Rick Warren came out against the bill.

There will be, of course, no version of this bill that will not elicit an outcry from the gay activists. And I will be amazed if any of them give credit to the Anglican Church of Uganda for any role in softening the law’s effects.

2.,
Show evidence that the Church played a role in softening this still-horrendous human rights violation, and I’ll be happy to give credit where credit is due.

Isaac, I did a little digging and found this Reuters article that implies that the softening of the bill will be attributed to certain un-named “donors.” The minister of ethics attributes it to “religious leaders.” I don’t know whether it is fair to speculate that the “donors” and “religious leaders” are one and the same. The Reuters article rules out “diplomatic pressure,” for instance.

My guess—and this is just a guess—is that “donor” is a Uganda euphemism for the person who offers a bribe. It would not be surprising if it all boiled down to money—this is Uganda after all. And if the churches (for surely the Roman Catholic church is just as involved as the Anglicans) have organized to bribe the bill tenders, it becomes more clear why they have not been more public about their opposition to it.

Oh dear. 

. . . What truly depressing news—for all the Anglican gay activist groups.

For one thing, it’s now been demonstrated that, indeed, something was going on behind the scenes, and that there was absolutely no need to make any kind of public statement.  And for another, it means that they have failed to get Williams really really between a rock and a hard place on Public Statement Making, and they’ve lost an opportunity to really drag all of this out, hopefully, over the coming months.

All in all, a sorry night for the Anglican gay activist groups. 

Something still might be salvaged however.  There is still a chance to spin gold out of straw, to get something out of the whole mess.  After a conference call discussion to discuss the best take, they can issue a statement saying that it’s all still awful.  That of course, there should be no laws against anything to do with same-gender sexual activity.  And calling loudly for a Public Statement from Williams and the Ugandan Anglican church denouncing the bill.  That is, of course, still Absolutely, Vitally Necessary because there are no other countries in the entire world that have legislation against same-gender sexual activity. 

. . . Or at least, if there are, Uganda is The Most Vitally Important One To Deal With First—hopefully through a Public Statement From Orombi and Williams.

4,
I didn’t see any reference to religious leaders other than a reference to religious leaders thinking homosexuality is a western import and unafrican.  I read ‘donors’ as being international agencies like USAID and the like, rather than private charitable giving (the reference to funding ‘a 1/3 of the budget’ suggests that).  If there were behind-the-scenes politicking going on by the Ugandan Church, then I suspect there won’t be much evidence in the way of newspaper reports.  I’m willing to give the Church the benefit of the doubt on this one, because I can’t conceive of a situation wherein a gov’t that’s willing to go this far to restrict human rights is going to be friendly towards a Church that chooses to advocate for human rights.  Would I have done something different?  I’d hope so, but then again, I’m aware of my own sinfulness to know I’m a coward more often than I ought to be.

That being said, there’s a long distance between ‘there might have been’ to ‘there’s evidence of’ behind the scenes politicking.

All that being said, surely someone would point out that ‘SMUG’ is a bad name for any rights group.

True, Isaac. This is probably all we’ll ever know on this subject. From what I know personally of Henry Luke Orombi, I suspect he was involved, but in the end it boils down to pure speculation.

For one thing, it’s now been demonstrated that, indeed, something was going on behind the scenes, and that there was absolutely no need to make any kind of public statement.

Not at all.  What has been demonstrated is a change in the bill.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Simply a change.  Why is up to speculation.

And for another, it means that they have failed to get Williams really really between a rock and a hard place on Public Statement Making, and they’ve lost an opportunity to really drag all of this out, hopefully, over the coming months.

Again, an incorrect reading.  ++Rowan’s silence speaks columes.  Because his voice may or may not now be necessary is irrelevant.  He was silent when it was necessary.

RE: “He was silent when it was necessary.”

Heh—obviously it wasn’t. 

RE: “What has been demonstrated is a change in the bill.”

Which occurred . . . [drum roll] . . . behind the scenes, and not in public.

We know this because . . . the machinations didn’t occur out in front.  But machinations occurred—to change the bill and announce it publicly—behind the scenes.  Note that I didn’t say that there was any activity by *the church*—merely that something was going on behind the scenes, hence . . . the change.

All of the Anglican gay activist groups crass, rancid, transparently obvious political maneuverings—poof.

Gone.

And looking mighty foolish too.

But not to worry—they can come out with their statement [see above content] soon and maybe they’ll be able to cover it somehow.

I’m sure folks have seen this.  I think it’s the best statement to date by a western Christian leader.

Rick Warren on Uganda

Bruce Robison

Nice. A good end to this. And the publicity might be good toward making some progress toward G&L people being able to live in safety in Uganda, as well.

This has generated some of the most virulent and vicious Christian-bashing I have ever seen on MSNBC.  I saw one of the segments Rachel Maddow did the other night (of course, she has a huge axe to grind) and virtually everything she said was a misstatement, distortion, or outright lie.  If you believed her, you would conclude that Christians in the U.S. were directly responsible for this legislation and were pushing it.

