This article is part 5 in an 11-part series about the Ugandan anti-homosexuality bill of 2009, better know as the Ugandan kill-the-gays bill. The first 4 articles can be accessed at the following links:

• Part 1: Born in the USA
• Part 2: Horrific Details
• Part 3: American Silence is Deafening
• Part 4: HIV-AIDS Statistics in Uganda

Video (6 min):

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The U.S. has gotten more timid about demanding human rights around the world over the past 9 years. The Bush 43 administration outright committed human rights violations itself and allowed a significant increase in human rights abuses to go on widely with its isolationist policies.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration has been low-key about human rights so far. President Obama made a trip to China and human rights wasn’t a significant part of the agenda. China has improved on human rights issues compared to 50 years ago, but their progress is much slower than it should be.

One reason we may be timid about human rights in China is China owns such a huge chunk of U.S. debt. If they called our debt, they could bankrupt us. It is unlikely they would do that because all their assets in U.S. debt securities would be worthless, and they would lose the country who buys more from them than anyone else on the planet. That would bankrupt them. In that light, we should be less timid about direct human rights talks with China.

Nicholas Kristof is right that the President needs to use his influence around the world, and especially in East Africa where his father was from and where Obama’s own ancestral tribe resides. President Obama has more credibility and influence in East Africa than any president in our history. He should use it on human rights.

Melissa Harris-Lacewell is absolutely right that America sends hypocritical signals about homophobia. We are hypocritical that we treat LGBT people as second class citizens, and then demand Uganda not pass laws to discriminate against them and punish them harshly just for being LGBT.

But, just because America is struggling with the civil rights of a minority group does not mean we support felony criminalization of that minority group or harsh punishment of them. No matter how hypocritical America is about its treatment of its LGBT citizens, being LGBT is not illegal here. Rick Warren and The Family may be strongly anti-gay, but they don’t support such treatment of gays, even if they haven’t said so to Uganda.

The Family’s positions and beliefs have been influential in Uganda for over 20 years. U.S., Canadian and European aid has been going to Uganda and Sub-Saharan Africa longer than that. Yet Ugandan President Musevini is risking that essential aid by signing a bill such as Bill 18: The Anti-homosexuality Bill of 2009 into law. Losing aid will kill thousands of people a day from disease and hunger. If these fringe Americans can use their influence to cause such a human rights catastrophe, they can use their influence to avert it.

Congressman Anthony Weiner is right that the U.S. State Department and Ambassadors must be our official source of American policy positions. That U.S. legislators can take off on a plane and get in to see the leaders of developing countries, who view any visit from a U.S. government official as important, needs to be countered with immediate visits from the State Department to make sure actual U.S. policies are made clear no matter what any legislator says. We know these Evangelicals, Senators and Congressmen are extremist conservative ideologues (fringe-of-the-fringe right-wing nut-jobs). A small country in East Africa doesn’t know that and will take what is said as how all of America stands on any issue.

With the incoming younger generation and attrition of older, much more conservative citizens, LGBT civil rights and social acceptance is improving. It has a long way to go, but it has come a long way in a short time. I discuss the LGBT equality issue in detail in the article U.S. not really about equality.

Race and civil rights in America are similar to LGBT civil rights but much farther along legally and socially. Still, many non-whites experience different levels of discrimination every day. The situation is changing, but it still exists over 40 years after the passage of The Civil Rights Act of 1964. America made a quantum leap forward when we elected Barack Obama as President of the U.S. We’ve come a long way on race, but we still have a long way to go.

Like all sweeping civil rights changes, equal LGBT civil rights will have to come through the federal system and be upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. The tide of history is turning rapidly, and I do not believe it will be many more years before same-sex civil rights are equal with opposite-sex civil rights in America.

The difference between what Uganda wants to do and what happens in the U.S. is the difference between violating human rights and arguing both for and against the civil rights of a minority group. The difference between them is as wide as the ocean between the U.S. and Africa.

The buck stops with the State Department. It is the duty of the State Department to speak for the U.S. and its policies throughout the world. Individual Senators and Congresspersons may interfere in foreign countries to the benefit of their personal beliefs, but the State Department must step up and visit the same leaders within a day to communicate America’s official position.

Part 6 is located at this link.

Technorati Tags: Anthony Weiner, Bart Stupak, Human Rights, James Inhofe, Joe Pitts, John Ensign, kill-the-gays bill, LGBT civil rights, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Museveni, Musevini, Nicholas Kristof, Rachel Maddow, Rick Warren, Sam Brownback, The Family, Tom Coburn, Uganda, US State Department

Abortion is legal in the U.S. and has been since 1973. It is a necessary procedure to allow women to have control over their health and reproductive rights. No one should be allowed to make this private medical decisions for any woman. Those decisions should remain between a woman, her family and her health care providers.

