On Wednesday the Ugandan LGBT activist David Kato, 42, was viciously murdered with a hammer in his own home.
It was an attack he feared was coming. Friends said he was a brave but frightened man. On Wednesday the day he dreaded finally arrived.
Last year Kato's photo had been printed on the cover of a Ugandan newspaper that called for gays to be executed under a headline that read: "Hang them."
That call worked. After it ran Kato began receiving death threats. In a farcical turn the editor of the Rolling Stone, the paper that had put Kato's face on its front page, told the press on Thursday that he condemned Kato’s murder and he insisted that his publication had not called for gays to be harmed - just hanged.
“We want the government to hang people who promote homosexuality, not the public to attack them,” Muhame said.
You might think that Kato's murder would have satisfied the bigots baying for his blood. But on Friday at his funeral a local pastor stormed the pulpit, wrestled the microphone from the mourners and preached against homosexuality. His sharp words led to a mob of villagers refusing to let Kato's body be buried.
"It is ungodly," the pastor shouted."People are turning away from the scriptures. They should turn back, they should abandon what they are doing. You cannot start admiring a fellow man."
Why should we care about this nightmare happening so far away? Because Uganda was intentionally positioned as an outpost in the US culture wars.
With prodding from prominent American evangelicals, last year an "Anti-Homosexuality Bill," also known as the "Kill the Gays" bill was introduced in Uganda with provisions that include "up to three years in prison for failing to report a homosexual" (heterosexuals are menaced by it too); seven years for "promotion of homosexuality"; life imprisonment for a single homosexual act; and for so-called "aggravated homosexuality" (anyone who had consensual sex on several occasions) death.
The bill was introduced in 2009 by a member of parliament named David Bahati, a rising star in the shadowy but influential American evangelical movement based in Washington D.C. known as The Family. Bahati has already admitted he was guided in its drafting the bill by the organization. The "kill the gays bill," he acknowledged, was introduced after a public visit from three American evangelicals who toured Uganda in March of 2009.
So none of this happened by accident.
These self-described American "experts" encouraged Ugandans to persecute LGBT people by assuring them that gay men often recruited and sodomized teenage boys; that the gay movement is an evil institution whose intended goal is to "defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity." They even claimed they could "cure" homosexuality and turn gay people straight through the power of Christian prayer.
The three Americans who traveled to Uganda to ring the homophobic alarms bells are Scott Lively, a missionary who's books against homosexuality include the incendiary "7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child"; Caleb Lee Brundidge, a self-described former gay man who leads "healing" seminars; and Don Schmierer, a board member of Exodus International, the discredited body who claim to "cure" homosexuals.
So it is now clear that the pulpits and check books of American fundamentalist churches have helped to fuel these dreadful developments. But those who helped light the fuse refuse to acknowledge the consequences of their own actions. Lively, Brundidge and Schmierer are claiming they are the real victims of the recent developments.
But tell that to the deeply frightened friends of David Kato, who's face was beaten unrecognizable, and who was prevented from having a dignified burial by the villagers incited by the murderous anti-gay rhetoric that Uganda indulges in without censure.
After this week every gay person in Uganda has reason to fear for their lives. This climate of anti-gay hysteria is the result of a sustained, homophobic and misleading campaign waged by American evangelicals.
Thanks to their unchecked intolerance, David Kato lived a short, terrifying life. And when the mob cleared and his friends recovered from the sinister scenes they were subjected to, they had to go and bury his body themselves.
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Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.Irishphotograph | Feb 17, 2011, 08:35 PM EST
They talk of Christ yet they do not know Him!..dead people cannot repent..
seanomelbourne | Feb 02, 2011, 04:31 PM EST
Maloney anybody to the left of Beck would be a far left socialist by your thinking.
maloney | Feb 01, 2011, 09:48 PM EST
The far left liberal progressive socialists are poisoning the minds of todays young and they all vote for the progressive dismantling of America and will do so until they are old enough to know better.
seanomelbourne | Jan 31, 2011, 05:30 PM EST
The Christano-fascist fundamentalist have poisoned the mines of the young for decades and they all vote for the tea party.
hollabackgurl | Jan 31, 2011, 10:42 AM EST
That's a non sequitur, Ourselves Alone. You have conceded (you have to, if you have integrity) that US Evangelicals (our own homegrown fundamentalists) helped draft and shape the "Kill The Gays" Bill. That's a matter of public record now. David Bahti is a member of The Family, an Evangelical, and he has bluntly said so. Your second point is utterly repulsive: you're setting up a sort of apparatus of intolerance and suggesting that the US doesn't suck quite as much as Norway when it comes to LGBT rights. Honest to God, do you even realize what a douche that makes you sound like? I dislike intolerance and fundamentalism in any of its forms: religious or political
hollabackgurl | Jan 31, 2011, 08:28 AM EST
Er, no. It's not a stretch to blame US Evangelicals. They poured gasoline on a fire. A month after their homophobic tour of Uganda the Kill The Gays Bill was published. David Bahati is already on record saying they guided its content. You would know this yourself with two Google clicks.
