Being the Change I Wish to See

This is part 3 of a multi-part series of articles on the Ugandan kill-the-gays bill. Parts one and two can be read at these links. Part 4 will be published in a couple of days.

• Part 1 can be found here
• Part 2 can be found here

Evangelicals like Rick Warren and “The Family” (conservative U.S. Senators Ensign, Inhofe, Brownback and Coburn;and Congressmen Pitts and Stupak), who are heavily involved in Uganda and tout their big influence with the government there, haven’t spoken up to Uganda that criminalizing being gay and proposing to imprison gays for life or execute them is wrong.

When asked, some say they have no business influencing other governments. Others condemn the legislation to The Rachel Maddow Show, but not to Ugandan government officials. Some leave it to the U.S. State Department to clean up their mess. They can influence Uganda to walk down this path, but they can’t say anything to stop it? Hypocrites.

Where are their voices? Why aren’t they protesting this legislation loudly to Uganda on the grounds of being pro-life and compassionate? I have always thought “compassionate conservatism” is an oxymoron.

Video (9 min):

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This proposed legislation is clearly not intended to reduce the spread of HIV-AIDS. Because of their own extremely conservative ideology, the Ugandan government is turning a blind eye to the real at-risk populations and not providing prevention and treatment programs to them. They seem to blame the spread of HIV-AIDS on gay men. A conviction for being gay and HIV-positive results in the death penalty. (1)

Heterosexual transmission is currently the most prevalent mode of new infections by far, followed by rate increases in men having sex with men, IV drug use, and medical injections in clinics not always using sterile needles. A person is 2.35 times more likely to contract HIV if they’ve had 5 or more injections in a year. There has been a decrease in the spread of HIV from mothers to babies by providing testing and antiretroviral drugs to an increasing percentage of pregnant HIV positive women. Their blood supply wasn’t always 100% safe until quite recently. (3)

AIDS and HIV infection rates in Uganda declined significantly with the ABC program from 1991 to 2001. ABC stands for abstinence, be faithful and condoms. Infection rates dropped from 15% to 5% during that time period. (1)

Infection rates stopped declining and began slowly climbing again to nearly 6% today (2). Condom billboards were torn down. A radical Ugandan pastor burned condoms in bonfires on the streets. That pastor was a guest of The Family in the U.S. and his radical behavior began after that association.

Compassionate conservatives snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. They again failed to craft policies based on scientific facts (condoms are the best prevention of HIV infection outside of abstinence and monogamy). It is socially tolerated that men frequently have sex outside their marriages with both women and men in Africa, so being faithful isn’t an effective HIV prevention strategy. (3)

Instead conservatives based policies on their ideology. Abstinence and being faithful became the only American-funded programs to prevent the spread of HIV with the passage of George W. Bush’s law to massively focus HIV-AIDS resources on Africa, and specifically Uganda, in 2003. The resources America provided didn’t include condoms, which are very inexpensive. They included HIV antiretroviral drugs, which are very expensive.

Other countries providing funding continued teaching about condom use, but lack of U.S. participation has stagnated progress in stopping the spread of infection. (3)

For each new HIV infection that would probably have been prevented with condom use, the U.S. and other developed countries are providing antiretroviral drugs at great cost over each infected person’s lifetime.

And the saddest fact of all? Less than 50% of the people in Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole who need antiretroviral drugs are able to get them, so they progress to AIDS and die of its complications. (3)

What can we the people do? Write, call and pressure the Americans directly involved in this human rights disaster. Demand they speak out and stop this legislation from becoming law in Uganda.

While we’re at it, we need to make sure the aid America sends now includes condoms and instruction on proper condom use.

Sources:
(1) TRMS
(2) UNAIDS 2008 Global AIDS Epidemic Report
(3) UNAID AIDS Epidemic Update December 2009

The story continues in part 4 here about HIV-AIDS statistics in Uganda.

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This is part 2 of a series of articles on the Ugandan kill-the-gays bill.

Part 1 of this series is located here.

Rachel Maddow gives the bill’s details and more direct American anti-homosexual contacts involved with the legislation. These anti-gay activists claim that gay people can be “cured”, so homosexuality is a lifestyle choice instead of an innate and normal part of a person’s being.

They don’t claim that a person chose to be gay in the first place, but that being gay is caused during a person’s upbringing by multiple factors. A gay lifestyle is considered a choice because they claim people can be “cured” of being gay if they undergo their “treatment”.

Credible, licensed doctors, therapists, and organizations all over the U.S. determined decades ago (1973) that homosexuality is not an illness, it should not be treated as such, and those who try to “cure the gay” will do considerable psychological harm, including pushing people to suicide.

In my opinion, the proper course of helping these individuals is to help them come out as gay and reconcile their sexuality with their families and friends. If the person is having conflict reconciling his or her religious beliefs with being gay, a good therapist will encourage him or her to join welcoming Christians, Jews or other faiths (whichever applies) in churches, etc. where homosexuality is welcomed and celebrated.

Video: 4 minutes:

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Caleb Brundidge is a real piece of work, and the International Healing Foundation is neck-deep in this mess. IHF is run by Richard Cohen, author of the book Coming Out Straight. This book was used to justify this law. They lied when IHF claimed to have no knowledge of the existence of this pending law. One of the ten commandments is about not bearing false witness, isn’t it?

Indeed, who are the people in the United States who can put pressure on Uganda to stop this legislation? I can think of a few right off: The Family and the American Evangelical ministers (both very anti-gay) who encouraged Uganda to go down this path in the first place.

There are also far more potent and credible people who can exert real pressure and even exact sanctions on Uganda. They are President Obama, the U.S. State Department, and Congressmen and Senators not affiliated with The Family that approve aid funds to Uganda in the budget each year. Sweden gives Uganda $50 million each year and has threatened to stop all funding if the law passes. The U.S. gave them $246 million in 2009.

If it were up to me, if the legislation becomes law, I would pull their aid funding and halt all trade with them until this legislation goes away. What would you do?

More in the next post, Part 3, which can be viewed at this link.

Technorati Tags: anti-gay, Caleb Brundidge, Don Schmierer, Human Rights, kill-the-gays bill, Rachel Maddow, Scott Lively, Uganda

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