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The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.Uganda Cabinet Suggests Alternatives to Anti-Homosexuality Bill
Jim Burroway
April 13th, 2011
A report in this morning’s Daily Monitor, Uganda’s largest and most reputable independent newspaper, indicates that last week’s attempt by Martin Ssempa and Julius Oyet to revive the Anti-Homosexuality Bill have gotten under President Yoweri Museveni’s skin, and so his cabinet is proposing an alternative:
A Cabinet sub-committee formed to study the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2010 and report back to Cabinet, yesterday added a spin into the Bill and called for its withdrawal.
Sources, who attended the meeting, said the sub-committee, chaired by First Deputy Premier Eriya Kategaya, suggested that if Mr Bahati did not mind a lot, he could withdraw the Bill. “They said Cabinet doesn’t agree with the death penalty which the Bill proposes,” a source, who cannot be named because they are not authorised to speak on behalf of Cabinet, said. “They asked Bahati to drop the Bill if he doesn’t care much.”
That is a remarkably mild and polite request. As we all know, he does “care much.” But documents posted on Wikileaks indicate that Museveni has committed to seeing that the bill doesn’t become law. And so his sub-committee has offered an alternative:
In a closed-door meeting with Mr David Bahati, the mover of the Bill, the sub-committee said some of the penalties proposed in the Bill could be catered for by the Penal Code Act and the yet-to-come Sexual Offences Bill.
The sub-committee formed early last year following President Museveni’s call on Parliament to “go slow” on the bill following international outcry over its draconian provisions. In April, the committee reported that the biggest problem with the bill wasn’t so much it’s call to execute gay people, it was its name. The Anti-Homosexuality Bill simply drew too much attention.
According to last year’s Sunday Monitor report, the cabinet sub-committee argued that the bill should be dropped and certain sections of it (principally, the provisions criminalizing “promotion” of homosexuality with up to seven years’ imprisonment) be quietly transferred to other bills so as to draw less attention to what they are trying to do. Sunday Monitor noted last year that the Sexual Offences Bill would be a likely vehicle. This report indicates that we now have two bills to watch for: the Penal Code Act and the Sexual Offences Bill. The report doesn’t indicate which provisions would be transferred to the other two bills.
As currently written, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill would impose the death penalty on gay people under certain circumstances (including if one partner is HIV-positive) and would clarify lifetime imprisonment for all others, including for those who obtained legal same-sex marriages abroad. (Ugandan law already provides either a 14 years’ imprisonment or a lifetime sentence, depending on how the individual is prosecuted.) The Bill would also require family members, doctors, teachers and others “in a position of authority” to report LGBT people to police within 24 hours to avoid the risk of three years’ imprisonment themselves. Anyone convicted of “promoting” or “aiding and abetting” homosexuality would be liable to seven years imprisonment. Those provisions are so broadly written that they could include doctors and even lawyers called upon to defend LGBT people in court. The bill even targets landlords who rent to LGBT people under a “brothel” provision that provides seven years’ imprisonment. It also contains an extradition clause, allowing the Ugandan government to lodge extradition requests to foreign governments to extract Ugandans living abroad.
In this morning’s Daily Monitor, Bahati denies that the cabinet sub-committee pressured him to drop the bill.
Ssempa, Oyett Press Uganda’s Parliament on Anti-Homosexuality Bill
Jim Burroway
April 6th, 2011
Pastor Martin Ssempa (pointing) and Julius Oyet at Uganda's Parliament House (VOA / M. Onyiego)
The Voice of American is reporting that Ugandan pastors Martin Ssempa and Julius Oyet led a group of anti-gay activists to demand that Parliament pass the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. According to VOA:
Lead by Pastor Martin Ssempa, a charismatic and vocal opponent of homosexuality in Uganda, the group asked Ugandan Parliamentary Speaker Edward Kiwanuka to fight the emerging “homo-cracy” in Uganda and enter the bill for debate.
“We as religious leaders and civil society are distressed that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill is being deliberately killed largely by the undemocratic threats of western nations,” he said. “These same nations who promote democracy don’t want our representative to discuss laws to protect our children from the human trafficking of recruiting our children into homosexuality.”
Ssempa leads the Inter-Religious Taskforce Against Homosexuality. During the session with Speaker Kiwanuka, the Task Force presented a portion of over 2 million signatures it said were gathered from around Uganda in support of the bill.
The group trotted out Paul Kagaba, an “ex-gay” associate of Martin Ssempa who alleged that he had been “recruited” into homosexuality at the age of seventeen by murdered LGBT advocate David Kato. Kagaba has been implicate in at least two vigilante outing campaigns, the most recent of which is suspected of having been orchestrated by Ssempa himself.
George Oundo
Another putative ex-gay, George Oundo, re-appeared in this latest episode with his own allegations of foreign recruitment. Oundo has also participated in vigilante campaigns as well, particularly in the immediate aftermath of the infamous March 2009 anti-gay conference put on by American activists Scott Lively, Don Schmierer and Caleb Lee Brundidge. Oundo himself appears to have a great deal of difficulty deciding which side he should be on, but for now he appears to have cast his lot with Ssempa once again.
Julius Oyet’s appearance here is notable. Oyet and Ssema were present in the gallery when the Ugandan Parliament first considered the indroduction of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Oyet, who is President of the Ugandan branch of the U.S.-based College of Prayer (which itself is a ministry of Rev. Fred Hartley’s Lilburn Alliance Church in Atlanta), was made a member of M.P. David Bahati’s staff to lobby Parliament for the bill’s passage. While Bahati is the bill’s author and sponsor, Oyet played a crucial role in its drafting. He repordtedly told a documentary filmmaker:
I was there. I have been part of the brains behind it. We worked on it. We planned who should propose it. It is the Ugandan’s bill. It is the culture of Uganda to keep purity. It is everybody’s voice. I worked with Bahati on this.
