Box Turtle Bulletin

Does Lou Engle Really Oppose Uganda’s “Kill-the-gays” Bill?

Jim Burroway

June 14th, 2010

The answer to that very simple question was never clear. Today, we might have a bit more clarity than before. If so, the news isn’t good.

American evangelical leader Lou Engle traveled to Uganda last month to put on another of his TheCall rallies on the sports field of Makarere University in Kampala. That event turned into a political rally in support for passage of the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill. The rally featured key bill supporters like MP David Bahati, the bill’s sponsor; Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo, and Ugandan pastor Julius Oyet. Just before Engle traveled to the rally, he released an extremely ambiguous statement in which he promised that he “will not promote this bill.” He continued:

In fact, we challenge the Church of Uganda to join with Christians around the world, to first examine our own moral failures, confess our own lack of love, and from that heart seek to establish true biblical standards, reflecting compassion for those struggling with same-sex attraction and equal justice for criminal offenses committed by heterosexuals or homosexuals. We believe this also reflects the heart and intent of the Christian leaders of Uganda.

But news reports from Uganda itself suggests that Engle went back on his promise and spoke in favor of the bill. The New York Times reported that he praised Uganda for its “courage” and “righteousness” in proposing the bill. Further reports indicate that while Engle was clearly careful in not calling explicitly for the bill’s passage, he nevertheless gave his implicit support by defending Uganda’s pastors who were dealing “with a controversy they never wanted.” He also refused to comment when other speakers took the stage and demanded the bill’s passage. It’s pretty obvious from several reports of people who were there that the crowd was left with the distinct impression that Engle supported the bill, and Engle did nothing to disabuse them of it.

Five weeks later, and almost immediately following Exodus International president Alan Chambers’ contrite statement regretting his failure to more vigorously oppose the infamous “nuclear bomb” conference held in March of 2009, Engle tried to jump on the same bandwagon. Just two days later, Engle issued a press release:

I was actually asked to release a petition at TheCall for the people to sign in support of the Bill. I did not allow that to happen because the purpose of the gathering was not a political gathering; it was a prayer gathering. However, I had to leave the prayer meeting early to catch our flight back home. After returning home, I was told that the Bill had been clearly promoted after I left the meeting. I apologize that this took place and that my stated purpose of not promoting the Bill was compromised. I take responsibility for what was done on the stage of TheCall, even in my absence.

Engle’s apparent defense is that his tacit non-endorsing endorsement could have been worse. He could have circulated a petition that would have removed any lingering doubt whatsoever as to his real stance on the bill. Thanks for small favors.

But even if we try to look at this with the deepest rose-colored charitable glass-half-full benefit of the doubt, Engle’s true position on the bill still remains ambiguous at best. Even in this latest statement, he repeated his admiration for Uganda’s commitment ” to raise up a principled stand to protect their people and their children from an unwelcome intrusion of homosexual ideology.”

So even under the most generous assumptions, Engle’s stand with this bill would still remain anybody’s guess. I think you know mine. And today, we have some more information which confirms my strong suspicion that Engle really supports the bill but won’t actually allow those precise words to escape from his lips.

Engle’s most recent statement prompted Jeff Sharlet to write about his encounter with the bill’s supporters while attending Engle’s rally in Kampala. Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, spent quite a bit of time with Oyet and Bahati immediately following the rally and reports that they were both “ecstatic at what they perceived as Engle’s strong support of the bill. They felt his rally and his statements would be a turning point for the bill, reassuring their Ugandan allies that they had support abroad.”

Sharlet also says that Oyet and Bahati both insisted that Engle had explicitly supported the bill when speaking with them, but that he had to “lie to the Western media because gays control it.” Bahati recounted that Engle spoke to the BBC against the bill, and then promptly walked over to Bahati offer his private support. Sharlet continues:

I tend to believe Bahati here, since Engle didn’t mean anything to him until he met him that day. He hadn’t heard of him and decided to attend the rally only after I’d told him a few things about Engle. In other words, he left the rally thrilled with Engle based on that encounter with Engle alone. Clearly, Engle did something to please him.

Sharlet also says that despite reports that Uganda may remove the death penalty from the bill, both Bahati and Oyet strongly support retaining the provision.

Sharlet confirms that Oyet is playing a very prominent role in promoting the bill, and is now officially working for Bahati. I’ve heard some suggestions that Oyet is the bill’s true author, but that hasn’t been confirmed. He is, nevertheless, very closely identified with it. For example, we know that Oyet was in the visitors gallery when the Anti-Homosexuality Bill was introduced in Parliament last October, and that the Parliament’s Speaker specifically acknowledged him and commended his presence there.

Oyet is the self-styled “apostle” who is vice-president of the Born Again Federation, an umbrella group of some 10,000 Ugandan Pentecostal churches. He is also an adherent of “Seven Mountains” theology, a Dominionist theology that calls upon Christians to “establish the Kingdom of God on earth” by claiming possession to “the Seven Mountains of Culture namely: Business, Government, Religion, Family, Media, Education and Entertainment.” Oyet is also the head of the College of Prayer International’s Uganda branch. MP David Bahati, the credited author and sponsor of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, is one of eight MP’s serving on COPI’s “servant leadership team” in Parliament.

Finally, according to Sharlet, “Oyet insisted that there are American church leaders who are supporting the bill privately but lying to the American media about it.” This repeats almost word-for-word what Bahati told Current TV’s Mariana van Zeller: 

The many friends that we have, especially evangelicals in America, when we speak to them privately they do support us. They encourage us, but they are in a society that is very hostile. And we appreciate that and we say do what you think is right for your conscience. …But we have support in America. There are people who support what we are engaged in.

At that time, I asked aloud who some of those Americans might be. Today, we may very well have one answer: Lou Engle.

Kill-the-Gays Bill Sponsor: Uganda Is Providing Leadership Where It is Needed Most

Jim Burroway

May 27th, 2010

Current TV’s Vanguard reporter Mariana van Zeller has posted some outtakes from their documentary “Missionaries of Hate“, which explored the events that followed the three-day anti-gay conference put on by three American Evangelicals in March, 2009, which ultimately culminated with the introduction of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, sometimes referred to as the “kill-the-gays bill,” by MP David Bahati. In this video, we see an extended interview with MP Bahati.

Bahati brags that many American Evangelicals who publicly condemn the bill have told him they privately support it. One wonders, which Evangelicals are he referring to?

Click here to read a rush transcript of the interview.

Myths and Consequences: The True Impact of the Kampala Anti-Gay Conference

Jim Burroway

May 26th, 2010

One criticism of the coverage of the three American Evangelists who held their anti-gay Kampala Conference in March 2009 and its aftermath is over the inference that without the conference, we wouldn’t be in this mess today. Critics of our coverage have charged that we have blamed Uganda’s rampant homophobia on these American activists — a position we have never held. Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, one of the principal American speakers who delivered his “nuclear bomb” at that notorious conference  has even played the race card: “It’s racist to suggest that Africans have no will of their own to produce public policy to suit their own values.”

While we do reject the notion that homophobia in Uganda is an American import, I think it is proper nevertheless to hold the three Americans — Lively, Exodus International board member Don Schmierer, and the International Healing Foundation’s Caleb Brundidge — accountable for the conference and its aftermath. As many independent observers have noticed, this particular conference, with the unwieldy title “Exposing the truth behind homosexuality and the homosexual agenda,” turned out to be – as I correctly feared when I first learned about it a week before it took place – the prime catalyst for the massive convulsion of anti-gay hysteria which followed and ultimately led to the tabling of the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill before Parliament.

