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crossposted on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters
Last week, anti-gay activist Scott Lively whined in a local Boston newspaper that he is being unfairly criticized for his stances against the lgbt community, including playing a huge role in the creation of the infamous “kill the gays” bill in Uganda.
After an incident in Uganda yesterday, he may want to keep his mouth shut:
An outspoken Ugandan gay activist whose picture recently appeared in an anti-gay newspaper under the headline “Hang Them” was beaten to death in his home, Ugandan police said on Thursday.
David Kato, the activist, was one of the most visible defenders of gay rights in a country so homophobic that government leaders have proposed to execute gay people. Mr. Kato and other gay people in Uganda had recently warned that their lives were endangered, and four months ago a local paper called Rolling Stone published a list of gay people, and Mr. Kato’s face was on the front page.
At press time, the police do not view Kato's murder as a hate crime, but a robbery. However some lgbt activists in Uganda disagree:
Gay activists . . . said Mr. Kato was singled out for his outspoken defense of gay rights. “David’s death is a result of the hatred planted in Uganda by U.S. Evangelicals in 2009,” said Val Kalende, the chairperson of one of Uganda’s gay rights groups, in a statement. “The Ugandan government and the so-called U.S. evangelicals must take responsibility for David’s blood!”
Mrs. Kalende was referring to visits in March 2009 by a group of American evangelicals who held anti-gay rallies and church leaders who authored the anti-gay bill, which is still pending, attended those meetings and said that they had worked with the Americans on their bill.
One of the those activists was Scott Lively He even bragged that the 2009 visits created a “nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda.”
Kato's death comes almost a month after the arrest of Ugandan pastor Martin Ssempa on conspiracy charges. Ssempa, a chief pusher of the country's “Kill the Gays” bill and also for his penchant for showing “scat porn” in church is among eight people who was either detained or sought after an “alleged conspiracy to injure the reputation of Pastor Robert Kayanja of Rubaga Miracle Centre Cathedral, Kampala.”
Ssempa and eight others had been charged with spreading rumors that Kayanja was gay, which is supposedly a common way to settle political scores in Uganda, but has deadlier implications since the controversy about the anti-gay bill.
The webpage Box Turtle Bulletin said the following:
David Kato was a spokesperson for Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) and one of the plaintiffs (or applicants) in the successful lawsuit seeking a permanent injunction against the Ugandan tabloid Rolling Stone (no relation to the U.S. publication of the same name). Kato was one of three applicants who had been named by the tabloid under a headline tagged “Hang Them!” His photo appeared on the tabloid’s front cover.
LGBT Ugandans have lived under a menacing atmosphere for more than a decade. The anti-gay hysteria has increased significantly since the introduction of the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill into parliament in 2009. That bill, which remains under review Parliamentary committee, would impose the death penalty on LGBT Ugandans under certain circumstances and criminalize all advocacy by or on behalf of LGBT people. It would also criminalize even knowing someone who is gay if that person fails to report their LGBT loved one to police within 24 hours. Parliamentary elections are scheduled for February 18, and the bill is expected to be considered after Parliament returns for a lame-duck session before the new Parliament begins in May.
Now in all honesty, we do not know the truth behind Kato's murder at the present, so it may be unfair to blame Lively. Certainly he never told people to kill anyone. And according to him, he never agreed with the death penalty facet of the Ugandan anti-gay bill.
But he did fan the flames of hatred towards lgbts in Uganda and that's the funny thing about fanning flames.
They always get out of hand and sooner or later, someone gets burned.
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As awful as LGBT life in this country can be,it is bracing (albeit in a very sad way) to realize how much worse our brothers and sisters elsewhere can have it. And the realization is made so much more painful by the knowledge that the vile hatred is being exported from his country. It is only a matter of time–probably hours–before we start hearing from Lively, Perkins and the rest of their mob that their hate-mongering doesn’t actually monger hatred, and that they really do love us. If there really was a God, surely the first objects of his wrath would be the villainous hypocrites who trade on his name.
Rick Warren and “The Family” may be the ultimate US malefactorsin Uganda. Warren made well-publicized visits to Pres. Museveni and his wife Janet, providing both political sanctification and probably a considerable amount of cash to Museveni and operatives. Janet M. is very publicly evangelical Christian in her role as First Lady. Warren is a large and difficult-to-monitor funder – he is personally wealthy and controls abundant resources of his non-profit entities funded by his “Purpose-Driven Life” book and franchise. Warren has made multiple statements for at least 10 years about making Uganda a testing ground for creating a “Christian nation”.
“The Family”, a loose political-business-social-religious good-ol’-boys network (see writings of Jeff Sharlet), has encouraged (trained and presumably paid) some of the major Ugandan political and religious players sponsoring the gay genocide bill. Yes, this US-based group is the same one that sponsors the annual Presidential Prayer Breakfast.
This act of violence has its origins in the intensive effort of US christers to promote anti-GLBT hatred and violence throughout Africa.
Prominent in that effort, in addition to Lively, are two figures we’re more familiar with. Donnie McClurkin, an early Obama supporter, is pushing his anti-GLBT hatred in South Africa where lesbians in particular are targeted for rape and murder. So is Obama’s BBF, Rick Warren.
“It’s no secret, of course, that there are strong and growing links between American and African conservatives. Rick Warren has been deeply involved in planting churches in Africa and mentoring African preachers.” Many rightwing African governments with neo-colonial relations to England and the US welcome US christer penetration of their nations. “Since the late 1990s, the Anglican archbishops of Uganda, Kenya, and Nigeria, and presidents Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, and Sam Nujoma of Namibia have all used homosexuality to distract people from the issues facing their countries and churches by claiming that homosexuals are responsible for moral decay in Africa,” We’re being use to scapegoat the failure of pro-American governments to govern well.
Rick Warren’s cult spends millions in Africa to promote the spread of HIV by promoting abstinence. Kampala used to be dotted by billboards promoting condom use. They’re torn down, replaced by billboards promoting virginity, ‘faithfulness’ and abstinence. Predictably, HIV/AIDS rates are on the risebecause of Warren.
McClurkin and Warren share Obama and Hillary Clintons’ bigotry regarding same sex marriage. Neither they or Lively have been indicted on federal charges of interfering in the internal affairs of foreign countries.
Ultimately, the example provided by Obama’s mass murder of civilians is the origin of much of this violence. GLBT folks in US occupied Iraq are routinely murdered by US armed and trained sunni ‘police’ and shiite jihadists. People who try to stop that, like Bradley Manning are arrested by no senior US military commanders in the area are being investigated for abetting and permitting the mass murder of our brothers and sisters in Iraq.
As for the gays, lesbians, bisexuals and trans folk endangered by Obama’s occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and by American cultists in Africa we should insist that Obama and H. Clinton begin atoning for their crimes by
1 – Opening all US military and diplomatic installations to give unlimited protection to our brothers and sisters.
2 – Offer unlimited asylum with necessary financial aid to those endangered by US polices and US cultists.
3 – Admitting US responsibility for the jihadist murders and withdrawing all US armed, mercenary and security forces from the region while ending their practice of tacitly condoning the mass murder of GLBT folks in Iran and elsewhere by confiscating, without compensation, the payments from the mad ayatollahs government to US companies.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/24/world/24sanctions.html?_r=1&emc=na
me tooI also commend Jeff Sharlet’s chapter on the Uganda situation in his recent book C STREET: THE FUNDAMENTALIST THREAT TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY.