Being the Change I Wish to See

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

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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.

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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.

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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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