Two weeks ago, Information Minister Kabakumba Masiko spoke on behalf of President Yoweri Musevini’s government to announce that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill would not be voted on by Parliament. Bahati however insists that the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee, where the bill currently resides, will still hold hearings. The bill will automatically die if it does not come up for a final vote before the current Parliament ends on May 20.
Update: Daily Monitor picks up the story and adds a couple of interesting items. First, Daily Monitor quotes Parliament Speaker Edward Ssekandi:
“The mover of the Bill (David Bahati) is still a member of the 9th Parliament and even if the current Parliament doesn’t debate it, the new Parliament will do it,” Mr Ssekandi said.
This, I believe, indicates that he expects the bill to be reintroduced into the next Parliament after the current one ends.
And finally there’s this: a group of students from Makarere University had earlier met with Steven Tashobya, chairman of the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee, and told him that “ recruitment of gays was rampant at the university campus“:
The students told Mr Tashobya that each of their colleagues who join homosexuals is paid a monthly salary of Shs800,000.
That’s about US$340, which is more than the average annual per-capita income in Uganda. Where’s my US$340? Nobody told me about this!
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TV Report: Uganda to Shelve “Kill-The-Gays” Bill
Jim Burroway
March 25th, 2011
We now have YouTube video of the television news item we told you about yesterday reporting that the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill will not be taken up by Parliament.
The chairman of the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee had scheduled the Anti-Homosexuality Bill for debate in his committee, possibly as early as this week. But now, based on what Information Minister Kabakumba Masiko tells Uganda’s NTV, it appears that government has intervened to put a halt to the bill once and for all:
We had the Cabinet Subcommittee which gave us a report yesterday and we did realize that there are many things that are in the bill that are covered by other laws that are already in place. … And the law that is in offing, the Sexual Offenses Bill, will cover most of the other issues that were going to be covered.
Uganda President Yoweri Museveni directed a subcabinet committee to study the bill in January, 2010 amid growing international outcry over the proposed bill. In April, it was reported that the committee recommended that most of the bill be dropped with “useful provisions of the proposed law” incorporated into the Sexual Offenses Act. Which provisions the cabinet considered combining is not known. We currently do not have a copy of the Sexual Offenses Bill. The Bill’s sponsor, David Bahati, responded with a litany of issues which he felt were not covered:
We don’t have any prohibition on promotion of homosexuality anywhere, we don’t have any prohibition on same-sex marriage, we don’t have any prohibition in our laws on recruitment of homosexuality of our children, we don’t have any provision on counseling and caring. We want to make it very clear, we want Parliament to come up with a law that is specific and clear to address the emergent problem of homosexuality.
The Anti-Homosexuality Bill, if passed, would have imposed the death penalty on gays and lesbians under certain circumstances, including for “repeat offenders” — which would apply to anyone who had more than one relationship. Ugandan law already provides either 20 years or lifetime imprisonment, depending on how prosecutors chose to charge the accused. The new law would also have lowered the bar for conviction, making mere “touching” for the perceived purpose of homosexual relations a criminal offense. The law threatened teachers, doctors, friends, and family members with three years imprisonment if they didn’t report anyone they suspected of being gay to police within twenty-four hours. The law very broadly criminalized all advocacy of homosexuality including, conceivably, lawyers who defended accused gay people in court. It even threatened landlords under a “brothel” provision if they knowingly rented to gay people.
Bahati continued:
I am very confident that the Executive knows that 95% of Ugandans will not support homosexuality.
Minister Kabakumba responded:
Of course we are concerned and we don’t condone homosexuality in our country. That should be very, very, very clear. It’s in the constitution, we do not condone it, and of course our children are suffering.
Bahati called for committee to hold hearings on the bill:
Their views must be taken to committee of Parliament to be considered. They could be accepted, they cold be not accepted.
Last week, Tashobya said that the bill would be taken up for consideration by his committee, possibly as early as this week when Parliament returned for its lame duck session. Parliament returned on March 22. Parliament will expire on May 20. Our source in Kampala reports that Bahati has now gone on radio this morning saying that committee chairman Stephen Tashobya has assured him that the bill would be debated in committee.
But with the announcement coming from a cabinet member and not the committee chairman, it suggests that someone, possibly President Museveni himself via Masiko, has intervened and persuaded the Parliamentary Affairs committee to drop the bill altogether without a hearing. It should be noted that the bill’s main supporter in the cabinet, former Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo, resigned last week in compliance with a court order following his loss in the ruling party’s primary elections last fall.With Buturo now out of the way, it appears that Masiko is the new point person for the government’s position on the bill. In Buturo’s parting remarks, he called on Parliament to pass the bill. (Shortly after Buturo’s departure, the offices of the Ethics and Integrity Ministry were padlocked by their landlord over failure to pay rent.)
January a year ago, Museveni spoke at an NRM meeting urging Parliament to “go slow” over the bill, pointing out that due to international outcry it is not just a domestic matter but one with worldwide ramifications, most notably in the threat it posed to foreign aid to the country. Foreign aid makes up an estimated one-third of Uganda’s budget and economy. He also called on a special subcabinet committee to examine the bill. In a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Kampala posted on Wikileaks, President Museveni “suggested the entire bill could be dropped, and twice asked the Ambassador to remind Washington that “someone in Uganda”, meaning himself, is handling the matter and knows what he is doing.” Museveni also complained about foreign pressure. “The President twice referred to a recent local political cartoon depicting him on this issue as a puppet of Secretary Clinton, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and Stephen Harper, and asked international donors to stand down to give him room to deal with the anti-homosexuality legislation in his own way.”
That subcabinet committee completed it work the following April, but since then the bill has languished in Parliament’s Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee. There it quietly stayed through the February Parliamentary and Presidential elections, and its quiet repose there appeared to keep it safely out of electoral politics. Now that the elections are over, Buturo is out of the way, and with Parliament reconvening for a short lame-duck session, it appears that Museveni’s government saw this as the best opportunity to kill the bill.
