’ve requested that we inquire about your intentions.

So please let me know whether you will continue to allow CRCC to participate in your organization and to display their organization’s name.

Jeniffer Morss, the Executive Director of Aid for AIDS Nevada, does not have her direct email listed on their website, so I directed my letter to:

Jared Hafen – Associate Director
Cira Jones – Director of Finance and Administration
Theresa Mayet – Development Coordinator
Blair Stirek – Development Coordinator

and requested that they “forward to the appropriate person and also please respond to let me know who will be addressing this issue.”

That was Thursday. As of today there has been no response. At all. Not even an acknowledgment of receipt of my letter.

But perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. We are not alone in trying to get AFAN to look at the consequences of their relationship with the church funding a campaign to execute gay people. And their constant response has been silence and stonewalling.

Dr. Warren Throckmorton has also been trying to contact AFAN, and he describes his experience thusly:

When I [contacted AFAN], one staffer I spoke with declined to comment but forwarded my request to the director, Jennifer Morss. I then wrote Ms. Morss two additional emails asking for comment on the relationship with Canyon Ridge and the recent action of Southern Nevada Health to sever ties with the church.

To date, I have gotten no answer. Last week, I went on the Facebook group for AFAN and left a comment on their wall asking for a PR person from AFAN to contact me. Initially, that comment was answered with a recommendation that I contact Terri Maruca, Vice President at Kirvin Doak Communications. When I contacted Ms. Maruca, she replied that someone from the staff would contact me next (now this) week. In the mean time, Michael Bussee also left a request for public comment on the AFAN Facebook group wall. Sometime in mid-week last week, both of those comments were removed by the owner of the AFAN group. Currently, Mr. Bussee has another request for public comment on the AFAN wall.

That request for comment by Michael Bussee has now been removed.

Aid For AIDS Nevada may well have a very good reason for not wishing to confront CRCC (which may or may not have anything to do with their website’s need to assure us that most of their management is heterosexual). But they have no valid reason for ignoring and deleting questions.

We deserve an answer. AFAN owes us the courtesy of replying and letting us know exactly why it is that they are partnering with a church that is sponsoring murder.

Major Gay Porn Actor Discloses He Is HIV+

Due to the subject matter of this post assume all outgoing links are not work-safe unless noted otherwise.

Mason Wyler is one of the more prolific gay porn actors currently producing material; in addition to having a considerable formal filmography (IMDB) he maintains personal and commercial websites.  Last Thursday on his personal blog Wyler disclosed that he is HIV+.  His brief post in it’s entirety:

I have something to say. I spent the last few months waiting for the right time to tell you but it turns out that there is no right time… I wish I could put this off for a little while longer but information like this usually finds a way of coming out sooner than later. In fact, people have already begun to talk so I might as well just tell you now. I tested positive. I have only myself to blame. I have HIV and it kind of sucks.

Porn news site TheSword.com reports Great Atlantic Media’s (a porn conglomerate) webmaster Mark Wilson originally outed Mason with a trashy post on GayPornGossip.com.  Wyler’s admission on his own site appears to have been posted later that same day.

Sometimes it boggles the mind the number of people who think it’s acceptable to disclose someone else’s status, including as I’d previously posted Michael Alvear, Manhunt.net’s in-house advise columnist (Safe for work).

I admit I’m fond of Mason’s work and part of the purpose of this post is to speculate on how this might affect his career.  In the mainstream (condom-less) straight  porn industry contracting HIV is a career ender (gee talk about stigmatizing).

Contrast this to the gay porn industry where an anonymous survey conducted by TheSword.com revealed a full 30% of actors were either poz or unsure of their status and 52% of survey respondents either never or rarely discussed their status with scene partners.

But my question is, how many of those people are public with their status and how does that affect their cast-ability in films?

Off the top of my head I couldn’t think of any mainstream (non-bareback) openly poz gay pornstars.  If you happen to know of any please post a comment below and include a source link.

Fortunately TheSword.com is already reporting the Raging Stallion network of porn sites has issued a common sense statement:

Raging Stallion practices safe sex on all of its video shoots–indeed we enjoy filming hot safe sex and showing other gay men how to have hot safe sex. HIV status should not be an issue when shooting porn if the actors are using condoms and using common sense. Raging Stallion would love to shoot Mason Wyler in an upcoming movie. He is a great actor and I have always wanted to work with him. Nothing has changed from my perspective.

God now if only the rest of the porn industry would adopt such a rational view.

