Uganda's "Kill the Gays" Bill - It's Time for Obama to Denounce BFF Rick Warren

I haven't written about Uganda and the Christianist anti-gay hate imported to that backward nation by folks like Barack Obama's BFF Rick Warren. That's not to imply that I haven't been following developments in that physically beautiful but otherwise benighted nation. As many bloggers and news outlets have been reporting, Uganda's Parliament is still considering a horrific anti-gay bill largely as a result of the efforts of U.S. based Christianists influencing - and in some cases bankrolling - the most extreme elements of the Ugandan hate merchants both in pulpits and the government itself. Karen Ocamb has a superb (and lengthy) article at LGBT Pov that looks at the current situation in Uganda and tracks the nasty finger prints of U.S. based Christian extremists to the ongoing anti-gay jihad in Uganda and other parts of Africa. Indeed, she correctly equates what is happening to the "ethnic cleansing" atrocities that occurred in the former Yugoslavia. Deeply involved - despite his protestations and denials - is Barack Obama's BFF, Rick Warren, whom Obama tapped to give his inaugural invocation. A choice that I still consider the equivalent of flipping LGBT Americans the middle finger. If Obama wants LGBT support for his 2012 election effort, one of the many quid pro quos needs to be Obama's public denunciation of Warren and the anti-gay hatred he has help export to Africa in general and Uganda in particular. Here are highlights from Karen's piece (take the time to read the full article):
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As reported earlier, the world is watching the Ugandan Parliament Wednesday to see whether they will pass the horrific Anti-Homosexuality bill, despite international condemnation and pressure from the US State Department.
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Additionally, as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reports . . . . the C-Street Family-backers of the effort have argued that Ugandan President Museveni would veto the bill after supposedly having his mind changed – but there were also promises that the bill would not make it this far.
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What does seem clear is that the antigay sentiment, if not the bill itself, is sanctioned by the Ugandan government – as illustrated in the photo of how protesters were treated by police. The photo is reminiscent of the police water-hosing of civil rights protesters demanding an end to wanton lynching and Jim Crow laws in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s.
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It may be useful for the State Department to start considering this extreme hatred for LGBT people to be akin to the religious-based hatred that inspired violent racism in the US and the impulse to ethnic cleansing in other parts of the world. And they might also want to start by looking at some of their own friends – such as Pastor Rick Warren, who delivered the Invocation at President Obama’s Inauguration.
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The State Department, however, is caught in a precarious position since too much public pressure might give Museveni an opportunity to pushback to show that he will not be strong-armed by the bullying United States.
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Openly gay Rep. Barney Frank is not so similarly constrained, saying Tuesday: “If the bill before the Ugandan parliament becomes law, it must be the policy of the United States government to oppose any aid to Uganda from the World Bank, the African Development Bank, or any other international financial institution of which we are a member.”
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Frank may find a friend in European Union parliament President Jerzy Buzek who said in Brussels on Monday that the EU will recognize an anti-homophobia day on May 17 and will “live up to its responsibility” to protect minorities in line with the EU treaty. “The EU is against discrimination of all kinds, inside Europe and outside.
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But the ‘Kill the Gays’ bill is only the surface of a larger, deeper and wider problem that may prove thornier than the State Department might expect. . . . . – there is a Christian evangelical invasion of Africa. Wednesday, for instance, Wilson re-posted a piece reporting on how Atlanta-based Pastor Fred Hartley of the Lilburn Alliance Church has been fund-raising for the ministry of Julius Oyet, one of the professed co-authors of the “Kill the Gays” bill. Additionally, on April 24, 2010, Wilson posted a piece about Republican preacher TheCall’s Lou Engle “helping incite near-genocidal antigay hatred in Uganda. . .
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But perhaps more vexing and difficult to deal with is the involvement of Obama’s friend Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California. In a Nov. 13, 2009 conversation with reporters organized by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, Warren was upfront about his mission to bring his version of Christianity to the whole world – including Africa.
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International human rights organizations are also expressing deep concern. Tuesday, Neil Grungras, Executive Director of the Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration, said in a statement: “If the ‘Anti-Homosexuality Bill’ passes, LGBTI Ugandans will face ongoing violence, abuse and torture with no mechanism for redress.” Sounds like an LGBT version of Ethnic Cleansing to me.
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The State Department has issued a denunciation of the "Kill the Gays Bill." When will Obama denounce Warren and wash his hands of coziness with hate merchants and proponents of the equivalent of ethnic cleansing?