Being the Change I Wish to See » Human Rights

Ugandan kill-the-gays bill part 17: David Kato murdered

Sherri Joubert — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 16:08:55 +0000

This article is part 17 in a series about the Ugandan anti-homosexuality bill of 2009, better known as the Ugandan kill-the-gays bill. It is still alive and on the newly-elected Ugandan Parliament agenda for debate in 2012, after being kept tabled in 2011.

The first 16 articles can be accessed at the following links:

Jeff Sharlet’s book about his visits to Uganda and conversations with government officials:

There is a link at the bottom of each article that will take you to the next one in the series for easy navigation.

David Kato was the highest profile gay in Uganda, and was a strong activist for gay rights. He was brutally murdered on January 26, 2011. His name and photo were published on the cover of a Ugandan news magazine along with 99 other people suspected or known to be gay. Here is a link to the Maddow Blog coverage of Uganda.

In May 2011, Ugandan police used a water cannon to spray pink dye on anti-government and economic protesters in the capital city of Kampala and 5 other cities. Permanent President Yoweri Museveni seems to be repeatedly reelected every time the people vote, and there are questions about the validity of election results.

This is also an update on the Ugandan legislation. Death penalties have not actually been removed. David Bahati says he will take them out, but they seem to stay in the bill. To date, Mr. Bahati has not sent any evidence of recruiting Ugandan children to become gay.

David Kato burial controversy and story overview video from Feb. 4, 2011 (~ 9 min.):

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Here is a reminder of some of the provisions in the bill that will call for the death penalty if it isn’t removed as a punishment. Box Turtle Bulletin excerpts the definition of “aggravated homosexuality” from Mr. Bahati’s original legislation:

(a) person against whom the offense is committed is below the age of 18 years;
(b) offender is a person living with HIV;
(c) offender is a parent or guardian of the person against whom the offense is committed;
(d) offender is a person in authority over the person against whom the offense is committed;
(e) victim of the offense is a person with disability;
(f) offender is a serial offender, or
(g) offender applies, administers or causes to be used by any man or woman any drug, matter or thing with intent to stupefy overpower him or her so as to there by enable any person to have unlawful carnal connection with any person of the same sex,

(3) Where a person is charged with the offense under this section, that person shall undergo a medical examination to ascertain his or her HIV status.

As of March 2012, a law suit has been filed against Scott Lively, one of the Americans involved in bringing this bill to Uganda.

The Box Turtle Bulletin does extensive coverage on this story, and you can read about it at the above link.

Technorati Tags: Box Turtle Bulletin, David Bahati, David Kato, kill-the-gays bill, Maddow Blog, Scott Lively, The Rachel Maddow Show, Uganda, Yoweri Museveni

Pepper spray isn’t harmless

Sherri Joubert — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 23:59:03 +0000

I want to explain what pepper spray is before I launch into posts about it’s use as a chemical weapon against peaceful protesters, protesting for Occupy Wall Street, protesting for the 99%, and America’s not-too-distant history of protests.

Pepper spray is an internationally illegal chemical weapon. We couldn’t use it against foreign soldiers in war. Our State Department railed against other governments using tear gas and pepper spray on their own citizens during the Arab Spring. So what do we do? We use it against our own people during Occupy. But I digress…

The following video explains what the hot stuff in pepper is (capsaicin), how hotness is measured (Scoville units), a chart to compare the various hotness of peppers we’re familiar with, and how capsaicin can harm us over time when it gets in our eyes and respiratory systems. (8.5 min):

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To review, the capsaicin bonds with pain receptors and causes extreme pain, and capsaicin is mildly corrosive and causes chemical burns. All burns, heat or chemical, cause scarring of the tissue that is burned. Being sprayed in the eyes many times will eventually cause permanent blurring of vision from corrosive damage to cornea cells. Inhaling pepper spray causes chemical burns to the nose, mouth, throat, and lungs. Burns cause scarring, and those scars will cause any respiratory, sinus, or eye problems to become worse.

Keep the Scoville unit chart in mind whenever you see pepper spraying occurring, and whenever you are working with hot peppers in the kitchen.

Photo Credit: The Maddow Blog

I’ve gotten jalapeno pepper juice in my eyes chopping them in the kitchen, and cayenne pepper in my eyes after failing to thoroughly wash my hands and clean under my nails after eating boiled crawfish. We put lots of cayenne in the boil. It burns like crazy, and I was crying and splashing water into my face holding my eyes open for at least 30 minutes.

For those who haven’t gotten pepper in their eyes, a jalapeno is about as bad as a very strong onion, but the pain from onions goes away much faster and doesn’t cause permanent harm. The chemicals in onions form sulfuric acid with your tears and that’s what burns. But because it’s a vapor mixed with air it’s a very small dose compared to peppers and pepper spray. You actually have to get pepper physically into your eyes for it to burn.