And by the way, if you go to her site and look at the stuff she has posted there as legitimizing her stories, you will discover she is talking directly about YOU, or should I say US, since my present church is one of those evil “renewal” PCUSA churches that still believes in the Bible.  Here is one of her primary “sources,” that she has used repeatedly including interviewing the author:

http://www.publiceye.org/publications/globalizing-the-culture-wars/press-release.php

Sexual minorities in Africa have become collateral damage to our domestic conflicts and culture wars as U.S. conservative evangelicals and those opposing gay pastors and bishops within mainline Protestant denominations woo Africans in their American fight, a groundbreaking investigation by Political Research Associates (PRA) has discovered. . . .

These partnerships have succeeded in slowing the mainline Protestant churches’ recognition of the full equality of LGBT people, in part due to liberals’ sensitivity to the charge of colonialism. However, as Kaoma argues, it is U.S. conservatives who are imposing their own concerns about homosexuality on Africa.  Further, although U.S. conservatives have organized African religious leaders as a visible force opposing LGBT equality, it would be wrong to conclude that all of Africa stands with these clerics and their U.S. patrons.

In the United States, Kaoma focuses on “renewal” groups in The Episcopal Church, United Methodist Church USA, and Presbyterian Church USA; U.S conservative evangelicals; and the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a neoconservative think tank that for decades has sought to undermine Protestant denominations’ tradition of progressive social justice work.

In Africa, Kaoma investigates ties U.S. conservatives have established with religious leaders in Nigeria, Uganda, and Kenya and the impact of homophobia exported from the United States to these Anglophone countries.

As Kaoma argues, the U.S. Right – once isolated in Africa for supporting pro-apartheid, White supremacist regimes – has successfully reinvented itself as the mainstream of U.S. evangelicalism. Through their extensive communications networks in Africa, social welfare projects, Bible schools, and educational materials, U.S. religious conservatives warn of the dangers of homosexuals and present themselves as the true representatives of U.S. evangelicalism, so helping to marginalize Africans’ relationships with mainline Protestant churches.

“We need to stand up against the U.S. Christian Right peddling homophobia in Africa,” said Kaoma, who in recent weeks challenged U.S. evangelist Rick Warren to denounce the bill and distance himself from its supporters. “I heard church people in Uganda say they would go door to door to root out LGBT people and now our brothers and sisters are being further targeted by proposed legislation criminalizing them and threatening them with death. The scapegoating must stop.”

While the American side of the story is known to LGBT activists and their allies witnessing struggles over LGBT clergy within Protestant denominations in the United States, what’s been missing is the effect of the Right’s proxy wars on Africa itself. Kaoma’s report finally brings this larger, truly global picture into focus.

“Just as the United States and other northern societies routinely dump our outlawed or expired chemicals, pharmaceuticals, machinery, and cultural detritus on African and other Third World countries, we now export a political discourse and public policies our own society has discarded as outdated and dangerous,” writes PRA executive director Tarso Luís Ramos in the report’s foreword.  “Africa’s antigay campaigns are to a substantial degree made in the U.S.A.”

Leaders within mainline Protestant denominations hailed the report.

“The exploitation of African Christians by right-wing organizations in the United States is reprehensible. Where were these individuals and organizations and their leaders during the struggles against colonialism and apartheid? They certainly were not standing in solidarity with the people of Africa. Today, they use a variety of corrupt practices and methods in a vain attempt to turn back the tide of history. This report reveals the truth about what is going on and should be required reading for American church leaders,” said Jim Winkler, the general secretary of the international public policy and social justice agency of The United Methodist Church.

The author is “Rev. Kapya Kaoma,” who “is a Project Director at Political Research Associates, and an Anglican priest from Zambia now leading churches in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts.” You can read a lot more of his material, reminiscent of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-kapya-kaoma/the-us-christian-right-an_b_387642.html

Make no mistake about it, this is all part of the effort to demonize traditional Christians and to legitimize discrimination and eventually, persecution.

And will anyone have the guts to ask whether Schori & Co. at 815 are financially underwriting it?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4725959.stm

This BBC link indicates that real executions of gays have taken place in other countries than Uganda.  Previous tribal governments in Uganda staged well documented executions of Christians who refused to participate in homosexual relations with their pagan king.

Maybe gay activists should issue calls for apologies and reparations due to victims and families of victims of tyrants with disordered orientations.

#5 Sarah,

You totally rock!  The best thing about your post is that die hard revisionists are incapable of seeing the world except through their peculiar filter and thus incapable of understanding how non left leaning United States political systems really function. You go girl!