Uganda’s Media Picks Up More Talk About Anti-Homosexuality Bill
Jim Burroway
March 18th, 2011
Following on earlier media reports that Uganda’s Parliament may begin consideration of the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill as early as next week, NTV, Uganda’s largest independent television network, has just posted this news report featuring Stephen Tashobya, Chairman of the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee:
After the bill was introduced in October 2009 amid worldwide outrage, it was sent to the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee for further review and report back to Parliament. It has languished quietly in that committee since then. Now that Parliamentary elections are over and Parliament is due back to complete its lame duck session (and only maybe coincidentally while the world’s attention is consumed by events elsewhere in Japan, Libya, Bahrain and Yemen) the bill, which many news outlets erroneously reported to be dead, is again rearing its ugly head.
In this NTV report, committee chairman Tashobya is shown saying:
The Anti-Homosexuality Bill has generated a lot of debate and interest in our population, both for and against. And we are sensitive about that interest.
So we shall put out public notices for all types of people, for even foreigners, let’s have a [unintelligible] to come and appear before the committee and have this matter resolved once and for all.
M.P. David Bahati, the bill’s sponsor, responds:
I’ll be working with my colleagues to talk to other members of Parliament to ensure that this bill is debated and concluded before we close the Eighth Parliament.
We are working with religious leaders, we are working with people in the legal fraternity, we are working with parents and schools…
At this point, the NTV reporter correctly pointed out that if the bill is passed into law in its current form, the provisions barring “promoting homosexuality” would potentially punish even lawyers who defend LGBT people in court. Uganda’s legal fraternity is expected to point out that the proposed law would be completely unfair. To them.
Earlier this week, the U.S. Congress’s House Financial Services Committee passed an amendment with nearly unanimous bipartisan support which calls on the Treasury to make foreign aide contingent on developing nations’ human rights records, including how those nations treat its LGBT citizens. Rep. Barny Frank (D-MA) sponsored the amendment and singled out Uganda as an example of a country that abuses its LGBT citizens. Bahati dismissed that threat:
In my opinion, the future of our children is more important than the money we get from abroad, and the interests of Uganda are more important than the interests of foreigners. We are a soverign state, and nobody should dictate the values we should adopt in our country.
Uganda Parliamentary Committee Chair: Anti-Homosexuality Bill May Not Come Up For A Vote
Jim Burroway
March 3rd, 2011
That’s the word Warren Throckmorton received from the Chair of the Parliamentary and Legal Affairs Committee, Stephen Tashobya. His committee was assigned the Anti-Homosexuality Bill for consideration and possible revision before reporting the bill back out to Parliament for a vote. Tashobya now says “I am not sure if we will get to that one now” before the current Parliament ends in May, citing a backlog of other bills that require consideration. Warren notes that this contradicts Tashobya’s prediction in January that the bill would be brought to a vote during Parliament’s lame duck session following February’s elections.
Uganda held Presidential and Parliamentary elections on February 18, which returned 25-year ruling President Youweri Museveni to another five year term and assured his ruling party a veto-proof majority in Parliament. His ruling party, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) also holds the required majority in Parliament to change the constitution at will. On the bright side, Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo, one of the bill’s most ardent supporters, lost his re-election bid. It’s not clear though that this guarantees the end of his tenure in Museveni’s cabinet since the constitution allows the President to appoint ministers who are not members of Parliament. David Bahati, the bill’s sponsor, easily won re-election to represent his Ndorwa West constituency after his opponent withdrew from the race over concerns for his safety and that of his family.
The next Parliament will be seated in June. If the Anti-Homosexuality Bill is not reported out of committee and onto the floor of Parliament for a vote before the current Parliament ends, it will die at the close of Parliament.
Gay BBC Radio Host Threatened With Arrest in Uganda
Jim Burroway
February 11th, 2011
BBC Radio 1 DJ Scott Mills was in Uganda recently filming a show called “The World’s Worst Place to be Gay?” where he met with M.P. David Bahati, the sponsor of the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill (a.k.a. the “Kill the Gays” Bill) that is still before that nation’s Parliament. During Mills’s encounter with Bahati, Mills confessed that he was gay. That’s when, according to Mills, Bahati “went mental“:
He explained: “He was scary. He ordered us to cut the cameras then brought a security guard. We ran off and he rang one of our guys saying, ‘Where are they staying? What are the registration plates? I want them arrested. They won’t get far’.”
Fortunately Scott’s colleague lied about their location, and armed police arrived at the Sheraton – where they had been falsely told the team were staying. The DJ continued: “I’d heard horror stories about people getting arrested and roughed up and who knows what. I was scared.”
On a lighter note, Mills learned that some people turn to traditional healers in their desperate attempt to become straight. So Mills decided to give it a try.
It looks to be about as effective as therapies from NARTH or Exodus.
The program airs in Britain on BBC3 on Monday at 9:00 p.m. There’s no word on whether the program will be available on the web internationally.
“Kill The Gays” Bill Author And His American Friends: The Final Part of Rachel Maddow’s Interview
Jim Burroway
December 10th, 2010
Last night, Rachel Maddow wrapped up her pre-recorded interview with Ugandan M.P David Bahati, author of the proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill that is currently under consideration in that country’s Parliament. The full uncut video is available here, including portions that were not shown on Rachel Maddow’s show. The third part of that interview which aired last night follows:
This portion of the interview repeats a small segment that aired the day before, and here is the transcript of that portion:
RM: What is God’s law about homosexuality?
DB: God’s law is that homosexuality is sin.
RM: Punishable by…?
DB: God’s law is that homosexuality is sin. …
RM: … In your view, does God’s law prescribe an appropriate punishment for that sin?
DB: God’s law is always clear that the wages of sin is death, whether that is implemented through legislation like mine or by a mechanism of a human being, whatever happens is the end result. We need to turn to God.
