some interesting comments at the Batlimore Sun on the misleading New York Times article:
There is no evidence in this story that any of these three men agree with the death penalty for gays. What the Times is trying to infer is that repeating where God says that homosexuality is wrong and why leads to things like murder, and that homosexuality needs to be lifted up instead of put down. Not only that, it is trying to smear Christians in general. I suppose a story where people prayed and a child’s brain tumor suddenly disappared wouldnt even make their pages. It would be embarrassing for them to try to offer an explanation of why the prayer didnt really help. . . .
I note from a non-american site that the death penalty is for homosexual rape (statuatory, using Drugs, or force) sex with AIDS. In other words it was stuff that I’m surprised that the Gay movement wants to endorse. . .
The New York Times on Monday has an interesting story on the role that a visit by three American Evangelicals to Uganda last year played in legislation now before the parliament there to make homosexuality a capital crime.
Scott Lively, Caleb Lee Brundidge and Don Schmierer were presented as “experts on homosexuality” at a conference in March in the African country, where reporter Jeffrey Gettleman says they 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.”
Lively, Brundidge and Schmierer all have attempted to distance themselves from legislation the Gettleman writes has made Uganda “a far-flung front line in the American culture wars, with American groups on both sides, the Christian right and gay activists, pouring in support and money as they get involved in the broader debate over homosexuality in Africa.”
“I feel duped,” Schmierer tells Gettleman, and says that he had been invited to speak on “parenting skills” for families with gay children. He acknowledges 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 says. “Some of the nicest people I have ever met are gay people.”
As Gettleman notes, Lively and Brundidge have made similar comments. But he adds that the Ugandan organizers of the conference admit helping draft the bill, Lively has acknowledged meeting with Ugandan lawmakers to discuss it, and he has blogged that the campaign had been likened to “a nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda.”
“I pray that this, and the predictions [of a ‘significant improvement in the moral climate of the nation’] are true,” he wrote.
Gettleman’s story begins:
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.
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.
