Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin has an excellent compilation of posts that looks at the movement behind the "kill gays" bill under debate in Uganda - a mind set that seems to be spreading to other African nations. What's behind it all? It would seem American Christianists who are Hell bent to see gays legislated out of existence in a manner that they have not been successful in implementing in the USA. As with the Roman Catholic Church, these far right religious extremists have found fertile ground in Africa with its relatively uneducated populace. Faux "facts" and arguments that fail to be accepted in educated nations are sadly believed by a public that doesn't know any better and a leadership happily pocketing money from American Christianists. *
It is truly a toxic combination. In addition to the trio of gay haters pictured above - Don Schmierer, Scott Lively, Caleb Brundidge - other Christianists involved include Obama's BFF, Rick Warren, and the secretive organization known as "The Family." The compilation of posts begins back in February, 2009, and follows the involvement of U.S. Christianists in Uganda and the fast dancing and denials they have utilized to try to shift blame from themselves to Ugandan officials for the proposed genocide and/or "re-education" of gays. I'm sure these false Christians expect to make nice money implementing reparative therapy "ministries" in Africa even as the American Psychological Association has declared their use to be unethical as well as ineffective.
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The involvement of Scott Lively in the anti-gay movement is particularly disturbing because, in my candid opinion, Lively is stark raving insane. One of the first posts at Box Turtle Bulletin looked at this frightening circumstance and in hindsight should have been a sign of where things might lead:
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When BTB first broke this story, we couldn’t believe what we saw. Exodus International board member Don Schmierer would join Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively and ex-gay “counselor” Caleb Brundidge in a three-day anti-gay conference in Kampala, Uganda. Scott Lively already had a notorious reputation as author of The Pink Swastika, in which he claims that the Nazi movement was, at its core, a gay movement, and that violent fascism is the natural consequence of “the homosexual agenda.” “The Nazi Party was entirely controlled by militaristic male homosexuals throughout its short history,” he writes in his book, which is available online for free, and would be made available to conference attendees. He also adds that “There is no question that homosexuality figures prominently in the history of the Holocaust,” saying that German gays were eager to target Jews for extinction because of Judaism’s traditional prohibition against homosexuality. He doesn’t explain why Christianity’s traditional prohibition against homosexuality — which held a far greater moral influence throughout Europe — was ignored.
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It is this sort of rhetoric that has brought him the attention of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hate Watch project. There are only ten groupswith anti-gay rhetoric so violent-laden and provocative as to qualify to appear on the SPLC’s list of anti-gay hate groups. Mere opposition to homosexuality isn’t close to being enough. It’s a very easy list to avoid landing on. But Scott Lively serves in a foundational or leadership capacity with nearly one-third of those groups: Abiding Truth Ministries (his own personal platform), Watchmen On the Walls (Lively was a co-founder of th group) and the School of Christian Activism (affiliated with the Springfield, MA church he attends and where he is a regular lecturer).
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Seeing an official of Exodus International and Brundidge, a relative unknown who is a “counselor” for Richard Cohen’s International Healing Foundation, appearing alongside someone associated with three separate hate groups was shocking enough. To see the three of them putting on an anti-gay conference in Uganda, which already had a recent history of anti-gay vigilantism and extra-judicial torture at the hands of police, we feared the worst. The problem was, we had no idea what the worst would be.
When BTB first broke this story, we couldn’t believe what we saw. Exodus International board member Don Schmierer would join Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively and ex-gay “counselor” Caleb Brundidge in a three-day anti-gay conference in Kampala, Uganda. Scott Lively already had a notorious reputation as author of The Pink Swastika, in which he claims that the Nazi movement was, at its core, a gay movement, and that violent fascism is the natural consequence of “the homosexual agenda.” “The Nazi Party was entirely controlled by militaristic male homosexuals throughout its short history,” he writes in his book, which is available online for free, and would be made available to conference attendees. He also adds that “There is no question that homosexuality figures prominently in the history of the Holocaust,” saying that German gays were eager to target Jews for extinction because of Judaism’s traditional prohibition against homosexuality. He doesn’t explain why Christianity’s traditional prohibition against homosexuality — which held a far greater moral influence throughout Europe — was ignored.
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It is this sort of rhetoric that has brought him the attention of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hate Watch project. There are only ten groupswith anti-gay rhetoric so violent-laden and provocative as to qualify to appear on the SPLC’s list of anti-gay hate groups. Mere opposition to homosexuality isn’t close to being enough. It’s a very easy list to avoid landing on. But Scott Lively serves in a foundational or leadership capacity with nearly one-third of those groups: Abiding Truth Ministries (his own personal platform), Watchmen On the Walls (Lively was a co-founder of th group) and the School of Christian Activism (affiliated with the Springfield, MA church he attends and where he is a regular lecturer).
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Seeing an official of Exodus International and Brundidge, a relative unknown who is a “counselor” for Richard Cohen’s International Healing Foundation, appearing alongside someone associated with three separate hate groups was shocking enough. To see the three of them putting on an anti-gay conference in Uganda, which already had a recent history of anti-gay vigilantism and extra-judicial torture at the hands of police, we feared the worst. The problem was, we had no idea what the worst would be.
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The compilation is lengthy, but a worthwhile read if one wants to understand just how much the U.S. Christian Right is intertwined with the exploding homophobia in Africa.
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