Protesters out there, be careful about putting yourself in the line of pepper spray fire multiple times. It can have long-term negative health effects to your eyes and respiratory system. If you’ve been pepper-sprayed recently, you might want to take some time away from the line where the spraying is being done and give your body time to heal. I know there is plenty to do besides getting sprayed and arrested.

Please ask any questions you may have about the science of peppers and pepper spray in the comments and I’ll answer them. I may have to do some research for some questions, but I’m willing to do so. Thanks for reading.

Technorati Tags: capsaicin, hot peppers, Occupy Movement, Occupy Wall Street, Pepper Spray, Scoville unit

Ugandan kill-the-gays bill part 16: Rachel Maddow interviews David Bahati

Sherri Joubert — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 07:53:08 +0000

This article is part 16 in a multi-part series about the Ugandan anti-homosexuality bill of 2009, better known as the Ugandan kill-the-gays bill. It is still alive and on the Ugandan Parliament agenda for debate in early 2011.

The first 15 articles can be accessed at the following links:

This interview with David Bahati, the sponsor of this horrible legislation, is enlightening on a very deep level. Being able to discuss Mr. Bahati’s bill directly with him is an extremely rare opportunity, and provides a clear and frightening picture of what he is trying to accomplish in Uganda with the gay population there.

American history: foundational myths about being gay:

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“Gays can’t reproduce so they must recruit”, Anita Bryant. What a crock. Gays and lesbians are born that way, primarily to straight parents. We don’t know exactly why, but there are a few strongly-supported scientific theories being rigorously studied that may explain what we see in nature.

Ten percent (on average) of all animal species are homosexual, not just humans. Homosexuality exists consistently in nature and is a normal variant within populations.

The only differences between gay and straight people are gay people are attracted to and choose love partners from our own sex, and sex between us cannot result in procreation. We are exactly like everyone else otherwise. That is not to say gays and lesbians cannot procreate. Some have children from previous heterosexual marriages. We can also procreate with the assistance of modern reproductive technology.

Gays and lesbians can and do reproduce and/or parent adopted children just as well as straight parents. Children of gay and lesbian parents (biological or adopted) are generally straight.

Egg and sperm donors, and surrogate mothers allow gay and lesbian couples to have children biologically related to one or both partners. New technology allows a lesbian partner to provide sperm using her own stem cells, so it is now possible for a lesbian couple to both be biological parents of their children. It will become possible for gay male couples to both be biological parents of their children when stem cells can be used to produce ova, although they will require a surrogate mother and in vitro fertilization to carry and give birth to the children.

David Bahati Interview (part 1):

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David Bahati says, “I don’t hate gays, I love them”. But he’ll kill every one of them to protect Ugandan children. There are still 7 clauses in the bill that call for the death penalty. According to Mr. Bahati, telling children or teens that a man sleeping with a man is okay is tantamount to recruiting kids into being gay. They are supposedly enticed by bribes of money ($15 million U.S. in total).

He also believes that gays do not deserve human rights protections.

David Bahati Interview (part 2):

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Mr. Bahati doesn’t want to stop at keeping gays away from children. He wants all gay Ugandans punished, no matter where they are in the world. He wants gay Ugandans extradited back to Uganda to stand trial for homosexual behavior whenever it occurs outside of Uganda.

God’s Law and Homosexuality

Before we get to God’s Law, I want to make clear in my opinion that nothing in the Bible applies to sex in our modern world, or the relationships we form between consenting adults. I don’t believe the Bible or any other sacred text is the word of God. These texts may have been God-influenced, but they were written by humans.

In the times homosexual sex was brought up in the Bible, men had multiple wives and could also procreate with their wives’ servants or slaves. I don’t believe it is right to take any of these stories or laws out of context, or pick and choose which ones to obey and which to ignore. We ignore most of the laws in Leviticus today.

In the Bible, we first encounter possible homosexual sex starting in Genesis 9:18 in the story of Ham and his father, Noah. He was found drunk and naked by his son Ham, who tells his brothers their father’s condition. The other two brothers take a cloak and walk backward into Noah’s house and cover him without ever looking at him. Noah curses Ham for seeing him naked, which seems silly until you understand what the phrase “to uncover nakedness” really means. It’s a euphemism for sex. Thus, Ham must have had gay sex with his own father.

We encounter homosexual gang rape in Genesis 18-19 in the story of Lot and the city of Sodom. Gay sex is listed as a sin in Hebrew law (Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13), it is called an abomination, and the penalty is death. The problem with the story of Sodom was not gay sex. The town’s men wanted the angels sent out from Lot’s house so they could be gang raped.