Did you catch that? “…Through legislation like mine or by a mechanism of a human being, whatever happens is the end result.” This appears to be justification for killing gay people even if that killing takes place outside of the rule of law, through vigilante justice or other extra-judicial killing. Whatever happens, he says. This is truly a cold-blooded statement. It clearly matches Jeff Sharlet’s observation of him. In his must-read book, C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy
Sharlet accompanied Bahati to a restaurant, and later to his home, where Bahati told Sharlet that he wanted “to kill every last gay person.”
“It was a very chilling moment because I’m sitting there with this man who’s talking about his plans for genocide and has demonstrated over the period of my relationship with him that he’s not some back bender — he’s a real rising star in the movement,” Sharlet says. “This was something that I hadn’t understood before I went to Uganda, that this was a guy with real potential and real sway and increasingly a following in Uganda.”
Bahati also has increasingly a following in the U.S., including people like Lou Engle; Andrew Wommack and his man in Kampala, Leland Shores; and now, a former director of non-public education at the Department of Education under the President George W. Bush. Sharlet has more on that in the next segment.
Sharlet explains in a post on his facebook page that Bahati and Jack Klenk met through Klenk’s “Ugandan missionary work with an anti-gay Anglican religious movement.” (Update: Klenk is on the board of directors for Uganda Christian University, located outside of Kampala.) Sharlet told Maddow that he had spoken to Klenk and said that Klenk wouldn’t take a position on the bill. But Klenk says that the bill comes from a “beautiful place” and that the punishments in it are “loving punishments.” These loving punishments include not only the death penalty for many gays, but life imprisonment for the rest, seven years imprisonment for talking about homosexuality, and three years imprisonment for even knowing a gay person or renting a home or hotel room to him.
Sharlet believes that Klenk is not part of the Family, but he points out that Bahati nevertheless has numerous connections both inside and outside the Family, including Lou Engle, the Family Research Council and Sen. James Inhofe, who regularly travels to Uganda to talk about these issues. Sharlet describes Uganda as an American Evangelical “laboratory of ideas” that they cannot promote in the U.S. By exporting those ideas to a place like Uganda, the hope is these ideas can ferment so that they can then use those “successes” to re-import those ideas back to the West. In fact, Bahati has said several times that he believes his bill will serve as an example for the rest of the world to follow.
The anonymous blogger GayUganda notes that Uganda is in the midst of a very active campaign season ahead of Parliamentary elections in February. He says that it’s odd that Bahati would take the time to go to the U.S. to attend a conference that he likely knew would not welcome him. Given his hob-nobbing with a well-connected former Bush administration official, GayUganda’s speculation that this was actually a fundraising trip gains much greater credibility.
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Send Rachel Maddow a Message
Rob Tisinai
December 9th, 2010
Rachel Maddow is continuing her coverage of Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” bill tonight. She’s done a great job of keeping the story in the public eye, but she’s still missing one thing:
The bill would kill gays and would kill their friends, family, or co-workers who didn’t rat them out to the government. It would be impossible to be a gay person’s friend and not be subject to the death penalty.
I pointed this out in the video below, and it bears repeating. In fact, I’ll ask you this favor:
Post the link to this video on Rachel’s Facebook page. Email it to her, too. If enough people do this, it’s bound to get her attention.
Here’s the direct link to the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fuEsRJp2nU
Thanks.
Ugandan “Kill The Gays” Bill Author On Rachel Maddow Show
Jim Burroway
December 9th, 2010
Ugandan M.P. David Bahati, the author of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill who traveled to the United States to attend a conference only to find himself banned from the conference’s premises, appeared on Rachel Maddow’s program last night. Here is part one of that interview:
Bahati alleges that the provisions of the bill calling for the death penalty were implemented “to protect the children,” and claims that it was modeled from Uganda’s law against child sexual abuse. However, as we have pointed out many times before, the death penalty provision in the Anti-Homosexuality Bill goes way beyond “protecting children,” and is so broadly written that it can include just about anyone. For comparison purposes, here is the text of Section 129(3) and (4) of the Penal Code, as amended in 2007 (Act No. 8 of 2007):
29(3)
Any person who performs a sexual act with another person who is below the age of eighteen years in any of the circumstances specified in subsection (4) commits a felony called aggravated defilement and is, on conviction by the High Court, liable to suffer death.129(4)
The circumstances referred to in subsection (3) are as follows-(a) where the person against whom the offence is committed is below the age of fourteen years;
(b) where the offender is infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV);
(c) Where the offender is a parent or guardian of or a person in authority over, the person against whom the offence is committed;
(d) where the victim of the offence is a person with a disability; or,
(e) where the offender is a serial offender.
The comparable section of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill reads as follows:
3. Aggravated homosexuality.
(1) A person commits the offense of aggravated homosexuality where the(a) person against whom the offence is committed is below the age of 18 years;
(b) offender is a person living with HIV;
(c) offender is a parent or guardian of the person against whom the offence is committed;
(d) offender is a person in authority over the person against whom the offence is committed;
(e) victim of the offence is a person with disability;
(f) offender is a serial offender, or
(g) offender applies, administers or causes to be used by any man or woman any drug, matter or thing with intent to stupefy overpower him or her so as to there by enable any person to have unlawful carnal connection with any person of the same sex,
(2) A person who commits the offence of aggravated homosexuality shall be liable on conviction to suffer death.
(3) Where a person is charged with the offence under this section, that person shall undergo a medical examination to ascertain his or her HIV status.
Bahati and others had previously claimed that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill was aimed at closing a “loophole” in Ugandan law, which they claim does not cover same-sex sexual abuse, but as you can see, the current law is already written in a gender-neutral way which includes same-sex as well as opposite-sex abuse. The proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill also does not allow for consideration of consent, which is especially important in cases where the “offender” is HIV-positive or has a relationship with someone with a disability (a term which remains undefined in the proposed legislation).