Bishop Christopher Senyonjo is a rare straight allies for LGBT people in Uganda, and he’s paid a very heavy price for his support. Last Friday, I asked him whether the link between the conference and the events following were overstated:

Jim Burroway: Over here in the US, we often get an unclear, distorted view of what’s happening in Uganda. But when we look, we find that there have been a lot of outing campaigns in the 2006, 2007. To put things in perspective, did that conference really make things worse for LGBT people in Uganda? Or was it just that the rest of us in the Western world, we noticed it because we hadn’t been paying attention before? Did it really make things worse?

Bishop Senyonjo: What we saw coming to the office, it made things worse. Because soon after that conference, we saw the introduction of the bill, you know what I mean? Because I think it was October something when Bahati came out with that bill, And we knew, I knew, different ones were at that conference that before the people come to speak to us, Lively and his company, they had also met with some members of Parliament and talked with them, even I think with the Minister of Integrity. So they had met with him and of course they spoke with someone in power behind them. Right? And not long after, this bill comes up.

Burroway: So, some of the people that you counsel, have they talked about their fears about the Anti-Homosexuality Bill?

Senyonjo: Oh yeah.

Burroway: Do you have any particular examples you can share without breaking anybody’s confidentiality?

Senyonjo: Many, many are afraid, and they have been coming and talking to me about it. And they are afraid and would like to run out of the country. And that is something very difficult. They don’t know how they can live in Uganda like that because their life will be in great danger, because they feel they cannot change what they are. And because many are losing their employment, we are trying to see that we can have some place where people can have what they call self-employment in a certain way so that they may not live a destitute kind of life. We’re trying to do what we can, to have some possible room where you can have people, even if for a short time in a transition to allow them to see where they are going. Some people would need some shelter for some time, they could need transit to get to work…

Burroway: Because a lot of them loose their family, too, is that correct?

Senyonjo: Oh yeah. That’s true. … so it is not easy. There is real fear of what is going to happen if this bill passed. And that is why many of us feel everything possible should be done to reject this bill.

Bishop Senyonjo was an eyewitness to all three days of the three-day conference, so I pressed him to talk more about Lively’s talk –particularly Lively’s assertion that homosexuality and Nazism are inextricably linked, and his blaming the Rwandan genocide on gays — but he was reluctant to touch those topics. “It creates a lot of unnecessary fears,” he said. “It does, and we may probably not want to repeat those.” Besides, he felt that those who attended the conference didn’t place much weight to those two points, which surprised me because I thought that those were the most incendiary parts of the entire conference.

Instead, it turns out that the centerpiece message that came out of the conference was Lively’s,  Brundidge’s and Scmierer’s reinforcement of the myth that gays recruit school children through child sexual abuse. That was the message which struck a particular chord in Uganda. Bishop Senyonjo concurred:

Burroway: One of the things that I keep reading in the newspapers in Uganda that are on the Internet is that there’s a widespread belief that gay people are recruiting children in the schools, and then I heard basically Scott Lively say the same thing at his conference. Do you think that his talk helped confirm some of those fears that people have?

Senyonjo: Yeah. In fact, even myself, I was at one time accused that I was going to schools and trying to recruit, as it were, people into homosexuality, which is actually blackmail. And you can see, what are the intentions of these people to do this? …. People who will say this, they have very evil intentions which I don’t understand. Because I don’t go to schools to recruit young people. In each …. People develop into what they are, they know themselves whatever they are, what kind of sexual orientation they are. They are not being recruited into it.

Buroway: I know. I mean nobody recruited me.

Senyonjo: [Laughs] That’s what I’m saying there’s a lot of work we have to do in education. They threaten the parents, they say that people are going to schools trying to recruit their children into being gay or what?  This is not true, you know?

This reinforcement of the already prevalent myth — and it truly is a myth – is perhaps the worst legacy of the conference. As NPR’s East African correspondent Gwen Tompkins reported last December:

Scott Lively’s philosophies have been deeply internalized here among those who are proponents of the law, and for people who are listening to these public dialogues on homosexuality, they’re hearing Scott Lively’s words reiterated by Ugandan Evangelicals and others who are proponents of the bill. And they believe it to be Gospel. They believe it to be scientific fact, what they’re listening to.

The Vanguard episode, “Missionaries of Hate,” which premieres tonight on Current TV, further confirms the critical role that March 5-7 conference played in propelling this myth as “scientific fact.”  Here is one exchange between Pepe Onziema of Sexual Minorities Uganda and Peabody-award winning reporter Mariana van Zeller:

Pepe Onziema: (SMUG) The conference basically introduced the idea that homosexuals, their agenda is to recruit children into homosexuality.

van Zeller: So before this conference this concept didn’t really exist in Uganda?

Onziema: No.

The truth is, despite Pepe’s recollection, this allegation didn’t originate with the conference. I’ve seen these allegations in Uganda media long before the conference took place. But Pepe’s faulty memory reinforces what NPR’s Tomkins reported, that because those prior suspicions are now regarded as “scientific fact,” the March 5-7 conference has now been thoroughly associated with being the origin of the charge. Where before, the myth was passed on as rumor, this conference led by three American “experts” elevated this rumor to ”fact.” Human rights advocate Julius Kaggwa told van Zeller confirms, “The theme of this conference was the gay agenda and the gay agenda was that there is a massive recruitment of school children into homosexuality.” He added:

There is a culture of fear among gay people and among non-gay people. I mean the non-gay people are fearing that the gay people are invading our culture and want to recruit children into this thing. The gay people are scared because there’s a massive onset of hatred, if you look like you’re gay then you might be arrested, you might get mob justice, you might just get assaulted. So there is generally fear on every front.

And to match what Bishop Senyonjo told me about his clients’ fears in the conference’s aftermath, van Zeller followed the story of “Long Jones,” a gay man who was arrested by police following the conference. Because of the conference, he said, “people became more out and spying and mentioning others.”

As we noted yesterday, van Zeller talked to Scott Lively, who admitted that he knew that Ugandan lawmakers were considering new legislation to “strengthen” their already draconian anti-homosexuality law (life imprisonment is already the current penalty, depending on how it is prosecuted). And as we have reported multiple times, the three Americans also met with Ugandan members of Parliament as part of their tour in March, 2009.  Van Zeller also spoke with MP David Bahati, who introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill into Parliament. She asked him why he wrote the bill. His response:

I did that for the sake of protecting our children. Here in Uganda we have a problem of people promoting homosexuality, especially using money and materials to recruit young people.

And we know exactly where he got his ”facts” from.

“Missionaries of Hate” airs Wednesday on Current TV at 10:00 EST. A preview is also available on Hulu.

(See also part 1 and part 2 of our talk with Bishop Senyonjo.)

Engle Offers Tactical Support For Uganda’s Anti-Gay Bill

Jim Burroway

May 4th, 2010

Religious Dispatches as a very detailed eyewitness account by Michael Wilkerson of Lou Engle’s participating at an anti-gay rally in Kampala last Sunday. Wilkerson points out that Engle didn’t mention the the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill directly, but given the context of the entire all-day rally he didn’t need to.

Preceding Engle’s performance at the rally, Julius Oyet called on Parliament “not to debate heaven. We call on them to pass the bill and say no to homosexuality.” Oyet, you may recall, is the self-styled “apostle” who is vice-president of the Born Again Federation, an umbrella group of some 10,000 Ugandan Pentecostal churches.

