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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

Ugandan kill-the-gays bill part 14: Obama speaks of Ugandan bill at U.S. Family National Prayer Breakfast

Sherri Joubert — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 06:12:06 +0000

This article is part 14 in a multi-part series about the Ugandan anti-homosexuality bill of 2009, better known as the Ugandan kill-the-gays bill. The Rachel Maddow Show named this series Uganda Be Kidding Me, and they won a GLAAD award this year for it. The first 13 articles can be accessed at the following links:

Thu Feb 4, 2010
President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at the Family’s U.S. National Prayer Breakfast. The President spoke about Uganda and gay marriage amongst other topics. Sec. Clinton openly denounced the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009.

Bishop Eugene Robinson held an alternative American Prayer Hour. A gay Ugandan addresses the ecumenical American Prayer Hour with a bag over his head because of fear he might be extradited back to Uganda for trial.

Posted by Laura Conaway on Feb. 4, 2010
MaddowBlog.msnbc.com

MaddowBlog writer Laura Conaway has some interesting analysis of some of the President’s remarks:

Whew. Let’s roll forward just a bit, with this from President Obama’s as-prepared remarks:

We may disagree about gay marriage, but surely we can agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are — whether it’s here in the United States or, as Hillary mentioned, more extremely in odious laws that are being proposed most recently in Uganda.

Wait, did you catch that? The president of the United States just said “gay marriage” — like it was a thing. And he suggested, maybe, that this thing called “gay marriage” might be something “we disagree on.” Obama has been on the record as opposing gay marriage since he got famous, though he seems to have supported it back when no one much knew who he was.

And what’s he saying now, to an audience that leans toward being socially conservative and fundamentalist Christian? That crowd has opposed marriage equality, as has Obama. So what disagreement is Obama talking about?

Reverse Obama’s formulation, and you get: We can all agree the Uganda kill-the-gays bill is wrong, even if we disagree about gay marriage.

That disagreement could be on Obama’s move to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act — which would grant full equality at the federal level to married gay couples in states like Massachusetts, and is thus inherently pro-equality. Or the disagreement could be about whether same-sex couples should be allowed to have civil unions. In which case, President Obama just substituted the words “gay marriage” for the civil unions he has been willing to favor since running for president.

It may be that Obama really does oppose gay civil marriage and support civil unions, in each case because of his Christian beliefs. Certainly, he has argued from that position in recent years. But heard another way, his remarks at the Prayer Breakfast suggest that he finds himself on one side of the question of marriage equality, and the social conservatives he’s addressing on the other. If you’re for marriage equality, that’s worth something. — by Laura Conaway

I can’t say it any better than that. Maybe the president does consider gay marriage a thing, that it is something worth debating, and maybe he’s less against it than he’s professed since the campaign. I hope he is just waiting to repeal DOMA until his second term and help grant equal marriage rights to same-sex couples then. Hey, I can dream, right?

Part 15 can be found at this link.

Technorati Tags: 2010, American Prayer Hour, Bishop Eugene Robinson, Rachel Maddow, The Family, The Rachel Maddow Show, U.S. National Prayer Breakfast

Ugandan kill-the-gays bill part 12: Family leader Bob Hunter interview

Sherri Joubert — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 07:38:59 +0000

This article is part 12 in a multi-part series about the Ugandan anti-homosexuality bill of 2009, better known as the Ugandan kill-the-gays bill. The first 11 articles can be accessed at the following links:

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Rachel Maddow’s recap of the The Family, how it permeates governments and interview with a high-ranking Family member

Here is Rachel’s interview with Bob Hunter, long-time member and leader of The Family (also known as The Fellowship) who worked extensively in Uganda to help build that nation (13 min.):

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Doug Coe was one of the leaders of The Family. The short segment of one of his speeches to members in the video clip above is, I think, unconscionable and disturbing. To tie Jesus and Christianity to the Soviet Red Guard and Hitler’s Nazis turns my stomach. I have a big pet peeve about quoting from the Bible out of context. Coe takes one verse and equates it to horrible acts Jesus would never condone.

I’m not religious and I don’t go to church, but I have read the Bible cover-to-cover more than a few times. Why? Because I wanted to know what it says for myself. I also like to mess with born-again Christians who quote parts of it, but don’t actually know where the quotes come from or what they mean in context. What too many on the extreme Christian right claim to believe isn’t Christianity either. I’ll write about that sometime in the future.

What Jesus preached and what Doug Coe preached are diametrically opposed. To me, Coe got the wrong message about Jesus’ teachings entirely. The only parallel Coe has with a teaching of Jesus is his disciples were supposed to put him first in their lives. But, He knew all the Jewish laws, including the ones about family. In my reading, the whole concept Jesus was trying to portray was metaphorical, not literal. Jesus knew the law, but violated it whenever following it would cause something wrong to occur. Doing the right thing was more important than following the rules.

The founders of The Family required that members put the group before their families, their jobs and themselves literally. There is probably more to The Family than we know. They are not Jesus. Humans have free will and we make decisions on our own. If we include what we think God would have us do, great, but we’re still at the steering wheel. Their god is in no way the loving, forgiving, merciful God most believers follow.

I’m not convinced The Family is as benign as Mr. Hunter claims. From reporting on The Rachel Maddow Show and Jeff Sharlet, The Family has a lot of influence in politics and in a lot of areas all over the world. I also don’t buy it because of the amount of money they control, and their ability to get Senators and Congressmen to go to other countries on their behalf carrying out their assignments.

Bob Hunter says The Family is too secretive and is addressing being more open. He denies there is any real membership in The Family and claims it is a loosely associated group of around 10,000 groups throughout the world and in many professions, including journalism.

So, all these groups form The Fellowship and they, obviously—even though they‘re linked together, they‘re atomistic and they‘re out there and there‘s no—they—there‘s no one position. Nor does The Fellowship deal with politics in anyway, because we‘re trying to attract people from diverse political perspectives. – Bob Hunter from interview with Rachel Maddow

Again, I smell a rat. The Family has control of a huge amount of money and sends powerful politicians around the world on their behalf.

Part 2 of the Bob Hunter interview (7 min.).

No one in The Family in America is thought to be in favor of the kill-the-gays bill in Uganda. They have taken this stance much more openly since they were made aware of the legislation details. Before that, many were on board with the concept of making homosexuality a crime, but didn’t understand the bill being written was so harsh.

Ugandan members of The Family, with false information from Evangelicals and cure-the-gays industry members, are the people who introduced the bill against the push-back from American members. High level American Family members, like Bob Hunter, are working behind the scenes to stop the bill. The U.S. State Department is working with their Ugandan counterparts to stop this legislation.

President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have spoken out publicly against this bill. President Obama attended this year’s U.S. National Prayer Breakfast, as many presidents have since President Eisenhower was in office, and spoke out to the attendees against the Ugandan bill.

It is beginning to look like progress is being made to stop this legislation.

Part 13 is located here.

Technorati Tags: Bob Hunter, kill-the-gays bill, Rachel Maddow, The Family, The Rachel Maddow Show, Uganda