In part two, Bahati commends the editors of the Ugandan tabloid Rolling Stone (no relation to the U.S. magazine by the same name) for publishing the photos of allegedly gay Ugandans, saying that he would hope that in the future, the police would use articles like these to hunt down gay people. He also called homosexuality a sin and said, “the wages of sin is death.”
Laura Conaway, one of the producers for Rachel Maddow, wrote on Maddow’s blog:
To me, one of the most amazing things about that conversation is that it’s able to happen at all — that Mr. Bahati’s able to say to her, “I think the bottom line, Rachel, is to make sure that we protect the children,” and she can say to him, “I think the international community is trying to decide whether or not Uganda is going to become an international pariah, a rogue state, excluded from the community of nations because you’re singling out a minority among your population for treatment that frankly is not the direction that the rest of the world is going.” They can say those things to each other and then keep talking. It’s amazing.
More of the interview will appear tonight.
Update: Afrogay reacts to Bahati’s incredible claim that US$15 million has been shipped to Uganda to oppose the bill and “recruit children into the practice” of homosexuality:
$15m?!! For those who can’t be bothered to put things in perspective, $15m is equivalent to 43,500,000,000 (forty three billion, five hundred million shilling) in Uganda’s money today.
The only viable referral hospital in Uganda, Mulago Hospital, which caters for the entire population of 33 million people asked for $4.8m in 2007 from the government for essential upgrades and they failed to get it.Why? The government of Uganda said that it didn’t have this money. As you can see, $15m in Uganda would be enough to refurbish a hospital that caters for 33 million people 3.5 times over. In fact $15m is more money than is allocated to entire ministries in Uganda annually.
And Bahati really wants anyone to believe that pro-gay groups have sent that kind of money to 10 or 15 people who represent perhaps 500,000 gay men and women in Uganda?
Ugandan Press Covers “Kill-The-Gays” MP’s Banishment From Conference
Jim Burroway
December 8th, 2010
Daily Monitor, Uganda’s largest independent newspaper, covered recent events in which M.P. David Bahati, author of the proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill, was denied entrance to the International Consortium of Governmental Financial Management conference being held this week in Washington, D.C.
Daily Monitor appears to blame Bahati’s banishment on U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but offers no details on that assertion. In fact, the decision came from conference organizers themselves. Some LGBT activists called on the State Department to refuse Bahati a visa, but there is no evidence to suggest that the State Department has acted on that request or put pressure on the conference organizers to ban Bahati. Bahati complained to Daily Monitor that in barring his attendance, conference organizers had shown a “high level of intolerance” that is “inconsistent with American values.”
The Ugandan delegation reportedly raised their objections to Deputy Assistant of Secretary of State Bureau of African Affairs, Karl Wycoff. There is no report on Wycoff’s response, or whether the pending legislation itself was discussed with U.S. officials. Bahati bragged to Daily Monitor, “[T]he resolve to defend the future of children and pursuit of this wonderful piece of legislation is intact.”
Daily Monitor, which is usually a reliable news outlet, slipped badly in reporting on the nature of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. The paper says the bill “suggests life imprisonment for homosexuals, and in certain cases, death by hanging for those who recruit minors into the act.” That is the propaganda that bill supporters have been spreading about the bill from the very beginning, but it is not at all accurate. The death penalty of the bill, which we have posted online numerous times, reads as follows:
3. Aggravated homosexuality.
(1) A person commits the offense of aggravated homosexuality where the(a) person against whom the offence is committed is below the age of 18 years;
(b) offender is a person living with HIV;
(c) offender is a parent or guardian of the person against whom the offence is committed;
(d) offender is a person in authority over the person against whom the offence is committed;
(e) victim of the offence is a person with disability;
(f) offender is a serial offender, or
(g) offender applies, administers or causes to be used by any man or woman any drug, matter or thing with intent to stupefy overpower him or her so as to there by enable any person to have unlawful carnal connection with any person of the same sex,
(2) A person who commits the offence of aggravated homosexuality shall be liable on conviction to suffer death.
(3) Where a person is charged with the offence under this section, that person shall undergo a medical examination to ascertain his or her HIV status.
In fact, sex with minors is only one provision of the portion of the bill providing for the death penalty. Other provisions include merely being HIV-positive (with no provisions for disclosure or consent) along with a provision mandating HIV-testing to determine eligibility for the crime of “aggravated homosexuality.” The bill also mandates death for anyone who has a relationship with anyone with “a disability”, without defining what constitutes a disability and without any provisions for a consensual relationship.
Furthermore, the “serial offender” clause is likely to include just about anyone who is gay and has had more than one relationship. What’s worse, that clause can include just about anyone period, as Rob Tisinai illustrated earlier this year. It’s very disappointing to see Daily Monitor become a mouthpiece for the bill’s propagandists like this.
Uganda’s “Kill The Gays” Bill Author Turned Away From D.C. Conference
Jim Burroway
December 7th, 2010
Ugandan MP David Bahati
Warren Throckmorton has learned that Ugandan M.P. David Bahati, author of the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill, has been denied entry into the International Consortium of Governmental Financial Management conference being held this week in Washington, D.C. Throckmorton reports that according to conference spokesman Doug Hadden, Bahati arrived at the conference this morning where “[t]here was a frank but calm discussion and Mr. Bahati was not able to enter the building.”
Bahati was reportedly in the United States on a single-entry visa issued specifically for this event, according to a brief news item in Uganda’s Daily Monitor on Monday. It is unclear what the terms of his visa are, and whether he is now in violation of the visa as a result of being denied entry into the conference.
Bahati’s Visa: Why Hasn’t It Been Rescinded?
Jim Burroway
December 6th, 2010
Uganda MP David Bahati.