Leviticus has hundreds of laws we violate every day, like eating shrimp, and we don’t sell our daughters to their husbands, or stone adulterers to death. All are abominations. It’s also an abomination to work on the Sabbath, punishable by death, and Jesus violated that commandment all the time.

In Deuteronomy 22:5, cross-dressing is forbidden. A woman may not put on a man’s clothing, and a man may not put on a woman’s clothing. All of we women who wear pants are definitely in violation of this law.

These laws were specifically designed to prohibit the Children of Israel from imitating a variety of acts practiced by other tribes and nations surrounding them. (See Deuteronomy 18:9). The other local pagan religions worshiped their gods with every sex act you can imagine. The Israelites believed that sex was strictly for procreation. Sex that didn’t have a chance of causing procreation was forbidden.

There is the story of David and Jonathan possibly being bisexual lovers. David had many wives. But the story of the relationship between these two men is quite suspicious (see 1 Sam. 20:17). David got away with a lot of bad behavior and still ended up with a sterling reputation. He could have gotten away with a homosexual relationship, too.

Mr. Bahati gives his own opinion of God’s law as well as saying Jesus preached the same prohibitions against homosexuality. Jesus never preached anything concerning homosexuality. His Apostle, Paul, did (see Rom. 1:26-27). On the subject of adultery, Jesus stopped the stoning of a woman for adultery, saying “he who is without sin, cast the first stone”. Jesus saved the woman’s life by reminding everyone that no one is without sin, and mercy and forgiveness should be shown over strident application of Hebrew law. Jesus preached love, mercy and forgiveness, and I do not believe he would have considered today’s gay or lesbian couples to be abominations or unnatural in any way.

People of that time were ignorant of a homosexual nature with which a person is born, a nature involving romantic love of another person of the same sex. They didn’t marry for love or even have a choice of spouses. Their marriages were arranged by their families. Love never came into it. Their experience of gay sex was limited to the sexual religious practices of the Canaanites and other local tribes that would have been appealing to the Israelites. (Imagine orgies instead of church).

Mr. Bahati is correct that the Bible has prohibitions against homosexual sex, but the laws were not meant literally for a modern world. They were meant to keep the Israelites from having sex that did not result in procreation and from participating in the practices of worshiping the gods of the other nations surrounding them (including idol worship, cultic prostitution, incest, homosexuality, bestiality, and infant sacrifice).

If we want to talk about rampant sins, adultery is a very big problem in African cultures today as well as most of the rest of the world. We no longer punish adulterers with stoning, scarlet letters or banishment. That is seen as ridiculous. Since homosexuality and adultery are discussed in the Bible in the same chapters on laws about sex, adultery laws in the Bible should also be seen today in the same light as homosexuality. Since the modern world has dropped most all the ancient Hebrew laws, including those for adultery, the law against homosexuality should also be dropped.

To date, Mr. Bahati has sent nothing to The Rachel Maddow Show showing any facts supporting his allegation that gays recruit children into homosexuality.

David Bahati Interview (part 3):

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Mr. Bahati does not understand that there is such a thing as international law and punishment for human rights atrocities, and imprisoning and executing gays for being gay would certainly be an atrocity.

Jeff Sharlet Reports

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Conservative American supporters inside The Family or Fellowship and out are exporting the fight against homosexuality to Uganda through David Bahati. When and if he wins the war there, he will bring the lessons of the victory back to the U.S. to restart the conservative war against homosexuality in America, and the religious right will try again to win it.

I believe that gays and lesbians will have full and equal civil rights sooner rather than later. I believe the religious right will suffer a major backlash because of their extreme positions on social issues. They’ve gone too far, and that leaves a lot of room for progressives to move forward rapidly.

But, LGBT rights are not moving forward as quickly as they should be. Many laws passed during the 20th century ended African American segregation, provided suffrage for minorities and women, and people of different races have the right to marry. The right to marry interracially came in 1967. It’s 2011.

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has already been repealed. Vice President Joe Biden sees a path clearing for legalizing same-sex marriage all over the country, and President Obama is beginning to see same-sex marriage as the institution that will be instated rather than civil unions. I think it will happen during his second term. We can’t afford for him to lose the 2012 presidential race to the GOP.

Over the past 21 months of working closely with gays and lesbians on DADT, it seems President Obama has come to see their lives and relationships as much more similar to straight relationships than they are different from them. I say bravo Mr. President!

You can watch the full, unedited interview here on MaddowBlog.

Part 17 is available here.

Technorati Tags: C Street, David Bahati, Jeff Sharlet, kill-the-gays bill, LGBT Human Rights, Rachel Maddow, The Family, The Fellowship, Uganda