Oyet was in the Parliament’s visitors gallery and was commended by Parliament’s speaker when the Anti-Homosexuality Bill was introduced last October. He is also an Oyet is an adherent to “Seven Mountains” theology, a Dominionist theology that calls upon Christians to “establish the Kingdom of God on earth” by claiming possession to “the Seven Mountains of Culture namely: Business, Government, Religion, Family, Media, Education and Entertainment.” Oyet is also the head of the College of Prayer International’s Uganda branch. MP David Bahati, the credited author and sponsor of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, is one of eight MP’s serving on COPI’s “servant leadership team” in Parliament.

According to Religion Dispatches, Oyet spent considerable time at the rally pushing for the passage of the draconian bill:

Oyet also brought up the common Ugandan perception that homosexuality is an import of the West which “recruits” new members primarily by bribing children. “Father, our children today are being deceived by the West. To buy them, to give them school fees so that they can be homosexuals. We say no to that,” Oyet said with a rolling voice as a live band played smooth jazz in the background.

Engle took the stage right after Oyet, and almost immediately launched into a defense of the anti-gay bill. According to Wilkerson, Elgle repeated what he said in his statement last week when he claimed that he didn’t know about the bill. He also claimed that he almost canceled his trip over the controversy. But at no point did he contest Oyet’s support for the bill. In fact, he picked up on the homosexuality-as-Western-import theme and ran with it:

We know that Uganda has been under tremendous pressure—the church. We felt that same pressure. But I felt like The Call was to come and join with the church of Uganda to encourage you that in the nation who are showing courage to take a stand for righteousness in the earth,” Engle said.

Since arriving, Engle went on, he had consulted with Uganda’s pastors, who are “dealing with a controversy they never wanted.” He then pivoted to the blame-the-West assertion so popular among the bill’s Ugandan supporters. “What I found out was that NGOs, the UN, and UNICEF were coming in and promoting an agenda that the church of Uganda did not want to be in this nation.”

Engle was careful never to explicitly call for the passage of the bill itself, and to avoid being accused of inciting violence. “We are not standing with violence or hatred to people with homosexual lifestyles,” he preached. Still, as he does in the United States, he insisted that homosexuality harms society: “We are trying to restrain an agenda that is going to hurt the nation and hurt families.”

Engle is trying to have it both ways. When he took the stage, at no time did he distance himself or criticize the draconian bill. Instead, he pivoted and repeated the oft-cited propaganda, with no apparent attempt to verify the “facts” themselves, that homosexuality is a Western imperialist import. But in private, while speaking to reporters on his way back to the car, Engle sought to distance himself from the bill again. Ugandan LGBT advocates noted the tightrope act:

“They tried to avoid the issue of inciting violence but they did not come out and condemn the bill, which was in their [press] statement,” said Dennis Wamala, who works with a group called Icebreakers Uganda. “They did not come out in any way to say this bill is wrong.”

Engle likes to portray himself as a courageous, fearless and bold trumpet of righteousness. When he issued his statement addressing concerns about his then-upcoming rally, we noted then that he tried to weave some sort of middle ground and we were left wondering what message he would deliver in Kampala. We now know the answer.

The problem all along is that the way the bill has been framed by its supporters, there is no room for middle ground. You are either in support of the bill or you are against it. Either you want to legislate LGBT people into oblivion or you don’t. Engle’s actions now leaves him squarely in the supporting camp. He had the opportunity to “[reflect] compassion for those struggling with same-sex attraction and equal justice for criminal offenses committed by heterosexuals or homosexuals,” but he blew it.

Instead, he demonstrated public solidarity with the people who want to kill LGBT Ugandans, and repeated their propaganda to do it. He stood beside those who want to kill LGBT people, including Oyet, Bahati, and Ethics and Integrity Minister James, Nsaba Buturo, among others. Nobody heard an ounce of caution or criticism from him. Instead, Engle affirmed the “righteousness” of the people who want to kill you. He’s an articulate man. Words never fail him. Which means that when he left only one conceivable take-away message for everyone in that crowd, that they are on the right track in trying to legally kill gay people, he did this with deliberate intent. And really, that is all you need to know about him.

Lou Engle Praised Uganda’s Anti-Gay Bill

Jim Burroway

May 2nd, 2010

In an apparent contradiction to a statement Lou Engle released earlier last week, the New York Times reports that Engle praised Uganda for its “courage” and “righteousness” in promoting the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

In a rally held Sunday on the sports grounds of Makerere University in Kampala, Engle told the crowd of about 1,300 people:

“NGOs, the U.N., Unicef, they are all coming in here and promoting an agenda,” Mr. Engle said, referring to nongovernmental organizations. “Today, America is losing its religious freedom. We are trying to restrain an agenda that is sweeping through the education system. Uganda has become ground zero.”

The Times reports that Engle was followed by Uganda’s Minister of Ethics and Integrity James Nsaba Buturo, who addressed the crowd, “These are desperate times, but we will not accept intimidation. It is our business to do what God wants. Pray for Bahati, and pray for the bill.” MP David Bahati, the bill’s sponsor, also attended the rally. Bahati called the rally’s turnout “a good sign” for the bill’s passage, which he said he expected to occur soon.

Peter Tatchell’s Correction

Jim Burroway

February 17th, 2010

Veteran UK LGBT activist Peter Tatchell has issued a correction to yesterday’s assertion that Ugandan MP David Bahati, author of the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill, ”is demanding the execution of all scouts and scout leaders who commit repeated homosexual acts.” In an email sent to BTB, Peter’s statement reads:

On 16 February, I issued a news release about the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda and the Bill’s sponsorship by David Bahati MP, who is also Chairman of the Scout Board of Uganda.

I should have made it clear that Mr Bahati was not explicitly calling for the execution of gay scouts and scout leaders. His Bill proposes the execution of gay serial offenders, which could, of course, include gay scout members. But his Bill does not target gay scouts in particular and he has not specifically called for the execution of scouts who are gay. The threat to gay scouts in Uganda is implicit, not explicit.

Apologies for my lack of clarity. Below is a revised, corrected version of the news release, together with some new information about the Uganda Bill.

Peter Tatchell – London, UK

In his revised press release, Tatchell asks that UK readers write to their members of Parliament about the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

Click here to read the revised news release.

Bahati Won’t Attend the National Prayer Breakfast, But Others From Uganda Will

Jim Burroway

January 28th, 2010

The Voice of America’s Straight Talk Africa television program this week featured a discussion of the secretive evangelical group known as the Family or the Fellowship and its connections to Uganda. Appearing on the program were Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, and Bob Hunter of the Family.

Hunter explained that Ugandan MP David Bahati, author of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, had been invited earlier this year to attend the National Prayer Breakfast on February 4. That invitation was extended before Bahati introduced the draconian bill into Parliament. Hunter said that Bahati had not accepted the invitation, and was surprised to see Bahati’s boast in Uganda’s Daily Monitor that he would be there. Then, during the program, Bahati himself called in briefly to the program and confirmed that he will not attend the Family’s National Prayer Breakfast “because of a prior engagement.”

But here’s an interesting detail. Hunter reiterated that Bahati’s invitation had been to be a “volunteer” rather than to attend the event itself. (Hunter had also described Bahati’s invitation the same way when he first confirmed that Bahati wasn’t going to attend the Breakfast.) But on the VOA program, Hunter offered a few more details. As he described it, if someone is invited to attend the National Prayer Breakfast for a second time, the invitation is to serve as a volunteer to accompany a larger delegation — in this case, a delegation from Uganda — but not to attend the Breakfast itself. In other words, Bahati has attended the Prayer Breakfast before, but this time he was asked to facilitate the attendance of a delegation from Uganda at the Breakfast.