As we’ve reported, Ugandan MP David Bahati, author of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill which would provide for the death penalty for gay people under certain circumstances, was slated to come to Washington, D.C. to attend the International Consortium of Governmental Financial Management conference that kicks off today. The problem however is that conference leaders have announced that Bahati won’t be allowed to attend the conference. According to an official statement from the conference, “it is clear that his participation would be contradictory to our mission.” Conference leaders also said that they will post extra security to ensure that he won’t be allowed in.
Which leads us to this interesting item in this morning’s Daily Monitor from Uganda:
Unlike other MPs, the American mission in Kampala gave (Bahati) a single-entry visa specifically for the event.
With his invitation rescinded, is there any reason not to cancel Bahati’s visa?
Uganda’s “Kill The Gays” Bill Author Barred From Washington, D.C. Conference
Jim Burroway
December 5th, 2010
Mike Jones at Change.org has learned that Ugandan MP David Bahati, who was slated to come to Washington, D.C. to attend next week’s conference of the International Consortium of Governmental Financial Management, will not be permitted entry into the conference:
According to Doug Hadden, the Vice President of Communications for the International Consortium of Governmental Financial Management, “David Bahati will not be attending this conference.” Bahati, for his part, is still telling folks, that he is attending. But conference organizers have said they will not allow him to attend, and are hiring extra security to make sure that he cannot attend. An official statement from ICGFM says: “It is clear that his participation would be contradictory to our mission.”
Warren Throckmorton confirms that Bahati, author of Uganda’s proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill, still thinks he’s going to the conference, but Hadden told Throckmorton via email that “the ICGFM Executive Committee has agreed that his attendance is not consistent with the mission of the organization.”
Uganda’s “Kill The Gays” Bill Author Coming To Washington, D.C. Next Week
Jim Burroway
December 2nd, 2010
MP David Bahati
That’s according to Warren Throckmorton, who has been talking with with M.P. David Bahati over the phone:
In addition to campaigning for re-election during the recess, Mr. Bahati plans to travel to the United States next week with a group of MPs to attend the 2010 Winter Conference of the International Consortium of Governmental Financial Management. The conference will be held in Washington DC from Dec. 6-8.
Parliament is now in recess in preparation for the February Parliamentary elections. Bahati expects the Anti-Homosexuality Bill to be considered during the Parliament’s lame-duck session between the elections and the installation of the next Parliament in May.
Uganda To Revive Anti-Homosexuality Bill Soon
Jim Burroway
November 19th, 2010
The big news yesterday was that Uganda’s Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo ordered a women’s conference scheduled for Wednesday in Entebbe canceled. The reason given was that one of the topics to be discussed was to have been the plight of sex workers. But buried beneath all of that in the last paragraph of this Daily Monitor news item:
Dr Buturo also revealed that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which brought controversy between government and donors, will be revisited upon completion of the Chogm debate which is on-going.
The “Chogm debate” is over rampant corruption in the awarding of government contracts and other acts of bribery that took place when Uganda was preparing for its role as host for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in 2007. Parliament is due to issue its report into the investigation. If that report follows previous patterns in dealing with corruption, it will likely offer up a few low-level scapegoats while protecting the guilty among the elites.
But the big news for us is the indication that the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill is expected to be debated in full Parliament. That bill, in its current form, would impose the death penalty for gay people under certain circumstances, and impose life imprisonment (which is practically a death sentence when it comes to Ugandan prisons) under all other circumstances. It would also outlaw all free speech and advocacy on behalf of gay people and threaten relatives and friends of gay people with three years imprisonment if they fail to report their LGBT loved ones to police.
Earlier this week, Warren Throckmorton interviewed MP David Bahati, the bill’s sponsor, who said that the anti-gay bill remains in the queue:
“The last time I talked to the chairman,” Bahati said referring to the chairman of the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs committee, “what he assured us is that he is going to work on this for sure.” Bahati added that the timing is unclear. “But if it will come up before recess, I am not certain.” The Parliament is slated to recess for nominations on November 25. Bahati told me that there were other bills in committee that would need action before his could be considered.
Australia’s SBS Television Focuses on Uganda
Jim Burroway
September 8th, 2010
Australia’s SBS network, which fills a role similar to that of PBS in the United States, delved into Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill last Sunday in a segment of the documentary program Dateline by Canadian journalist Aaron Lewis. The non-embeddable video is available online at the Dateline web site, along with a full transcript.
This documentary explores similar ground covered in other documentaries on Uganda that have appeared in the U.S. and Britain. Regular readers of BTB are unlikely to learn many new facts, but this documentary does a wonderful job of re-telling the story in different contexts. As with the other documentaries, Lewis obtained interviews with M.P. David Bahati, chief sponsor of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, and Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo, one of the bill’s most ardent supporters in Uganda’s Cabinet. It also features brief appearances from pastors Martin Ssempa and Solomon Male, who both have been involved with hurling accusations of homosexuality toward rival pastors during last year’s vigilante campaign.
Among the things this documentary covers that we’ve seen before is Bahati’s assertion that many American evangelical leaders privately tell him that they support the Anti-Homosexuality Bill bill:
We have friends who are evangelicals in the US and they are being supportive. Some confidentially supporting this, others, very few openly, in support of this because of the fear to be blamed back home and we truly accept that.
But where this documentary truly excels is in covering the impact the debate over the the Anti-Homosexuality Bill has had on Uganda’s LGBT community. Frank Mugisha, head of Sexual Minorities Uganda, said that since the bill has been introduced, life has become much more difficult:
Many Ugandans have taken the law into their own hands and started attacking homosexuals, beating them up. Landlords have thrown people out of their houses because they are saying “If this legislation is passed and I have a homosexual who is a tenant, then I become a criminal, so it is better I throw you out now before the law is passed”.
Pepe, a transgender advocate for SMUg, agrees:
Kampala is one of the places that is known for mob injustice – anything can happen. You can move on the street and someone can say “Look, the homosexual is doing something” – just that word alone is going to draw attention and something can happen so that we live in fear of all the time.
