Monday, January 4, 2010

U.S. Evangelicals’ Role Seen in Uganda Anti-Gay Push - By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN – New York Times- International Herald Tribune

KAMPALA, Uganda — Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived here in Uganda’s capital to give a series of talks.

The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organizer, was “the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda” — and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family. Photos

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, as a result, has put Uganda on a collision course with Western nations. Read complete article - By JEFFREY GETTLEMANNew York Times- International Herald Tribune


Related links:

Exodus Board Members Plays The “Dupe” In Uganda – by Jim Burroway – Box Turtle Bulletin

Slouching Towards Kampala: Uganda’s Deadly Embrace of Hate – by Jim Burroway - – Box Turtle Bulletin

Gay in Uganda, and Feeling Hunted - By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN - New York Times- International Herald Tribune



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