This article has been making the rounds on Facebook: Americans’ Role Seen in Uganda Anti-Gay Push. It’s about three American evangelical Christians who gave a series of anti-homosexual talks in Uganda. The Ugandan people were so swayed by the Bible thumpers’ presentation that they created a bill calling for death sentences for homosexual behavior.
Now I LOVE the NY Times; I read it every day. However, notice how the headline does not mention anything about these Bible thumpers’ religion? Think about it…if it were Muslims pushing people to the point that they created this bill, the headline would probably say something about “Radical Muslims” this or “Radical Islam” that. Why don’t they say something about “Radical Christianity?” Why the double standard? Radical Christianity is clearly very dangerous if you’re gay.
As for the defensiveness and backpedaling of these three holy wise men, I don’t buy it. I was alive during the 80′s when American Bible thumpers were murdering abortion doctors and blowing up abortion clinics left and right, and I remember the shrugging, eyewinking, backpedaling, and lack of responsible behavior whenever one of the loonies killed people. Why weren’t James Dobson and the other powerful hatemongers focusing on the families of abortion doctors and those who worked in clinics? It’s evil once again disguised as religion.
Related posts:
But here is an...
I agree with everything you said. About #1…I think...
Hmm… Yeah, I would totally agree with you if the facts turn out to be as straightforward as you’re saying… I mean, if 3 Christian guys went over to Uganda and advocated for the Death Penalty against homosexuals, that would be a very GRAVE crime, and an unprecedented abuse!
But, my experience tells me that it will probably prove to be much less of a direct cause and effect, than that. It seems very suspect to me that 3 guys giving a talk where able to cause this drastic a change in legislation in such a short time! It smells like a classic oversimplification to me. I’ll have to look further into the facts, of course.
But this is what raises the red flags for me.
1) Is this the first time that missionaries have been to Uganda? Why would the results be so much different than the previous years that missionaries (or whoever) spoke against homosexuality in Uganda?
2) Are the Ugandans really that stupid? The entire country can be swayed to start executing homosexuals based on a few speeches over the course of, what, a few weeks or months? Obviously, they’re stupid enough to impose the death penalty, but was the reasoning really as simple as that?
3) Does anyone know if the 3 dudes were just disagreeing with homosexuality, based on their personal beliefs, in general, or if they were actually advocating for violence?
Anyway, thanks for bringing it up, now I’ll have to see if I can find the answers to my questions somewhere out there.
King,
I don’t think they advocated for the death penalty. But I think that when we talk about religious people, there is a very thin line between outward advocacy and purposeful neglect. I see their situation as similar to the preachers of the 1980s who compared abortion clinics to Dachau and Auschwitz, and who referred to abortion doctors as murderers. They let the extremists take the next step and they watched. And then they said, “Well, we didn’t do anything.”
Most of the people who hear preachers are looking for direction and aren’t necessarily in the best frame of mind. It’s like a psychologist who counsels an alcoholic and talks about how much fun he has drinking and partying and where he buys his liquor. Sure, there might not be a direct request, but it’s pretty irresponsible. And like a bartender who gives alcohol to someone who is violent and inebriated, there should be some responsibility, in my opinion.
Remember too that Uganda is a comparatively poor country. You get these rich Westerners coming over and preaching morality, and people listen.
1. It’s not the first time missionaries have been to Uganda, but at least one of these guys is an “expert” who has written numerous books on gays and Christianity. That might have had some effect. Or it could be cumulative.
2. People can be stupid. Americans were stupid enough to bomb abortion clinics. We voted for Bush in 2004 after testing him and watching him fail since 2000. It’s like doing the same thing and expecting different results. I’m guessing that the prejudice against gays in Uganda existed before and that this was just a push they needed for extremism to come out.
3. I don’t think they advocated for violence, but I’m willing to bet that they weren’t exactly talking love for so-called sinners either.
Again, in my opinion, when dealing with religious belief, it doesn’t have to be explicit in order to be advocacy. It’s kind of like the 44s and the IR crazies. We all had to temper it down because we knew some people were heading for a big ol’ wreck.
Well, if you’re talking about that Moral Majority / Operation Rescue crap, then you’re… wait for it… “preaching to the choir!” (do you see what I did there?) I agree, Randall Terry is basically a terrorist, or at the least, a supporter of terror.
But regardless of that, I’m not completely convinced of the following statement because it seems to be overly generalized.
“Most of the people who hear preachers are looking for direction and aren’t necessarily in the best frame of mind.”
It seems to me that people who are “looking for direction” are not necessarily in a questionable state of mind. After all, people in a university course may also be looking for direction. So, I’d say that we’d have to make our judgments based on what was said or taught, rather than on the mental state of those who heard it.