More compelling is this recounting of a case of “curative rape,” a common threat against lesbians throughout Africa.
SHEILA MUGISHA: At the age of 12 I had a friend at home – and actually these things are done by friends. I had always told him my stories, my secrets, my encounters in bed. So, he would tell me, “You know what? I want to teach you how to play with boys, not with girls.” He put his leg here, and here, and then he got into my body, into my vagina, and I screamed because I’d never had any sex, I’d never known, you know, any of those practices. “So, from now, you are going to learn how to play with boys.”
As a result of the rape, Sheila became pregnant at the age of 12. Her family took her to have the child aborted but the effects of the rape continued.
SHEILA MUGISHA: I went to a certain AIDS information centre in Mengo with a friend – I took a test – and it was positive.
Sheila has been living with HIV for almost twenty years. When the reporter told Minister for Ethics and Integrity James Nsaba Buturo about Shiela, the cabinet minister who has been one of the anti-gay bill’s staunchest supporters said that the entire story is a lie:
I have never heard of that, actually. But they lie a lot. Lies. They use that as a major tool because you see that’s the only way they garner sympathy from all over the world. Now the idea that in Uganda we have plans to kill gays you know, that the bill of Honourable Bahati is intended to kill homosexuals – that is the view that the entire world has got, yet it is not the case.
But what has to be the most interesting element of the documentary for me is that for the first time we get to hear from Stanley Nduala, who writes for the notorious tabloid Red Pepper. He has been in the forefront of that tabloid’s outing campaigns. Apparently, making life miserable for LGBT people pays very well in Uganda; we see Nduala driving around Kampala in a late model Mercedes. Incredibly, he claimed that he, too, would fall under the bill’s provisions against “promoting” homosexuality:
STANLEY NDUALA, JOURNALIST ‘RED PEPPER’: For them, they believe that anything you write about homosexuality is promotion. So they think that I’m working with the activists to promote homosexuality in Uganda. So it is quite strict.
Far from promoting homosexuality, ‘The Red Pepper’ goes so far as to out homosexuals in its most popular section. No-one is spared.
FRANK MUGISHA: I know very many people who were outed in that tabloid who lost their jobs, who lost their families, who lost friends. I know people who were even bashed, I know people who were beaten. I know people who were harassed because they were outed in ‘The Red Pepper’.
REPORTER: Do you feel that you are persecuting a minority?
STANLEY NDUALA: I don’t know why they believe like that. We are just being journalists – True journalists.
Stanley tells me that the reason for such interest is that no crime is as hated as homosexuality here.
STANLEY NDUALA: When you commit homosexuality, they think all these other things, like rape, what, are just minor. If you have done that one, you could do everything.
REPORTER: So here in Uganda, being a rapist is minor compared to being a homosexual?
STANLEY NDUALA: Yes, to the public eye
Lawyer Lad Rekefuzi confirms that rapists and murderers fare better in Uganda’s courts than do gay people.
Also making a brief appearance is retired Bishop Christopher Senyonjo, a brave man who I had the distinct pleasure of meeting last May in Southern California. This documentary is a great addition to the body of work being done all over the world to call attention to the deplorable treatment of LGBT people in Uganda.
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David Bahati’s Plan for Genocide
Jim Burroway
August 25th, 2010
Ugandan MP David Bahati
Jeff Sharlet, author of the upcoming book C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy, will appear on Terry Gross’ Fresh Air today on NPR. Sharlet also has an article appearing in the September issue of Harmer’s. It’s behind a paywall, so I haven’t seen it, but NPR reveals that when Sharlet spoke with MP David Bahati, the sponsor of Uganda’s draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill, Bahati said that his plan was to “kill every last gay person.”
Bahati said ‘If you come here, you’ll see homosexuals from Europe and America are luring our children into homosexuality by distributing cell phones and iPods and things like this,’” Sharlet recounts. “And he said, ‘And I can explain to you what I really want to do.’”
Sharlet accompanied Bahati to a restaurant, and later to his home, where Bahati told Sharlet that he wanted “to kill every last gay person.”
“It was a very chilling moment because I’m sitting there with this man who’s talking about his plans for genocide and has demonstrated over the period of my relationship with him that he’s not some back bender — he’s a real rising star in the movement,” Sharlet says. “This was something that I hadn’t understood before I went to Uganda, that this was a guy with real potential and real sway and increasingly a following in Uganda.”
Ugandan MP Confirms “The Family’s” Connection to Anti-Homosexuality Bill
Jim Burroway
August 24th, 2010
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.”
Ugandan MP: Homosexuality is an abomination punishable by death
Jim Burroway
August 22nd, 2010
Uganda’s Sunday Monitor this morning features a fawning profile of MP David Bahati, the who proposed the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda’s Parliament last year. That bill would have imposed the death penalty on gay people under certain circumstances, and it would have criminalized virtually anyone else who rented to or provided services for gay people. It also would have imposed a three year prison sentence on teachers, family members or other “persons of authority” who failed to report gay people to police. That bill is now stalled in Parliament.
Daily Monitor’s Mike Ssegawa asked Bahati about his anti-gay campaign:
Bahati says he has a passion for service and trying to make a difference in people’s lives and also, fighting for what he believes is right. In his words, “One of the things I do is fight for the future of our children. And that is why I fight homosexuality.” Bahati accuses the rich for trying to influence the world with their homosexuality agenda, which he calls a great threat to society and the future generation.
“This habit is learned and can be unlearned,” he adds, quoting the Bible: “Homosexuality is an abomination punishable by death.” When I asked him how, as a Christian, he can advocate for a death penalty, he replied, “It is in Leviticus. Go and read – the penalty for homosexuality is death.”
However, he says the Bill has not been passed yet and whoever is concerned about the death clause should change it, but believes there is nothing more important than keeping Ugandan children morally upright.