Anti-abortion advocates have settled for the next best thing. If you can’t make abortion illegal, just make it impossible to get by intimidating doctors to quit performing the procedure and harass abortion clinics into closing. Fewer doctors and fewer clinics mean less availability of reproductive services to women.

Those extremists who set the tone for hate and violence should not be the socially acceptable group. They should be equated with other hate groups, such as the KKK. Belonging to and supporting these groups should be shameful. Being a patient, clinic employee or doctor should not be shameful.

Interview with Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Associate Professor at Princeton University:

Anti-abortion extremists operate in the open and get away with these actions all the time. Little seems to be done until severe acts of violence occur. This must stop, and it looks like the Obama justice department is stepping up to enforce the relevant laws in this matter.

No one, pro-choice or pro-life, likes it that abortion procedures have to exist. Those who are legitimately pro-life and want to find ways to reduce as many abortions as possible and take part in a real debate are free to do so, and this is a legitimate debate. But when a culture of intimidation and violence is allowed to continue, that is where they cross the line.

Doctors and other providers should be able to train for and perform abortions in medical practice without fear of harassment and being murdered. Women should not be subject to harassment and made to feel shame about something that is a private medical concern. It is not anyone’s business except the patient and doctor when a decision about having the procedure must be faced for whatever reason.

Women are not second class citizens whose only job is to be incubators. No embryo or fetus has or should have more value as a human life than the woman carrying that embryo or fetus. A woman should be and currently is able to choose to terminate a pregnancy based on her own needs, beliefs and ability to make informed decisions.

The anti-choice movement and government should not be permitted into these private decisions, which should stay between women, their physicians and health care providers, and their families. No group should be allowed to intimidate women and health care providers of abortions because they violate a family’s privacy rights and the privacy rights of the doctor-patient relationship.

Narrowly looking at family planning clinics as abortion clinics neglects the fact that they provide much needed health screening services (PAP smears and breast exams) to millions of women who can’t afford to receive this care through the usual doctor’s office setting.

Demonizing birth control as a form of abortion and not permitting sex education are beyond ridiculous, let alone illogical, in preventing abortions from unwanted pregnancies. Abstinence only does not work as a form of birth control.

How is it that these anti-abortion extremists and their associated groups can call themselves pro-life? They murder people and harm others in the attempt. They are death penalty proponents. How do these beliefs constitute protection of life?

Once these babies are born, extremist groups no longer care about them. These babies may become children on Medicaid and food stamps, and part of a class of people these extremists detest. The extremists don’t want to provide any assistance to families to feed, clothe, shelter, provide medical care for and educate these children.

If the family is already in poverty, this child may die in infancy because our infant mortality rate is significantly higher within our poor population than it should be, given we are the richest country in the world. Our overall IMR is unacceptably high no matter what demographic of the population to which a woman belongs. How do these actions constitute protection of life?

A woman may need to seek a late pregnancy abortion because continuation of the pregnancy is threatening her life or harming her health permanently. What if she already has a husband and children to care for? How can a mother choose to give up her life and responsibilities to her living children to die during a pregnancy?

She may have cancer that can’t wait for the baby to be born before she starts treatment that would surely seriously harm or kill the fetus. If she waits, she will die. The fetus may be severely deformed or will be born with a fatal disease that will painfully kill the child after its birth. She may be carrying a dead fetus and her obstetrician may refuse to induce labor to allow her to deliver it at the time of demise. An abortion of the dead fetus would allow her and her family to go forward with the funeral and grieving process.

The woman in question may not be a woman at all, but a girl of age 10 or 11 who was raped and didn’t tell anyone until the pregnancy had progressed too far for an early pregnancy abortion. Is the child’s life of less value than the fetus she carries?

None of these situations is my choice. The point is no one should have the right to make these extremely difficult choices for anyone else. The abortion health care services needed to serve women who have made these tough decisions should be reasonably available to them without intimidation, harassment or fear.

Women in America have the right to a safe and legal abortion. Strategies and tactics that take away the availability of a legal abortion performed by a physician trained in the procedure must be removed as obstacles to women seeking reproductive services.

Technorati Tags: abortion, abortion is legal, abortion must be available, domestic terrorism, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Rachel Maddow, reproductive rights

LMAO! This is so funny, yet so timely and serious at the same time. Watch and see what I mean:

Do your sides hurt?

The question is will Michael Steele be able to transform the GOP from a practically all-white party to one of diversity? If the GOP doesn’t change and become much more diverse, it won’t recover in today’s America.

Technorati Tags: GOP in Exile, GOP new leader, GOPeakness, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Michael Steele, Rachel Maddow