So who’s coming? We don’t know. But just because Bahati can’t attend due to a “prior engagement,” that doesn’t mean the rest of the Uganda delegation won’t be there.

If I were to put together a “watch list” of Ugandans associated with this bill, I think it would include:

• President Yoweri Museveni
• First Lady and State Minister for Karamoja Janet Museveni.
• Attorney General Khidu Makubuya. He is heading the Cabinet subcommittee examining so-called “compromises” to the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, and is believed to be a supporter of the bill.
• Regional Affairs State Minister Isaac Musumba is on the subcommittee. I don’t know his position on the bill.
• Education Minister Namirembe Bitamazire is on the subcommittee. I don’t know his position in the bill.
• Gender Minister Gabriel Opiyo is on the subcommittee. I don’t know his position on the bill.
• Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo is on the subcommittee, has been a very strong supporter from the very beginning.
• Uganda’s Speaker of Parliament Edward Ssekandi has urged passage of the bill.
• Deputy Parliament Speaker Rebecca Kadaga also appears to be a strong supporter.

And, of course, Pastors Martin Ssempa, Steven Langa, David Kiganda, Henry Mina, and Julius Oyett should also be on the watch list.

Update: Bob Hunter of the Family left a comment below to say that these people are not coming to the Prayer Breakfast. That leaves open the question of who is coming and whether they are supporters of the bill or not.

[Hat tip: Warren Throckmorton]

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

Uganda’s Cabinet Debates Anti-Gay Bill

Jim Burroway

January 20th, 2010

Uganda’s state-owned New Vision reports that a “heated” Cabinet meeting took place yesterday to discuss the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. The discussions don’t look good:

Sources said the Cabinet was divided on the clause spelling out the death penalty. After failing to agree on a position, works minister John Nasasira reportedly proposed that the Bill be delayed. His position was rejected, sources disclosed.

This suggests that there are people in the cabinet who don’t even want the death penalty removed, let alone any of the other draconian and wide-ranging provisions of the proposed legislation. The independent Daily Monitor reports that MP David Bahati, the bill’s sponsor, said that he is willing to amend the proposed law in a way “without putting the values of the country at risk. He was tight-lipped about the Cabinet meeting itself.

The cabinet decided to form a sub-committee headed by Attorney General Khidu Makubuya to suggest amendments to the bill. Other members of the sub-committee include Regional Affairs State Minister Isaac Musumba, Education Minister Namirembe Bitamazire, Gender Minister Gabriel Opiyo, and Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo. Buturo has been one of the bill’s strongest proponents.

It looks like any hope that the bill would be withdrawn is diminishing. Merely “amending” the bill would still leave a bill that would represent a staggering setback for human rights in Uganda. As the bill is currently written, it would:

• Expand the definitions for homosexual acts, making conviction easier. Current law requires evidence of penetration. The new law would expand the definition of homosexual activity to”touch(ing) another person with the intention of committing the act of homosexuality.” Touching itself is defined as “touching—(a) with any part of the body; (b) with anything else; (c) through anything; and in particular includes touching amounting to penetration of any sexual organ. anus or mouth.”
• Affirm Uganda’s lifetime imprisonment for those convicted of homosexuality.
• Define a new crime of “aggravated homosexuality” for those who engage in sex with someone under the age of 18, who are HIV-positive, who is a “repeat offender” (so broadly defined as to include anyone who has had a relationship with more than one person, or who had sex with the same person more than once), or who had sex with a disabled person (consensual or not). The penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” is death by hanging.
• Require anyone arrested on suspicion of homosexuality to undergo HIV testing to determine the individual’s qualification for prosecution of “aggravated homosexuality.”
• Criminalize “attempted homosexuality” with imprisonment for seven years.
• Criminalize “promoting” homosexuality with fines and imprisonment for between five and seven years. This overly-broad provision would criminalize all speech and peaceful assembly for those who advocate on behalf of LGBT citizens in Uganda . It would also criminalize any attempt to repeal or modify the law in the future, as those moves could also be seen as “promoting” homosexuality.
• Criminalize “aiding and abetting homosexuality” with seven years imprisonment. This provision could be used against anyone extending counseling, medical care, or otherwise providing aide gay people.
• Criminalize the act of obtaining a same-sex marriage abroad with lifetime imprisonment.
• Add a clause which forces friends or family members to report LGBT persons to police within 24-hours of learning about that individual’s homosexuality or face fines or imprisonment for up to three years.
• Penalize people who run “brothels” with five to seven years imprisonment for renting to LGBT people. However, it defines a brothel as “a house, room, set of rooms or place of any kind for the purposes of homosexuality” instead of the more normal definition of a place where commercial sex work takes place. Anyone’s bedroom would be a “brothel” under this definition, placing landlords and hotel owners in jeopardy for renting to LGBT people.
• Add an extra-territorial and extradition provisions, allowing Uganda to prosecute LGBT Ugandans living abroad.
• Void all international treaties, agreements and human rights obligations which conflict with this bill.

It’s impossible to imagine any amendments short of a “strike-all” amendment that would represent a material improvement to the bill.

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

Is Uganda’s “Kill-the-Gays” Bill Author Coming to Washington or Not?

Jim Burroway

January 19th, 2010

Frankly, my ability to take anyone at their word is very strained right now. Ugandan MP David Bahati, the guy who can’t wait to begin killing gay people or throwing them into a Ugandan prison for the rest of their lives (is there really a difference?), says he’s coming to Washington, D.C. to attend the National Prayer Breakfast on February 4. Bob Hunter and others connected with the secretive Evangelical group known as The Family have told Warren Throckmorton that Bahati’s not invited and he won’t be allowed in. That’s fine, I guess, if I could trust this information. We’ve heard directly from Bahati; why can’t we hear directly from Doug Coe, the head of the Family?

The Fellowship’s obsession with secrecy means that nobody with recognized authority within the Family has said anything about Bahati, let alone the Anti-Homosexuality Bill that is now before Uganda’s Parliament and which appears to have strong support among people associated with the Family. Bob Hunter, a Family member who has deep ties in Uganda, has appeared on NPR and Rachel Maddow to say that the Family doesn’t like the bill, but read the transcript again. Is he authorized to speak definitively on behalf of the Family?

MADDOW: Have you had to get permission to do this interview? Are you here with The Fellowship‘s blessing?

HUNTER: No.

MADDOW: No?

HUNTER: No, I didn‘t. I first went on National Public Radio, because I felt like I was scandalized on National Public Radio by name. And that‘s why I started talking out.

Okay, so Hunter is speaking because he felt scandalized, not because he’s speaking on behalf of the Family. That is most certainly his prerogative. But he was so intent on defending himself that he forgot what he wanted to do on Maddow’s show. According to Jeff Sharlet:

He said he’d planned to talk about Senator Jim Inhofe, the fiercely anti-gay politician who is listed in Family documents as the “U.S. leader” responsible for working with Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni. Bob said he wants to see Inhofe take a bolder stand against this awful bill. But he got sidetracked.

Sidetracked is right. I’m glad he spoke against the bill. I’m also glad to hear him say that he knows others within the Fellowship who are against it. The last thing I want to do is throw cold water on that.

But I’m going to anyway. Because, you see, I know a lot of devout Catholics who worked to try to defeat anti-marriage amendments. Fortunately, they rarely do it by going on the offensive against Episcopalians who also want to defeat the amendments. But that aside, we all know that it’s what the leaders are doing that matters, and Catholic leaders have no qualms about letting everyone know where they stand. That’s why it’s impossible for anyone to claim that the Catholic Church opposes what they clearly support: anti-marriage amendments everywhere. There is no ambiguity about where the organization stands, whatever some members of it may believe personally.