But also, to be fair, most of the Atheist empires of the last century weren’t any better in their treatment to homosexuals than were the overtly religious ones. The Third Reich, for example, was an essentially an Atheistic regime:
“National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable”.
Martin Bormann, a close associate of Hitler, 1941 public speech.
In 1942 Borman also declared in a confidential memo to the Gauleiters that:
” the Christian Churches ‘must absolutely and finally be broken.’ Thus it is evident that he believed Nazism, based as it was on a ‘scientific’ world-view, to be completely incompatible with Christianity.”
The Nazi’s, of course, considered homosexuals to be “deviants” and rounded them up for extermination in the gas chamber of Dachau, Falstad, and Auschwitz. I could go on to give you the history of very harsh treatment of homosexuals in the former Soviet Union, under Stalin, and in later decades. I could also give you pages of atrocities that occurred in the Atheist regime in Communist China.
It’s clearly not just a case of religious people being at fault when it comes to inexcusable behavior and atrocities toward homosexuals. That’s why I’m hesitant to accept a simple ipso facto interpretation of the events in Uganda. Given the history of persecution against homosexuals worldwide, there may be more to this than a few religious kooks giving a talk.
King,
I think I’ve had the conversation about Hitler before. And I think I had it with you. (And yes, I’ve realized that I’ve started preaching..).
I find it hard to refer to the Third Reich as an “Atheist empire.” Hitler mentions God several times in Mein Kampf, and even if he didn’t believe in a Christian God (it’s not clear exactly what his religious beliefs were, although I agree he probably wasn’t Christian), it doesn’t necessarily mean that his regime was primarily atheist. If anything, we can really only call it a racist empire since race and ethnicity were the biggest justifications for its domination.
It’s the same deal with modern governments. Is America a Christian regime? Well, it probably was during Bush since Bush made several statements about his religious reasons for attacking Iraq, but all in all, it’s more about capitalism or (arguably) democracy rather than religion.
I think the critical difference between college students looking for direction at a university and people looking for a savior (literally) is that one is based on thought, while the other is based on obeisance. I realize there are good people who go to church and who live normal lives outside of church. I think I’m probably referring to the fundamentalists. Most people who put up with fundies do have issues.
I don’t know your religious background, King, but I remember growing up among fundies. They’d say things like, “Jesus, save me! I am an undeserving sinner!” That’s probably not something that a college student looking for truth would say.
By the way, we all should do a podcast soon. I was going to do one on masculinity. Maybe we could do that one…
B.
Pingback: News, Sports and Events in Uganda. » Blog Archive » Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda Calls for Death Penalty | big WOWO
Former NYT reporter Chris Hedges and others have written extensively about what they call Christian fascism. Based upon the evangelical “dominionist movement”, Christian fascism envisions a theocratic state for the American empire.
Chris Hedges on “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America”
http://www.democracynow.org/2007/2/19/chris_hedges_on_american_fascists_the
The Christian Right and the Rise of American Fascism
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/ChristianRight_AmerFascism.html
Christian Fascism: The Jesus Gestapo of St. Orwell
http://dissidentvoice.org/Feb07/Baker01.htm
“By the way, we all should do a podcast soon. I was going to do one on masculinity. Maybe we could do that one…”
Cool. Must we lift weights beforehand?
“Hitler mentions God several times in Mein Kampf, and even if he didn’t believe in a Christian God (it’s not clear exactly what his religious beliefs were, although I agree he probably wasn’t Christian), it doesn’t necessarily mean that his regime was primarily atheist.”
Well, I probably shouldn’t have brought up the angry guy with the Chaplan mustache, since nobody want to own that little bastard. Did we talk about him before at some time? I don’t remember that.
At any rate, my basic point was certainly not a defense of religion. That would be an incredible undertaking, and far beyond my abilities. My point was only toward the idea of fairness and equivalence of application. Basically, homosexuals have been mistreated both by religions and huge anti-religious movements alike. The Soviet Union declared itself to be an Atheist state, and outlawed,all but one, small state controlled church, on pains of gulag imprisonment, and sometimes death. That, my friend, is Atheist!
Yet, when the Bolsheviks unseated the Tsar, the new Atheist government, did not declare any great love, for the homosexual community. They did not invite the homosexuals of the world to a the new Atheist haven, free from persecution. Rather, there was the notorious Article 121.1 of the Soviet Justice Code which punished “myzhelozhestvo” (a man lying with another man) with up to five years of imprisonment, and psychiatry, for completely non-religious reasons! After which, the subjects were then registered as “mentally ill,” and on that basis, were treated as second class citizen for the rest of their lives—not even allowed to have drivers licenses. Also, the State, through complete control of the media, basically erased the existence of homosexuality as an issue by considering it to be an “unfit subject” to be reported on. It was basically, a forbidden topic, much as it is in Iran today. Please name for me one homosexual leader, entertainer, or accepted intellectual, of the former Soviet Union?
