LGBT POV

The Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission (TLHRC) is holding a hearing Thursday on the proposed “Anti Homosexuality Bill” now pending in the Ugandan Parliament.

The hearing will be held from 2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. in the 2172 Rayburn House Office Building in Washington DC.

TLHRC Co-Chairman James P. McGovern (D-MA) and TLHRC Exec. Committee Member Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), as well as other Commission members, will hear testimony from Karl Wycoff, Deputy Assistant Secretary at the Department of State; Julius Kaggwa, Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law, Uganda; Cary Alan Johnson, International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission; Rev. Kapya Kaoma, Political Research Associates and Christine Lubinski, HIV Medicine Association, Infectious Diseases Society of America, among others.

Baldwin’s office said the committee is trying to webcast the hearing.

But is an hour and a half enough time to expose the international antigay effort – for which Uganda is a working model?

What has become known as the “Kill the gays bill” would increase the penalty for “same sex sexual acts” to life in prison and establish the crime of “aggravated homosexuality” punishable by death for anyone in Uganda who is HIV positive and has consensual same-sex relations.

Further, the bill includes a provision that could lead to the imprisonment for up to three years of anyone who fails to report within 24 hours the identities of everyone they know who is lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, or who supports human rights for people who are, to the government. The bill also limits the distribution of information on HIV through a provision criminalizing the “promotion of homosexuality,” and allows Ugandan police to bring home for punishment any LGBT Uganda residing in another country.

Bruce Wilson, an expert on the antigay Religious Right movement at Talk to Action, has edited together an important short (20 minute) documentary called “Transforming Uganda” that highlights this underground movement, the leaders, and its worldwide connections – including into the United States.

Wilson says Rev. Kapya Kaoma, who is testifying today, called the documentary “very, very good” and “very important.” Wilson said:

“[Kaoma] told me that what I depicted was very much in keeping with the activities on the ground that he’s been tracking in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa. Kapya indicated to me that Malawi was another current trouble spot for gay rights in Africa.

Kaoma placed the evangelical effort covered in my documentary within a wide perspective – there is no one entity, not Jeff Sharlet’s Washington-based group The Family, or the International Transformation Network and related global Transformations entities covered in my video, Scott Lively and his cohorts, or Rick Warren affiliated ministries, that can solely be blamed for helping whip up antigay hatred in Uganda that has led to the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

He repeatedly stressed there are countless western and American evangelical ministry efforts in Africa which, from an American perspective, might seem independent of each other, but in the field these ministries tend to work together very closely.”

Wilson said that Kaoma also emphasized the “neocolonial quality of these evangelical efforts which are overrunning” entire African countries such as Uganda.

“He and I fully agreed that the building antigay climate in Uganda and Africa is being stoked by the export of western and especially American religious ideology to Africa. Gays are being targeted most heavily for the moment, but there are other sectors of society that would seem to be on the enemies list, for future targeting.”

Another point with which Wilson and Kaoma agree is that

“the eliminationist nature of this was tied to the spiritual warfare and spiritual mapping movement which originated mainly in the US. And, these evangelical efforts not are confined merely to the spiritual realm, he pointed out.  The most concerted campaigns are happening in resource rich areas of Africa. Souls are certainly an objective – but so are mineral and oil fields.”

Wilson also says that this movement

“overtly targets gays, covertly targets Jews, encourages its membership to geographically map out ideological foes, maintains that all other secular and religious belief systems except “spirit filled” evangelical Christianity are under demonic influence, and advocates cleansing the Earth of unbelievers.”

This is incredibly complicated since the “spiritual mapping” can also translate into church volunteers getting involved in political campaigns precinct by precinct or zip code by zip code, as happened in the Yes on Prop 8 campaign. Additionally, is it important to understand that the “eliminationist” aspect of this “spiritual warfare” means that police, church and governmental agents are not hurting human beings but the demons inside them.

Baldwin and the commission must commit to exposing this underground movement at its core – or more variations of the Anti Homosexuality Bill will emerge amid more cries from the strong and connected leaders that “religious liberty” means non-interference in another country.

Please watch “Transforming Uganda.”

Transforming Uganda / high resolution from Bruce Wilson on Vimeo.