But we have yet to hear from anyone in authority from the Family say anything about the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, and that leaves a truckload of ambiguity to deal with. Call me paranoid, but I think that this is exactly what they want. You see, the way things stand right now, Bahati can say whatever he wants — he can say he’s going to the National Prayer Breakfast even if he’s really not going. True or not, he can use that to build up his own political capital in Uganda with nary a contradictory whiff from the Family. Meanwhile, the Family’s silence means that Bahati isn’t embarrassed, nor are any other Family members like, say, Uganda President Yoweri Museveni. Bahati’s (and possibly Museveni’s) cherished dream goes forward, and the Family’s ties to Uganda’s political establishment remain intact. Everybody’s happy, except of course gay people in Uganda.

But on the other hand, maybe Bahati really is going to the National Prayer Breakfast. And maybe key members of the Fellowship — not Hunter, not people he knows, but others — support the kill-the-gays bills or its practically-equivalent effort, or at least are willing to look the other way. Meanwhile, those who are passing their assurances on the Warren Throckmorton may not be quite as in-the-know as they honestly think they are. How are we to know? And given the gravity of the situation, why should we go on their word while the Fellowship’s leaders maintain their useful silence? We shouldn’t, and more importantly we can’t afford to.

So, are Mr. Bahati or any other Ugandan political leaders going to Washington? I don’t know. Bahati says he is; Hunter says no. Does the Family support or oppose the Anti-Homosexuality Bill? Hunter says they oppose, but Sharlet says the group is divided and Hunter would appear to agree, especially if it’s true that Hunter went on Maddow to pressure Sen. Inhofe into taking a bolder stand (and failed). Only Doug Coe can answer all of this definitively, and pretty easily too. For the sake of all that is decent and humane, it’s time for Coe’s yes to be yes, and his no to be no. Silence is not an answer and time has almost run out.

So unless I hear it from Coe or another recognized senior leader who is officially authorized to speak on behalf of the Family, I’m sticking with the only first-person account I’ve seen so far. If trust is in short supply around here, it’s because the people who really matter have not lifted a finger to try to earn it.

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

Uganda’s “Kill-The-Gays” Bill Author Coming to National Prayer Breakfast

Jim Burroway

January 16th, 2010

That’s according to a feature story in Uganda’s largest independent newspaper, The Sunday Monitor:

In February, David Bahati, the mover of the controversial Anti-Homosexuality Bill is expected to attend a prayer breakfast in the American capital of DC.

Mr Bahati, according to reports, may speak at the event where President Barack Obama – a gays-tolerant liberal president, is also expected to attend. On Friday, Mr Bahati said he would attend. The event is organised by The Fellowship- a conservative Christian organisation, which has deep political connections and counts several high-ranking conservative politicians in its membership.

“I intend to attend the prayer breakfast,” said Mr Bahati – himself a part organiser of the Ugandan equivalent of the national prayer breakfast. This week, citing international pressure, President Yoweri Museveni advised his party’s National Executive Committee, his cabinet and the NRM parliamentary caucus to “go slow” on the Bill.

MP David Bahati is the sponsor of the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill that is now before Uganda’s Parliament. He is also a member of the secretive American evangelical group known as the Family, which founded and organizes the National Prayer Breakfast held on the first Thursday in February, typically at the Washington Hilton on Connecticut Avenue N.W. The Monitor reports that the Family has invited Bahati to the prayer breakfast.

Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo, another  is also said to be planning on attending the National Prayer Breakfast as well.

I find it absolutely incredible that secretive Family would risk this kind of attention at their premiere event. Did the Family actually extend an invitation to Bahati, as he has told The Monitor? If they did, will they honor that invitation or will they publicly repudiate their connections with Bahati and Buturo as had been suggested?

Also, every U.S. President since Eisenhower has attended and spoken at the breakfast. Will President Obama agree to share the same room with these two would-be murderers?

I think it’s a good time to convene a special session of the rainbow welcoming committee.

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

Beware of a “Compromise” In Uganda

Jim Burroway

January 15th, 2010

Uganda’s independent Monitor reports that the Speaker of Uganda’s Parliament Edward Ssekandi insists that, despite President Yoweri Museveni’s call for a “discussion” of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill due to international outrage and the prospect of forfeiting badly needed donor aid, the bill will go forward in Parliament:

Uganda's Speaker of Parliament, Edward Ssekandi

Mr Ssekandi said: “There is no way we can be intimidated by remarks from the President to stop the Bill. This Bill was officially tabled in Parliament and was subsequently committed to a committee for scrutiny. The President has a right to express his views like any other people who have petitioned me.”

He added: “This was a private members’ Bill and if the Executive wants to bring their views they are free. The Constitution is clear, it doesn’t allow people of the same sex to get married and what we are looking for in the Bill is (basically) the penalty and the process should continue.”

When Museveni announced to the Executive Council of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) that his Cabinet would sit down with fellow party member MP David Bahati to discuss the wide-ranging and draconian bill, many observers saw it as a signal that the bill would be withdrawn. But since then, we’ve noticed that while Uganda’s state-owned media gave Museveni’s remarks prominent play (the state-owned New Vision, the country’s largest daily newspaper, has mostly ignored the Anti-Homosexuality Bill until now), it has also been extremely cautious about reporting what the implications of his remarks might be. Meanwhile Bahati has remained defiant, insisting that he will proceed in pushing the so-called “kill-the-gays” bill through Parliament, and now it appears that the Parliament’s Speaker has Bahati’s back.

Museveni justified his announced intervention by telling the NRM gathering that the repercussions of the bill has gone beyond the borders of Uganda and has become a ign policy issue. But Voice of American yesterday reported that Uganda’s Foreign Affairs Minister Henry Okello Oryem now denies that the government is backing away from the draconian legislation because of foreign policy implications:

Foreign Affairs Minister Henry Okello Oryem

The minister said the president’s remarks to party members was in response to a recent war of words in the media between senior government officials over the gay bill, with one minister stating the government’s position was that the bill was “not necessary.”

“What the president was trying to say was that when it comes to those kind of issues that are related to the current issues relating to homosexuality – will aid be cut, will it affect our relations with other countries, and so forth – nobody has the right to comment on those matters except him as the president, and then it will be integrated by the Foreign Affairs [ministry],” said Oryem.

So what’s happening? It’s hard to know. Uganda is effectively a one-party state (Museveni’s NRM controls more than two-thirds of Parliament) and Museveni is about to begin his twenty-fifth year in power. In many ways, he rules as a strongman, closing radio stations and declaring opposition demonstrations “illegal” whenever it suits him. Uganda’s 1995 Constitution (PDF: 459KB/a whopping 192 pages!) calls for an “independent” Electoral Commission, but all seven members of the commission are appointed by the President. The constitution originally called for term limits on the President, but that was amended in 2005 to remove those limits and allow Museveni to run for a third term in 2006.

In fact, with the NRM dominating Parliament as it does, Museveni can change the constitution pretty much at will, and there are suspicions that he may do so again to gain a further advantage in the upcoming 2011 elections. The NRM, not surprisingly, has already named him as their candidate for a fourth term. Assuming he wins and completes that term, he will have held power for thirty-one years. Uganda has not had a peacful change of government since its independence in 1962. Museveni came to power after overthrowing his predecessor in a civil war in 1985. Museveni’s predecessor, Milton Obote, came to power following an invasion from Tanzania in 1979 which overthrew Idi Amin.  Despite the U.S. Congress having mandated that the State Department closely scrutinize the upcoming elections, few people expect a peaceful change in government next year.