The point is that anti-homosexualism is not simply a religious phenomenon. It would be easier for us to surmise that if the stupid “bible thumpers” would just keep their mouths shut, then homosexual persecution would disappear, and the world would be a better place, but we would probably be wrong. The longer that I live, the more I begin to understand that most or the world’s problems are Human problems. There are very few things that can be tracked down to one narrow group of people. It’s rarely a case of one religion, or one race, of one political party being at fault. More and more, I begin to understand, that we all are at fault.
Haha…no weights necessarily. People (fortunately) can’t hear my biceps over a podcast. Although I’m sure that weightlifting could make us sound manlier. Maybe I should do that.
As is often the case, I agree with everything you say about religion, homosexuality, and how religion does not have a monopoly on homophobia. I think my main points are that:
a) Homphobia exists within conservative evangelical Christian communities, and this homophobia veers into outright hatred, and
b) One might wonder how this hatred can exist even among powerful Americans who live in a land which has such great financial and educational resources
I’ll draw up a plan for that podcast and try to get it to you in the next week or so. Any other takers?
“People (fortunately) can’t hear my biceps over a podcast. Although I’m sure that weightlifting could make us sound manlier. Maybe I should do that.”
Every time that we think we’re making a good point, we should grunt like we’re clearing a really heavy lift! Aarrrrgghhhhhhh!!!!
http://stronglifts.com/wp-content/uploads/grunting-gym-grunt.jpg
” I think my main points are that:
“a) Homphobia exists within conservative evangelical Christian communities, and this homophobia veers into outright hatred, and
b) One might wonder how this hatred can exist even among powerful Americans who live in a land which has such great financial and educational resources”
I agree with you on your first point and commiserate with you on the second. But that particular fact is pretty commonly accepted, and has even become somewhat of a caricature of all Christians, in general. However, the truth that is very often overlooked is that:
a) Homophobia also exists within liberal/progressive non-religious communities, and historically, this has always been the case, from the advent of the French Revolution to the modern progressives of today and
b) The tendency to believe that all of our anti-homosexual behavior and policies are the result of “Jesus lovers” belies the mathematics. Most of the American Christian community is nominal, leaving a much smaller minority of politically active, religious-issue voters. Yet, when you look at say… the numbers in the States that have voted on Gay Marriage, you will see that this could not possibly happen without the support of quite a few liberals and independents as well. This is even the case in relatively progressive states:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/articles/2009/11/04/maine_voters_overturn_states_new_same_sex_marriage_law/
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122586056759900673.html
Twenty-nine states have a constitutional ban restricting marriage to one man and one woman.
Alabama
Colorado
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California (with the passage of Prop
Florida
Georgia
Kansas
Kentucky
Idaho
Louisiana
Michigan
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Utah
Virginia
Wisconsin
The following states have laws that that do not recognize gay marriage and limit marriage to one man and one woman but it is not in their constitutions:
Connecticut
Delaware
Hawaii
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Maine
Maryland
Minnesota
New Hampshire
North Carolina
Pennsylvania
Vermont
Washington
West Virginia
Wyoming
THAT is not the result of the small fringe minority of evangelical voters. Obviously we’re dealing with a lot of resistance from BOTH sides of the political and ideological spectrum.
I think there’s a difference between gay marriage and anti-gay violence. I know lots of liberals who oppose gay marriage for whatever reason without supporting anti-gay violence. I support gay marriage, but I know many activists who don’t.
The argument I hear most often is that gay people can have civil unions. I’m not sure about this, but aren’t most national politicians against it? I’m pretty sure Kerry and Edwards were. I would guess that Obama probably was, otherwise we would’ve heard more.
But supporting civil unions is a far cry from saying that homosexuality is “immoral” or “deviant.” One decries the preference, while the other simply says that society shouldn’t recognize it as a legal status. These guys in Uganda weren’t just saying that gays shouldn’t get married. They were condemning the behavior. Wouldn’t you say that this kind of condemnation is rare among liberals?
“I think there’s a difference between gay marriage and anti-gay violence.”
Yes, of course you’re right, but only in the same way that there is a difference between eco-advocacy, and eco-terrorism.
“Eco-terrorism is defined by the FBI as “the use or threatened use of violence of a criminal nature against people or property by an environmentally-oriented, subnational group for environmental-political reasons, or aimed at an audience beyond the target, often of a symbolic nature.” Wikipedia
Ted Kaczynski was probably the most extreme case of eco-terrorism that I can remember. His bombing spree lasted for 17 years, from 1978 to 1995. His maniacal campaign injured 23 people and killed 3. Yet, we correctly do not assume that environmentalism (as a concept) naturally leads to eco-violence. So, following that same vein of logic, are we not compelled to also concede that just because someone holds anti-homosexual views or beliefs, that it doesn’t mean that they support, or encourage, anti-homosexual violence?