Sometime back, there were reports that Bahati would be denied visas to some countries if the bill passed. But the legislator says he has heard no such thing. “I don’t know – but if that is the price I have to pay, I would rather stay here and keep our children safe, for I am comfortable and happy to be involved in this cause.”
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.
Bahati undoubtedly was reinforced in his belief that homosexuality is a “habit” that “is learned and can be unlearned” from the March 2009 conference put on by three American anti-gay activists. Two of those activists, International Healing Foundation’s Caleb Lee Brundidge and Exodus International board member Don Schmierer, reportedly met with several unnamed members of Parliament following the conference. One month later, Parliament approved a motion to draw up a draft of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. An early draft, dated April 20, began circulating a short time later.
Emblematic of the misinformation that Bahati has consistently deployed about what the Anti-Homosexuality would do if passed into law, Sunday Monitor incorrectly describes the death penalty as being reserved “for gays who lure the underage into the vice or infect one with HIV/Aids.” In fact, the actual death penalty portion of the bill goes much further:
3. Aggravated homosexuality.
(1) A person commits the offense of aggravated homosexuality where the(a) person against whom the offence is committed is below the age of 18 years;
(b) offender is a person living with HIV;
(c) offender is a parent or guardian of the person against whom the offence is committed;
(d) offender is a person in authority over the person against whom the offence is committed;
(e) victim of the offence is a person with disability;
(f) offender is a serial offender, or
(g) offender applies, administers or causes to be used by any man or woman any drug, matter or thing with intent to stupefy overpower him or her so as to there by enable any person to have unlawful carnal connection with any person of the same sex,
(2) A person who commits the offence of aggravated homosexuality shall be liable on conviction to suffer death.
(3) Where a person is charged with the offence under this section, that person shall undergo a medical examination to ascertain his or her HIV status.
Clause 3. (1) (b) was often cited to support the claim that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill would impose the death penalty for the “deliberate” spread of HIV, but it is important to note that the bill contains no requirement that the intent be deliberate at all. In fact, the third subclause would suggest that the death penalty would apply upon receiving a positive serostatus result from an HIV test, which might very well be the first time the charged individual would know he or she was HIV-positive. Alternately, if the accused already knew he was HIV-positive, the proposed bill provides no acknowledgment that the accused’s partner may have known about it and entered into a consensual relationship.
Clause 3. (1) (a) includes a prohibition against sex with a minor, but as you can see, the crime of “aggravated homosexuality” goes much further than infecting someone with HIV/AIDS or “luring the underage.” Clause 3.(1) (e), which prohibits sex with a “person with disability,” assumes that a disabled person — perhaps someone who is deaf, blind or in a wheelchair, for example — is unable to provide consent. Nowhere in the bill does it suggest that proof that the individual did not consent is needed.
And then of course, there’s the problem with 3. (1) (f), where the “offender is a serial offender.” That could mean anyone who has ever had more than one partner, or anyone who has had sex with his or her partner more than once. And as Rob Tisinai demonstrated, the bill is so badly written that the death penalty for the “serial offender” is so poorly written, just about anyone can be convicted of “aggravated homosexuality.”
Ironically, Bahati says he draws inspiration from Nelson Mandela for his work in reconciliation and conflict resolution. Ironic, because it was under Mandela’s leadership that South Africa moved vigorously to dismantle state-sanctioned discrimination against LGBT people.
Lou Engle Supports Criminalization of Homosexuality
Jim Burroway
June 22nd, 2010
Lou Engle on stage with other supporters of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill at a TheCall rally in Kampala (Michael Wilkerson / Religion Dispatches)
Lou Engle, the Dominionist evangelical preacher behind TheCall, has confirmed more or less what Uganda MP David Bahati told author Jeff Sharlet: That Engle supports Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill – at least some form that is similar to the one that is currently under consideration.
Sarah Posner, author of God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters
Posner asked a series of questions specific to the bill. Engle denied supporting the death penalty provision, although he believed that there was a biblical basis for having one under certain circumstances. She also asked what other provisions in the bill he didn’t support:
I pressed him about which penalties in the bill he didn’t support — and he did say that although he could see someone supporting the death penalty, he did not, and he did not support “hard labor” as punishment or the requirement that churches report LGBT people to the authorities. But when I asked him if he would support a bill with less harsh penalties, he added:
My main thing is to keep — is to not allow it to be legalized, so to speak, so then it just spreads through the legal system of the nation. So I’m not — I’m not making a statement as to what I think the penalties should be. It’s not my job to do that. I do think, I do think that these leaders are trying to make at least some kind of statement that you’re not just going to spread the agenda without some kind of restraint, a legal restraint and punishment. And I don’t know what the line is on those, but I can’t go that far as I understand that bill already said. [emphasis mine]
Engle admitted that his praise for the bill’s supporters’ “principled stand” might have led them to believe that he supported the bill. Although he insisted he did not support the bill as written, “I did support the principle of a nation saying, restraining it from coming into their nation.” He then went on to maintain that because homosexuality hasn’t been “restrained” in the United States, “I don’t think it’s going to be good for the nation, it sweeps into the education system, and the church is going to end up losing its privilege to have its own voice. Gender rights, will trump religious rights. I think it’s wrong, it’s not good for society. Those are the statements I came with, so frankly I was quite surprised to be thrown into this huge controversy.”
According to this interview, it appears that Lou Engle’s position on Uganda’s proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill is virtually identical to that of Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively. Lively, too, says that he doesn’t support the death penalty, but he finds the rest of the bill acceptable. Lively has called the bill “a step in the right direction” several times. More recently, he told Current TV’s Marianna van Zeller that passage of the bill would be “the lesser of two evils.” When asked whether that endorsement includes the death penalty, Lively had to struggle with that option for quite a long time before finally deciding that he still doesn’t support it, even as the “lesser of two evils.”
Engle now appears to hold the exact same position as Lively.