None of these are the hallmarks of a transparent, functioning democracy. And yet, NRM appears to be a rather fractious party these days. In addition to competing statements on the Anti-Homosexuality Bill from various NRM ministers even after Museveni spoke on the subject, delegates at the NRM gathering openly challenged Museveni on his preferences for appointing fellow members of his Ankole tribe to key positions and steering the country’s resources to western Uganda, his home area.

Unlike his predecessors, Museveni  seems to tolerate a measure of dissent, but this tolerance only goes so far and it extends to those areas which are useful to him. While he has no qualms about banning demonstrations by opposition parties and deploying a huge show of force to prevent them from taking place, Museveni has been remarkably “tolerant” of announced massive anti-gay rallies. Pentecostal pastor Martin Ssempa, who has close ties to several American evangelical groups as well as to Museveni and the First Lady (who also happens to hold a seat in Parliament), has just announced a”million-man” march for February 17 in support of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

So let’s not be fooled into thinking that Uganda is a free-wheeling and fully functioning democracy. It isn’t, and Museveni holds all of the cards where the future of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill is concerned. And we must not forget this, because Museveni may point to those appearances of an open and functioning democracy as an excuse for refusing to prevail upon Bahati to withdraw the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, even though this is something which Museveni could very easily do without breaking a sweat.

The danger then, is that we may see a “compromise” in the works, which would be just as disastrous for human rights as having the bill become law unchanged. To see what I mean, consider what the bill does now. If passed, it would:

• Expand the definitions for homosexual acts, making conviction easier. Current law requires evidence of penetration. The new law would expand the definition of homosexual activity to”touch(ing) another person with the intention of committing the act of homosexuality.” Touching itself is defined as “touching—(a) with any part of the body; (b) with anything else; (c) through anything; and in particular includes touching amounting to penetration of any sexual organ. anus or mouth.”
• Affirm Uganda’s lifetime imprisonment for those convicted of homosexuality.
• Define a new crime of “aggravated homosexuality” for those who engage in sex with someone under the age of 18, who are HIV-positive, who is a “repeat offender” (so broadly defined as to include anyone who has had a relationship with more than one person, or who had sex with the same person more than once), or who had sex with a disabled person (consensual or not). The penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” is death by hanging.
• Require anyone arrested on suspicion of homosexuality to undergo HIV testing to determine the individual’s qualification for prosecution of “aggravated homosexuality.”
• Criminalize “attempted homosexuality” with imprisonment for seven years.
• Criminalize “promoting” homosexuality with fines and imprisonment for between five and seven years. This overly-broad provision would criminalize all speech and peaceful assembly for those who advocate on behalf of LGBT citizens in Uganda . It would also criminalize any attempt to repeal or modify the law in the future, as those moves could also be seen as “promoting” homosexuality.
• Criminalize “aiding and abetting homosexuality” with seven years imprisonment. This provision could be used against anyone extending counseling, medical care, or otherwise providing aide gay people.
• Criminalize the act of obtaining a same-sex marriage abroad with lifetime imprisonment.
• Add a clause which forces friends or family members to report LGBT persons to police within 24-hours of learning about that individual’s homosexuality or face fines or imprisonment for up to three years.
• Penalize people who run “brothels” with five to seven years imprisonment for renting to LGBT people. However, it defines a brothel as “a house, room,set of rooms or place of any kind for the purposes of homosexuality” instead of the more normal definition of a place where commercial sex work takes place. Anyone’s bedroom would be a “brothel” under this definition, placing landlords and hotel owners in jeopardy for renting to LGBT people.
• Add an extra-territorial and extradition provisions, allowing Uganda to prosecute LGBT Ugandans living abroad.
• Void all international treaties, agreements and human rights obligations which conflict with this bill.

There can clearly be no “compromise.” Should even one provision of this bill survive, it would still represent a disastrous setback for human rights in Uganda. It could also, not surprisingly, become a powerful tool that Museveni could deploy against his political opponents with devastating effect.

In 1999, Museveni ordered a campaign of mass arrests under the current anti-gay law. “I have told the CID (Criminal Investigations Department) to look for homosexuals, lock them up and charge them,” he announced. Several people were jailed. Five men and women who had formed Right Companion, a fledgling LGBT group, were beaten and tortured by police and the women were sexually abused. Others fled the country in fear. The survival of any part of this proposed bill will result in anti-gay pogroms which will make 1999 look like child’s play.

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

Video: Ugandan MP Remains Defiant on Anti-Gay Bill

Jim Burroway

January 14th, 2010

Uganda’s independent NTV Television maintains a YouTube channel, but unfortunately not all NTV news reports get uploaded. An anonyous BTB reader in Uganda sent this clip from the January 13 broadcast of “NTV Tonight.” It includes reactions from MP David Bahati, sponsor of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, to President Yoweri Museveni’s remarks that his cabinet will “discuss” the bill with Bahati. Bahati responds:

“We welcome the comment of the president on this bill and the need to engage with cabinet to ensure that we have a fine piece of legislation that will protect our children, defend our traditional family as we know it, between a man and a woman.”

Interviewer: “Are you intimidated by the pressure that is mounting?”

Bahati: “As pressure intensifies, we are also intensifying prayer and we are happy that the religious leaders are engaged in this matter.”

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

Click here to read the transcript.

Voice Of America on Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill

Jim Burroway

January 13th, 2010

The Voice of America’s hour-long Straight Talk Africa television program today was devoted to Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Today’s program featured Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power; Ugandan MP David Bahati, sponsor of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill; Matt Kavanagh of the Health Gap Coalition; and Olara A. Otunnu, Former Ambassador of Uganda to the U.N. (1980-1985).

Some background on Otunno is warrented. He was ambassador for the government of Milton Obote, who was overthrown by Uganda’s current President Yoweri Museveni in a civil war. Otunnu is a member of the Obote’s Ugandan People’s Congress, and he is actively courting the divided party’s nomination for the 2011 presidential elections.

The program is available this week for download.

David Bahati continues to assert that “homosexuality is learned and can be unlearned” (wonder where he got that idea?), and characterized gays as being predators who “recruit” children in schools (wonder where he got that idea?), and that is why, he says, the bill is essential. Bahati insisted that Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni “has common ground” with Bahati on the need for the bill.

Bahati was asked if he was a member of The Family. He acknowledged having “friends” in Washington and having attended the National Prayer Breakfast which is organized by the Family. However, he denied that the Family had any input to the bill.

Matt Kavanagh pointed out that the provisions in the proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill would criminalize efforts to treat and prevent HIV/AIDS in the LGBT community, since providing such aide could be seen as “aiding and abetting” homosexuality with prison sentences of five to seven years. “Driving people underground is a horrible public health policy. It means only that you are going to increase the spread of HIV.”

Jeff Sharlet talked about the tremendous influence people like Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), who “adopted” Uganda and has a close personal relationship with President Museveni. He said that Museveni, and Bahati are members of the Family, but that the Family is now shedding its secretive image in order to “throw Mr. Bahati under the bus” in order to protect their relationship with Museveni, which the Family considers their more valuable asset.

Sharlet confirmed that Uganda’s Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo plans to attend the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. on February 4th. Buturo has been a heavy promoter of the draconian anti-gay bill throughout the year, having responded to the anti-gay conference put on in Kampala by three American anti-gay extremists with promises to “strengthen” Uganda’s law against homosexuality. Uganda’s laws against “crimes against nature” already provide for lifetime imprisonment. Buturo’s very office was created at the suggestion by the Family.