OurselvesAlone | Jan 31, 2011, 04:28 AM EST
The African culture has a long standing history of intolerance toward homosexuality. Zimbabwe, for one, has had laws making homosexual acts punishable by death since its creation in 1980. You may want to read the hilarious eulogy of Zimbabwe's first President, the Reverend Canaan Banana (google "Mark Steyn "Yes We Have No Bananas". In 1997, he was forced to flee to South Africa because of accusations he had sodomized bodyguards, cooks, gardeners and soccer players when he was President from 1980-7; homosexuality is punishable by death in Zimbabwe. The effort to pin the blame for the Ugandan murder on U.S. evangelicals is a stretch because these evangelicals were preaching to the choir, if you will. AIDS took a heavy toll on Uganda in the 80's and the Ugandan people have been quite receptive to the message of evangelicals, particularly with respect to abstinence. The biggest problem with identity politics is what do you do when two of your chosen groups of victims (gays and Africans in this case) come into conflict with one another. Obviously, the answer according to Cahir is to blame someone in America.
seanomelbourne | Jan 31, 2011, 01:27 AM EST
There's not much clarity in what you are saying maloney,
Advocate | Jan 31, 2011, 12:14 AM EST
We have to wonder: 'What is the opinion of Yahweh, (aka 'God'), not only of this death, but of the sexual perversion now rapidly escalating AND the silent tolerence of same by We the SHEEPle as part of our Moral Bankrupt status. Do we even care?
maloney | Jan 30, 2011, 07:45 PM EST
seano..surely your not saying obama should be investigated, or clinton or carter? A large percentage of the Tea Party don't know who The Family is. Jim DeMint is one of em. So was Strom Thurmond.
hollabackgurl | Jan 30, 2011, 05:32 PM EST
Evangelicals know they've lost the battle against gay people in the US; so they're opening culture wars in the developing world in the hope it will inspire growing intolerance here at home. Some Christians, that shower.
seanomelbourne | Jan 30, 2011, 04:55 PM EST
The fellowship is a Christano-fascist organisation any U.S. politician attached to this group should be investigated, dare I mention a tea party connection.
jamthecat | Jan 30, 2011, 02:24 PM EST
Africa is the testing ground for hate legislation; America is the place to use what these "wolves in sheep's clothing" have learned. The devil has taken over the Evangelical Christian right wing and is spitting in Jesus' face. I'd suggest that evangelicals remind themselves of Matthew 7:15-16 and 21-23...but the fact is, they don't like teachings of Christ -- too liberal for them -- so they don't really care what he preached. Some of them are even planning to rewrite the Bible to take out those dirty, Commie, socialistic passages and make it a manifesto to excuse their intolerance and evil. I hear hell screaching in every word they say.
lwhayer | Jan 30, 2011, 02:00 PM EST
I read a report recently that "high officials" were promoting evangelical beliefs in the American military. Is this where our "all voluntary" military is coming from?
Nicomax | Jan 30, 2011, 01:05 PM EST
Africans were better off with their ancient religious beliefs, then they are now following any evangelical form of Christianity. All these African Christians are just a boon to the Vatican to actually claim their numbers are growing, while hardly anyone in many Western countries pay much attention to their Christian heritage any longer.
olovely | Jan 30, 2011, 11:20 AM EST
Read the article and watch the video before you comment on it colkelley. The bill's drafters make it quite clear that the evangelical movement they belong to created it. Evangelicals are not America, in fact many of their values are inimical to the US Constitution.
colkelley | Jan 30, 2011, 10:56 AM EST
Yet another sick example of O'Doherty blaming America for EVERYTHING in the world. Grow the Hell up!
mayoman | Jan 30, 2011, 10:52 AM EST
Yet another sick example of religion mobilizing hate and violence.