Box Turtle Bulletin

Scott Lively Initiates Renewed Push to Pass Uganda’s Anti-Gay Bill

After laying low for a while amid news reports that Ugandan leaders may quietly drop the draconian Anti-Homosexuality BIll, it appears that Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively has decided become a pitchman for the bill’s passage, albeit in a slightly altered form.

Grove City College professor Warren Throckmorton discovered via an email sent to supporters that Scott Lively has decided to “get off defense and counter-attack the false witnesses with hard facts about Uganda.” Toward that aim, Lively yesterday posted a letter on his web site dated March, 2010,  addressed to Edward Ssekandi, the speaker of Uganda’s Parliament. In that letter, Lively urges the prompt passage of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill with some minor modifications. Lively suggests that the death penalty be dropped from the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, but as Dr. Throckmorton notes, Lively’s position “sound(s) pragmatic rather than principled.” Lively writes:

First and foremost, the inclusion of capital punishment for what you have classed as “aggravated homosexuality” is, in my view, a disproportionately harsh penalty. You may not be aware that capital punishment has been banned in numerous countries, even for the most extreme cases of aggravated murder. This is held as such an important policy that these nations will often refuse to extradite criminals to their home countries (including the United States) if there is any possibility that they will be subject to capital punishment there. Advocating the “death penalty” for “mere” sexual crimes evokes such a severe negative reaction in most Western nations that all other aspects of the law, and the rationale for drafting it is ignored, and very “gay” movement we seek to oppose is strengthened by public sympathy they would not otherwise enjoy.

Conversely, if the “death penalty” provision were removed, it would take the wind out of the sails of their current campaign against the bill. With so much of the international opposition rooted in the idea that this is a “Kill the Gays” law, the removal of this provision would represent enough of a concession on your part that a great many of the people who are now siding with the homosexual movement out of sympathy would consider the matter resolved. The “gay” activists and their political allies will, of course, continue to attack the bill, but from a much weaker position.

Lively also argues that the provision requiring individuals to report gay people to police should be dropped as well. “it is too vague,” he writes, “and because it targets people who may live as homosexuals in their private lives, but who do not seek to recruit others or legitimize their lifestyle in the larger society.” He argues instead that they should enact a “provision along the lines of child abuse reporting requirements in the U.S.”, but with the cut-off age for reporting being extended to the age of twenty-five, which is well into adulthood:

I believe you could easily adapt this model to your purposes by imposing this same reporting requirement on anyone with knowledge of homosexuals who involve themselves with anyone under a certain age. If, for example, you encompassed all youths under the age of twenty-five within this shield of protection, you would stop virtually all “gay” recruitment in your country, since normal young men and women are usually firmly set in their heterosexual identity by their mid-twenties.

Lively also argues that the bill should encourage “rehabilitation,” which, given the already draconian lifetime imprisonment penalties under current Ugandan law for homosexuality, would amount to coercing LGBT people into unproven and harmful conversion therapies.

Individual leaders at Exodus International, North America’s largest ex-gay organization whose board member, Don Schmierer, spoke the March 5-7, 2010 conference in Kampala alongside Scott Lively prior to the introduction of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, have come out against forced therapy schemes, although to date we are still unable to find an official Exodus International position statement on its web site.

Officials with The National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), the so-called “secular” arm of the ex-gay movement, have also come out against coerced therapy schemes, although at this time I also cannot find a position to that effect on NARTH’s web site either. Because Lively refers to both organizations as “experts” in ex-gay matters, I believe, once again, that it is essential for Exodus and NARTH to place such statements on their web sites, since this is most certainly not the first time this issue has arisen.

Lively’s letter to Speaker Ssekandi does not appear to have reached the speaker directly, and the only reply that Lively posts on his web site comes from MP Charles Tuhaise, who received a copy of Lively’s letter via Ugandan pentecostal pastor Martin Ssempa. Tuhaise says that dropping the death penalty may be considered, but rejects Lively’s other suggestions, labelling them as part of the same failed strategy which allowed pornography to “[break] barriers in Western society and became insidious.” Tuhaise continues, “It’s like the proverbial ‘Camel and herdsman story’. Today it is a foot in the hut, tomorrow it is a leg in the hut, next day its the head in the hut; before long, the herdsman is tossed out of the hut.”

Tuhaise says, “Ultimately, I see no way out in taking a stand and paying the price,” and comments Luively for having “stood up to homosexual intimidation for so long as a lone voice.”