Ambassador Otunnu denounced the death penalty aspects of the bill and said that all Ugandans deserve equal human rights, but called for sensitivity to the “deeply held traditions and cultures of particular societies. …When a society  sees suddenly a practice that was not (known to be) so widespread, it begins to ask questions, it goes into shock, it begins to panic, and you see reaction which can be irrational.” He went on:

I am very sad that it has taken the issue of homosexuals for key western leaders and key western governments to discover the human rights disaster in Uganda. We’ve had genocide in Northern Uganda for fifteen years, no comments from any high officials in the West.  We had thirty people massacred in the streets of Kampala on the tenth of September the last. No high level comments. We have torture chambers in Kampala as we speak. WE have widespread corruption, fraud in elections. So I’m very disappointed that is has taken this issue to have any comment on human rights, and even then the comments are not about human rights in general in Uganda, but specific to the fate of homosexuals.

Much of the rest of the program was devoted preparations for the 2011 elections, which international observers fear will not be free and fair.

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

Ugandan State-Owned TV’s Cautious Coverage of Museveni’s Remarks

Jim Burroway

January 13th, 2010

Uganda’s state-owned UBC television this morning featured Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s comments made yesterday during an Executive Council meeting of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party meeting at State House, Entebbe about the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. In these videos, provided by an anonymous BTB reader in Uganda, we see a report on Museveni’s remarks.

As you can see, the report on state-owned TV, which is followed by remarks by Deputy Attorney General Fred Ruhindi, is extremely cautious and does not speculate on the implications of Museveni’s remarks. Early coverage by the state-owned newspaper New Vision gave Museveni’s remarks extraordinarily large and thorough coverage, but offered no analysis of the bill’s future either. However, New Vision printed another article quoting Executive Director of the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative, Livingston Sewanyana, as backing Museveni’s remarks, saying that the bill infringes on human rights. This is, I believe, the first time this opinion has been reported in the state-owned paper.

Independent media has been less cautious. The earlier report by NTV speculated that Museveni’s remarks might be a “nail in the coffin” for the draconian anti-gay bill. Uganda’s independent Monitor newspaper, which is owned by the same media group as NTV, this morning said:

He also left Ndorwa West MP David Bahati holding the can, when he, for the first time publicly, disowned the legislator’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009, saying it does not represent the party or government position.

As for Bahati himself, he was reportedly on WBS television last night, still determined to push the bill through Parliament.

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

Click here to see a transcript of the UBC television reports

Ugandan MP Refuses To Withdraw Anti-Gay Bill

Jim Burroway

January 8th, 2010

Late last night, we noticed an item in Uganda’s largest independent newspaper reporting that the Ugandan Minister of State for Investment Aston Kajara said that the government would ask MP David Bahati to withdraw the Anti-Homosexuality Bill due to backlash from foreign investors. Now the Associated Press reports that MP David Bahati, the lawmaker who introduced the private member’s bill, will not back down:

“I stand by the bill,” Bahati said. “I will not withdraw it. We have our children in schools to protect against being recruited into (homosexuality). The process of legislating a law to protect our children against homosexuality and defending our family values must go on.”

Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo also insists that debate on the bill will take place in about three weeks, claiming that “there is no way government can withdraw that bill.” He also warns that any elected politician who opposed the legislation would be comitting “political suicide.” Parliamentary and presidential elections are scheduled for 2011.

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

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Ssempa and Bahati Discuss Uganda’s Anti-Gay Bill

Jim Burroway

December 27th, 2009

Our anonymous reader in Uganda has sent us some more fascinating video from state-run UBC television. In these series of clips, taken from the program Matters of Policy broadcast on December 23, 2009, Pentecostal pastor Martin Ssempa and member of Parliament David Bahati discuss the proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill that is now before Parliament.

In the first part, Ssempa announces a nationwide rally for January 19, 2010 in support of the bill. Bahati says the bill is necessary to fight a “creepng evil in our society,” alleging that wealthy gays are recruiting children in schools. This is a recurring theme in Uganda’s stereotypes about gay people, a stereotype that was vigorously reinforced by the March 5-7 conference put on by three American anti-gay activists.

In the second part of the video, Martin Ssempa rails against Barack Obama and other foreign leaders for denouncing the Anti-gay bill. He also completely misrepresents the “aggravated homosexuality” clause of the proposed bill, which provides the death penalty for LGBT people under certain circumstances. Ssempa claims that those circumstances are limited to rape or child sexual abuse. In fact, the proposed bill (the full text of which we’ve posted online) defines “aggravated homosxuality” this way:

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 other words, the bill also includes anyone who is HIV-positive (and mandates testing of anyone suspected of homosexuality to determine their eligibility for the death sentence) or anyone who is a “serial offender” — which could include anyone who has had more than one partner in his or her lifetime. Ssempa (and Bahati) are clearly lying when they claim that “aggravated homosexuality” is limited to rape or molestation. The text of Bahati’s own bill proves the lie.

In the third part, Bahati insists that the bill will not be dropped. He says that it is now before the Parliamentary Committee of Legal Affairs and also the Presidential Affairs Committee. He believes the bill will pass when Parliament returns from recess in February. He and Ssempa also claim to have been under death threats since the bill was introduced. In a recent story by the independent Daily Monitor, Bahati claims that a cousin is missing and blames the controversy over the anti-gay bill, but he doesn’t repeat that claim here. (That story has now gone missing from the Monitor’s web site.)

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

Click here to read a transcript of the Ssempa and Bahati interview.

Bahati Refuses To Answer Questions About Ties To “The Family”

Jim Burroway

December 18th, 2009

Ugandan MP David Bahati, the prime sponsor of the proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill, appeared in an interview on BBC’s World Service yesterday. It’s worth listening to, if only to hear first-hand how the draconian bill is being sold in Uganda.

There are two key points here worth mention. First, beginning at about the 5:25 mark, the BBC interviewer tries to get Bahati to say whether or not he is a member of the U.S.-based secretive Christian group known as The Family:

BBC: Is it true that you’re a member of The Family, also known as the Fellowship?

Bahati: [pause] Uh, these are the facts on the ground. Do we have friends that are beyond Uganda? Yes, we have them. Did they have an input to this bill? No, they didn’t.

BBC: Okay. The reason I ask that for the listeners who aren’t familiar, this is a very well-connected, pretty hard-core Christian group based in the United States with friends in many countries. If course, the reason I asked it is if you are a member, are you getting help from America?

Bahati: No, we are not getting any support. This is a home-grown bill. It’s a bill made by Ugandans for Ugandans, and for the good of mankind in the world. And we are saying, who are we to condone what God condemns?

BBC: You didn’t answer whether you are a member of the family or not, Mr. Bahati.

Bahati: Since we moved this bill, there has been a lot of manipulation and deception, especially by the pro-gay groups to try and spin the story.

BBC: A simple no would suffice if it is not the case.

Bahati: I just wanted to put it into context because the world we live in is not as simple as you are suggesting. But what I am saying is, did I get … am I getting any support from abroad? I’m saying no. Do I have friends abroad? Yes, I have them. Are they supporting or praying for me? I hope that some people are really praying for me on this one.

A second important event occurs at the about the 3:33 mark in which the BBC interviewer, after having listened to Bahati’s justification for the bill, observes:

The language you are using, Mr. Bahati, is redolent, frankly, of Nazi Germany. You’re talking about reclaiming people who have been corrupted. You’ve got another clause about forcing people to tell the authorities about anybody they know who is gay.

Interesting that Bahati didn’t take offense at the comparison, nor did he try to draw any contrasts between himself and Nazi Germany.

