Evangelical Bigots Visited Uganda Last Month to Warn of "Gay Agenda"

[Trigger warning.]

Previously I noted that the extreme anti-gay legislation under consideration in Uganda was underwritten by the secretive American evangelical organization known as "The Family."

Yesterday, the New York Times reported that three American evangelicals affiliated with gay conversion organizations, including the infamous Exodus International, gave "a series of talks" in Uganda last month on "the gay agenda -- that whole hidden and dark agenda" and "the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family."

For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how "the gay movement is an evil institution" whose goal is "to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity."

Now the three Americans are finding themselves on the defensive, saying they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that could lead to what came next: a bill to impose a death sentence for homosexual behavior.

One month after the conference, a previously unknown Ugandan politician, who boasts of having evangelical friends in the American government, introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, which threatens to hang homosexuals.

And the three Americans -- Scott Lively, missionary and author of anti-gay screeds like 7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child; Caleb Lee Brundidge, a "former" gay man who leads "healing seminars"; and Don Schmierer, who sits on the board of the heinous anti-gay Exodus International, which purports to degayify Christians being tested by God with same-sex attraction or whatever -- are positively shocked!

by the proposed legislation, and had no idea! they would be associated with such hatred blah blah yawn more total bullshit.

"I feel duped," Mr. Schmierer said, arguing that he had been invited to speak on "parenting skills" for families with gay children. He acknowledged telling audiences how homosexuals could be converted into heterosexuals, but he said he had no idea some Ugandans were contemplating the death penalty for homosexuality.

"That's horrible, absolutely horrible," he said. "Some of the nicest people I have ever met are gay people."

Mr. Lively and Mr. Brundidge have made similar remarks in interviews or statements issued by their organizations. But the Ugandan organizers of the conference admit helping draft the bill, and Mr. Lively has acknowledged meeting with Ugandan lawmakers to discuss it. He even wrote on his blog in March that someone had likened their campaign to "a nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda." Later, when confronted with criticism, Mr. Lively said he was very disappointed that the legislation was so harsh.

Because here in America, evangelicals constantly engage in absurd hyperbole, like "War on Christmas," and don't think that "a nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda" could actually mean that gay people will be killed as a result of their horseshit. Of course, queer people and trans people and religious non-Christians and atheists and feminists are harassed, abused, and killed in this country because of their horseshit, too, but it's not mandated or sanctioned by law; the connection is less obvious, less direct, and thus easier for the purveyors of Good Christian Hatred to deny and ignore. I would say I'd hope this would make them think twice about engaging in the same rhetoric in America, if there were even an infinitesimal chance of that happening. But there isn't. And I digress...