Cross posted on The Denver ELEMENT

Anglican Head Cedes Leadership To Africa

According to this NTVUganda news report, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams appears to have thrown in the towl in the face of the African rebellion. Responding to Ugandan archbishop Henry Luke Orombi’s call to “send missionaries to America and Europe to take back the gospel from these sending nations,” Williams conceded that it may indeed be “God’s Will” that African bishops continue to foment division within the Worldwide Anglican communion:

God raises up different countries and cultures in different seasons to bear witness to his purpose in especially marked ways. This indeed may be His will for Africa in the years ahead.”

There is also a clip of Uganda’s Prime Minister Apollo Nsibambi declaring to warm applause that “Africa has been exemplary, at least in not accepting homosexuality.”

“There is Already A Break”: Ugandan Archbishop Declares De-Facto Schism

About 400 African bishops of the Anglican Union have gathered in Entebbe, Uganda for a six-day All Africa Bishops Conference organized by the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa (CAPA). The head of the worldwide African Union, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams arrived in Entebbe on Monday to speak at the conference, which began this morning. His job is to try to hold the Anglican Communion together over deep rifts over homosexuality and the ordination of women. In Williams’ opening remarks, he didn’t address homosexuality specifically, but said this in his typically indirect, round-about way:

“We must learn to listen to those we lead and serve to find out what their hopes and needs and confusions are. We must love them and attend to their humanity in all its diversity,” Williams said.

But African clergy weren’t waiting to hear Williams’ watered-down messages, and they were far more direct in speaking with reporters. Before the conference began, the conference’s host and Ugandan Archbishop Uganda Henry Luke Orombi had already fired the opening salvo:

The Connections Between American Fundamentalism and African Homophobia

For the past year and a half, we have been carefully documenting the link between American anti-gay fundamentalism and evangelicalism and the wave of anti-gay hatred that has been sweeping across the African continent, particularly in Uganda. Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, has a new book coming out in late September, C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy, in which he details the extensive network operating between American fundamentalists and Ugandan politicians. Excerpts from that forthcoming book are the basis for two articles out in September. The first one is available on newsstands now. It’s “Straight man’s burden: The American roots of Uganda’s anti-gay persecutions,” which is in the September issue of Harper’s Magazine. The second article is in next month’s The Advocate, and it is available online:

“Spiritual war” is a theological term, but in Uganda — ground zero for an explosion in violent homophobia across Africa — it’s taking increasingly concrete form. For the Ugandan government, that’s a pragmatic strategy as much as a spiritual one. Since 1986, Uganda has been ruled by an autocrat, Yoweri Museveni, who correctly guessed that American evangelicals eager to do good works and to save the heathen could be a big source of income for his regime.

“We have a primary, a secondary, and a high school,” Tommy said of Faithful Servants International Ministries. “Four hundred and fifty children, two meals a day, and we go into two hospitals and three prisons. We can’t do all that ourselves of course, so we have nine ministers. And our own seminary!”

Sharlet asked them what they thought of the proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which would add the death sentence for those convicted of homosexuality under certain circumstances, would outlaw all advocacy on behalf of LGBT people, would make criminals of anyone who tried to offer services for or rent housing to gay people, and would penalize teachers and family members who failed to report gay people to police. Tommy replied:

“Well, I’m totally against killing them. Because some of them can be saved, and changed. But the thing is, you can’t force them to stop. It’s been tried! But it don’t work.” He shook his head over the problem on all sides — the homosexuals, themselves, and his Ugandan friends, so on fire for the gospel that they’d gone too far in an antigay crusade. That’s how it is with Ugandans, he explained. They’re a bighearted people, but they get ahead of themselves sometimes. That’s where Americans could help.

“What they need,” Tommy proposed, “is a special place, like, for people doing homosexual things to learn different. A camp, like.”

“Keep them all in one place?” I asked.

“Yes. I think that’s what we have to try,” he said. “Because the thing is, the Bible says we can’t kill them. And we can’t put them in prison because that’d be like putting a normal fella in a whorehouse!” Teresa chuckled with her husband. A camp in which to concentrate the offenders — that was the compassionate solution.

MP David Bahati, sponsor of the odious legislation, told Jeff Sharlet that based on his Bible, he is willing to kill every gay person in Africa. Sharlet’s article weaves together all the major players that we’ve been covering piecemeal, post by post, (David Bahati, Julius Oyet , James Nsaba Buturo, Lou Engle, Scott Lively and others) and synthesizes it all together with lots of added information drawn from his travels in Uganda and meeting with the major movers and shakers behind the bill.

But, he writes, “it’s American evangelicals, through naïveté in some cases and hate in others, who have done the most damage.” And he makes a very strong case for it, observing that now that American evangelicals are losing the anti-gay battle here at home, they have established a new tradition, “the practice of exporting a religious battle you’re losing somewhere far out on the edges and then declaring victory there as a precedent for revival back home.”