[Hat tip: Andy Harley at UK Gay News]

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

“The Family” Opposes Uganda’s “Kill Gays” Bill

Jim Burroway

December 16th, 2009

Jeff Sharlet, of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, wrote a guest post on Warren Throckmorton’s web site which updates his November appearance on NPR’s Fresh Air where he revealed ties between the secretive Evangelical movement known as “The Family” and Uganda’s politicians behind the proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill. In this latest guest post, Sharlet says that The Family opposes the bill and key members are working behind the scenes to stop it from becoming law.

In Sharlet’s book, he identified Bob Hunter as a key organizer for The Family in Uganda during the 1980′s becoming friends with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and helping him establish the Ugandan Prayer Breakfast. Sharlet was finally able to get in contact with Hunter and spent an afternoon detailing the events in Uganda. Sharlet writes:

We agreed that the first step was a statement making clear Bob’s opposition to the bill. Moreover, Bob adds “I know of no one involved in Uganda with the Fellowship here in America, including the most conservative among them, that supports such things as killing homosexuals or draconian reporting requirements, much less has gone over to Uganda to push such positions.”

That’s very, very good news. The Fellowship prefers to avoid the limelight; Bob has forsaken that to make clear his position and that of his American associates: The Fellowship, AKA the Family, opposes the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill. [Emphases in the original.]

In his book, Sharlet pointed out that while the Family has a strongly conservative bent, they do not exclude liberals or moderates from their ranks. Hunter had previously served in the Ford and Carter administrations, and had a strong background in consumer advocacy. Sharlet writes:

Over the course of the afternoon he [Hunter] shared with me his experience working with the Fellowship in Burundi, Rwanda, and South Africa. While I may take issue with the Fellowship’s behind-the-scenes approach, there’s no denying that in each of these cases Bob and his associates were working toward extremely admirable ends, and that in the case of Burundi Bob’s efforts helped make the difference that brought a truce to that country’s warring factions. Bob did what he did with the best of intentions, and, in several instances, achieved the best of outcomes.

While Sharlet exonerates Hunter’s role in the development of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, and further says that no American Family member has played a direct role in it’s promotion. But he notes the religious revival that has taken place in Uganda since the 1980′s and the prominent role Americans, including Family members, have played in shaping the rhetorical nature of that revival including its anti-gay aspects. And he believes that those Family members have a special responsibility, which many of them are not living up to:

I’d add that through the Fellowship, a number of anti-gay American politicians have involved themselves with Ugandan affairs, most notably Senator James Inhofe, who has spoken of having “adopted” Uganda and who has been a guest at multiple Ugandan National Prayer Breakfasts. I don’t believe James Inhofe told David Bahati to push this legislation. I believe Inhofe when he says – under pressure – that he’s opposed to it. But the fact is, these powerful politicians, representatives of the most powerful nation on the world and its foreign aid generosity, are clear and candid in their opposition to homosexuality. That’s their right. But I believe they should therefore be even more clear and candid in their opposition to its criminalization. Theirs is a personal, religious position.  They should extra precautions to make clear that these positions are in absolutely no way linked to the relationships between the United States and foreign aid recipients. Not only have they not done that, they resisted even condemning the bill.

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

“Hey Gay Pervert”: A Gay Ugandan’s Conversation With A Legislator

Jim Burroway

December 16th, 2009

Yesterday we posted exclusive clips from the print edition of Uganda’s largest independent newspaper The Monitor, which provided several examples of how ordinary Ugandans talk about gay people. Today GayUganda posted a series of emails from an exchange he had with MP Benson Obua-Ogwal, who has been identified as a co-sponsor who helped draft the proposed Anti-Homosexuality Act. These emails give us a good sense of how some Ugandan politicians talk to gay people:

Hey Gay Pervert,

How about this one coming from all religious leaders across board right here at home?:

www.monitor.co.ug/artman/publish/news/Church_
leaders_back_govt_on_anti-gay_Bill_95758.shtml

We love gays, but hate homosexuality which has no place here.

Forget about the Bill being withdrawn, for it will be passed in due time.

Benson.

There’s much more at GayUganda’s website.

MP Obua-Ogwal has been identified as a core member of the American-based College of Prayer International, which established a Ugandan campus under the leadership of Julius Oyet. Obua-Ogwa and MP David Bahati, the proposed bill’s sponsor, were two of eight MP’s appointed to serve on the College of Prayer’s “servant leadership team.”

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

David Bahati Is A Boy Scout — And Other Examples of Ugandans Talking About Gay People

Jim Burroway

December 15th, 2009

A BTB reader from Uganda sent some fascinating clips from the independent Daily Monitor, saying “people are actually talking and thinking, so… that’s another positive development.” I hope he’s right. The items he sent give us some indication of the kind of talking and thinking that is taking place as a result of the controversy surrounding the proposed Anti-Homosexuality Act.

The first item shows the negativity surrounding the discussion, with an article in yesterday’s Daily Monitor being a great example of how gay people in Uganda are blamed for just about everything including the political misfortunes of some top leaders. The Monitor runs a special feature called “Funny You Should Ask…” and yesterday Edwin Nuwagaba interviewed Mike Mukula, a former state Minister for Health. So who’s to blame for Mukula being identified as one of the most corrupt people in Uganda? Not political opponents, and of course not himself because he’s obviously a very innocent and virtuous politician. It’s gay people:

Don’t you feel ashamed after being named in the book of Shame and Fame as one of the most corrupt people in Uganda?
I don’t, because first of all that report is backed by Action Aid and it has support of the gay community. It should have been scientific that the people who have been convicted should have been the ones to be named and shamed. What happens if one is cleared by the Supreme Court? Do they go to Google and clear his image? I am a strong anti corruption crusader and tI think corruption should be fought.

So do you want to say that the gay people are against you?
Uganda is now under attack by the gay community globally, so people need to understand that prominent people in government will be taken on. This is a storm in a tea cup. It has got political origins. Corruption is a national and global matter it should never be used to demonize individuals.

But for balance, The Sunday Monitor also carried a column by Robert Kalumba, asking “Is the Church hypocritical when it comes to homosexuality?” That article recounts the various sex scandals in the Catholic Church, as well as Ted Haggard’s fall from grace along with a long line of American and Ugandan pastors that have been accused of sexual misconduct or have been forced to resign from their churches due to sex scandals. Kalumba has detected a glaring double standard:

So, according to the Bible, like homosexuality, divorce among other “vices” is forbidden. So why has the famous televangelist Pastor Juanita Bynum divorced her husband Bishop Weeks, who actually is planning to get married for the third time? Why isn’t the church throwing Mark’s verse to all church divorcees that fill their pews on Sundays? Why don’t they encourage women whose dead husbands have left no male heirs to engage in sex orgies with their brothers-in-law?

Some will argue that those biblical texts are taken out of context but the same can be said about verses that seem to denounce homosexuality.

Our reader says that the print version of this column had a cartoon of two men kissing, a rarity for Ugandan media.

In other news, Ugandan member of Parliament David Bahati, in addition to being the author of a bill imposing the penalty of death by hanging on LGBT people and criminalizing anyone who knows or associates with them, is also the chairman of the Uganda Scouts Board. There’s photo in yesterday’s Daily Monitor of Bahati receiving a scouting kerchief during a East African Scouting conference held in Kampala last Friday. We know that the Boy Scouts of America bans gays from the organization, and will drum out anyone who comes out. Given Bahati’s proposal for LGBT people, I wonder if Uganda’s scouts can earn a merit badge in tying nooses.

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