“They were condemning the behavior. Wouldn’t you say that this kind of condemnation is rare among liberals?”
I think that it is rare to see/hear it overtly expressed, but I still hear it in jokes, in anger. People still say “that f—-ing faggot!” when they’re upset with some guy who happens to be gay. It’s not part of the “official platform” but it still comes out in everyday conversations. There’s obviously more resistance among conservatives than liberals, but it’s still there.
However, you do raise a rather interesting philosophical issue. Are you saying that “condemning” behavior, is wrong?
King,
That’s a very good philosophical point. I was thinking about it last night, and I’ll try to answer later today. In the meantime, related to the discussion, have you seen this?
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/01/13/haiti.pat.robertson/index.html
“Pat Robertson, the evangelical Christian who once suggested God was punishing Americans with Hurricane Katrina, says a “pact to the devil” brought on the devastating earthquake in Haiti.”
Pat Robertson has always been a COMPLETE scumbag. I wouldn’t trust that televangelist cretin any far as I could throw Rush Limbaugh!!! Of course, I’ve always hated him, so I’m not surprised.
Rush Limbaugh might be hard to throw. Actually, it might take two of us. Even then, we wouldn’t throw him far.
So as you know, I’ve been dealing with the question of criticizing behavior for much of this past year. If a guy has the talent to be a great in something and to be proud of his achievements, yet he proudly refuses to apply himself and takes the easy way out, is this wrong? Can I criticize it? Referencing the Justice course, if judged solely on utilitarian principles, I shouldn’t. After all, his bills still get paid, and it doesn’t hurt me.
In terms of categorical principles, I might be able to criticize it. He’s wasting talent, and if I believe that it’s wrong to waste talent or power, I could criticize his behavior on that basis.
In this case, I think I could say that it’s wrong on both categorical and utilitarian principles. Categorically, I’m against “just so” explanations. Why are these people against homosexuality? Their answer would be “God says so.” It’s not an appeal to intellect; it’s an appeal to belief, which of course, differs from person to person. In utilitarian terms, their behavior was wrong because it caused or threatened to cause other people harm. They have the responsibility to know that people who listen to them are not of sound mind and can take things the wrong way. It happens often. There is no doubt in my mind that while they didn’t explicitly call for violence, they linked homosexuality to some kind of influence from Satan. Put into the ears of certain people, these depictions can cause violence.
“Rush Limbaugh might be hard to throw. Actually, it might take two of us. Even then, we wouldn’t throw him far.
Yeah, we’d probably throw our backs out before we could even roll him over.
“Categorically, I’m against “just so” explanations. Why are these people against homosexuality? Their answer would be “God says so.” It’s not an appeal to intellect; it’s an appeal to belief, which of course, differs from person to person.”
Well… I definitely hear you, but it also seems like it’s probably more complicated than that, on it’s face. Nothing comes from nothing, and that particular belief system is based on an entire worldview and epistemology. As I understand it, the basic premise is that this reality was caused by an intelligence as opposed to being caused and evolved by purely accidental means (non-intelligent origination) I’d say that ALL religious thought (Christian, Muslim, Judaism, Ancient Greek, Animistic, Native American, Zoroastrianist… etc) are based on that foundational idea/theory/belief.
Now of course, we certainly have the right to totally disagree with that theory, but I doubt if we can categorically disprove it. So the critical question would be, do religious people have the right to believe it?
I think they have a right to believe what they want, as long as it doesn’t hurt others. A child may believe in Santa Claus, but if he kidnaps a schoolmate and demands ransom from Santa around Christmas, I think there’s a problem…
Similarly, we sometimes see parents who deny medicine to their kids on religious grounds and wind up killing them. I don’t think they have a right to do this on utilitarian and categorical grounds.
“as long as it doesn’t hurt others”
Ahhh, but there’s the rub…
Who is going to decide what “hurt” is? If we simply mean physical harm, then we may have an objective basis upon which to begin. But if we are talking about anything beyond that, it can become very complicated.
After all, consider that another person, with a different worldview than your own, might consider that you are “hurting” your children by raising them as you are.
I know! By giving my kid medicine and not obeying God, I may be dooming him for all eternity.
At that point, I think it’s important for people to remember who has the burden of proof. If I say that medicine heals people, I can “prove” it inductively since it’s worked many times before. If I say the Lord Jesus Christ died on a cross so that you can spend eternity in heaven, or if I say that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created us, then the burden of proof is on me.