Ed

Jim (#13):  I don’t know who Kaoma is, but I read the article on your recommendation.  It does NOT read like the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”!  (These kinds of loaded claims are not helpful.) Indeed, it is quite instructive, in indicating some general attitudes, on three fronts:

1.  The general claim that the US inteneral struggle—and internal to many US churches—has been imported into Africa and African churches, seems quite true.  Both liberal and conservative churches HAVE done this;  and though he concentrates on the conservatives and white-washes the liberals in this unfolding and unedifying drama, the argument strikes me as generally accurate.  And yes, money HAS been a major factor in this struggle—this I know for a fact, and many of us who have connections to the African church know it too (again, though, the manipulation or attempted manipulation, comes from both sides). 
2.  Kaoma evidences a complete and surely deliberate negligence of the deep, abiding, and vital evangelical roots and current spirit of evangelical Christianity within e.g. the parts of African Anglicanism he mentions (if, in fact, he is Zambian, he would not have experienced this himself—the Anglican church in Zambia is historically un- and often anti-evangelical).  This negligence makes his discussion completely unhistorical and, ultimately, dismissive of the indigenous power of the Christian vision held by “conservative” African Anglicans.  In this, he mirrors the dismissive disrespect and historical twisting that many liberals engage to this day. 

3.  The real issue, as it comes out, is “organizing”, i.e. political manipulation.  Kaoma doesn’t like conservatives doing it, but wants liberals to do it in Africa.  This, of course, only furthers the problems of (1.).  Spouting half-truths as he does vs. conservative church organizations and leaders is simply a part—a morally corrupt part, to be sure—of such political dynamics.  But seeing a Kaoma in action—which I grant is something deeply distasteful—should be a warning to conservatives not to do the same thing in a misguided attempt to “outorganize” the “opposition”.  Alas, there is enough truth in Kaoma’s descriptions rightly to cause conservative Christians some measure of demanded self-scrutiny.

From the Political Research Associates website:
“While attacks on civil liberties can come from any direction, the political and Christian Right use skillful marketing that exploits the public’s desire for quick solutions and capitalizes on today’s hectic information flow. With clever slogans that oversimplify complex public policy issues, the Right routinely scapegoats others in pursuit of their agenda.”
Of course the left would never do this.
Also a bit about the author who has been in the U.S. since 2003:
“Kapya John Kaoma (project director) investigates right-wing efforts to destabilize mainline Protestant denominations. He is an ordained Anglican clergyman with a particular interest in social justice issues, ecological ethics, and interfaith work. From 1998-2001 he served as the dean of St. John’s Cathedral in Harare, Zimbabwe and lecturer at Africa University, where he coauthored a class text in ethics, “Unity in Diversity.” From 2001 to 2002, he was academic dean for St. John’s Anglican Seminary in Kitwe, Zambia, where he launched its women’s studies and church school training programs. An active campaigner for women’s reproductive rights, Kaoma argues theologically for the promotion of condoms in the fight against HIV/AIDS. He received the Boston Theological Institute’s Costas Consultation In Global Mission award from 2003-2005. A doctoral candidate at Boston University School of Theology, he received its merit-based African Studies Fellowship four years in a row, from 2004 to 2008.”

Sorry, but Kaoma’s piece is a hatchet job, full of errors and insinuations. A much fairer presentation of the intersection of North American Anglicans with the African Church is Miranda Hassett’s book, The Anglican Communion in Crisis: How Episcopal Dissidents and Their Allies Are Reshaping Anglicanism (2007) (see my review).

I can assure you that the passion behind this issue in Uganda is not being stirred up by “right-wing” ex-patriates. The global media has changed matters greatly. Whereas twenty years ago, news might take two months to get here, now we have color photos of Mary Glasspool on the front page of the national newspapers the day after her election. Uganda has largely escaped the anti-colonial resentments of other African countries. However, the suspicion at present is being directed to all muzungus, whether theological friends or foes.

I agree, Stephen (18), that it is a “hatchet job”, and it needs to be exposed as such (as Jim appropriately brought it to our attention);  although turning a political and theological struggle, with all the distortions this draws out of people, Christians included, into something analagous to pogrom-inciting anti-Semitism is not an accurate way to characterize liberal ideology at this point;  indeed, in this case, the issue has centered on legislation dealing with long-term incarceration and capital punishment aimed against homosexuals and their supporters, not the other way around! 

But I do think that the turmoil around all this in places like Uganda (although, obviously, you are far better informed about this country than am I), is not solely to be attributed to pristine indigenous Christian concerns in the face of expanded global communications. (Although, as I pointed out, indigenous Christian concerns ARE primary and historically deeply-rooted.) There has been long-term organizing in Africa and quite deliberate communication going on about this topic by both the Left and the Right of the West for well over a decade now.  This I DO know first hand. And American and Western ecclesial battles over sexuality have had an enormous and poisoning influence in parts of the Anglican Communion, including Africa.    The tenor of the current debate over the proposed Ugandan legislation, and the proposal itself, is a witness to the deforming insertion of this Western struggle into other churches and political cultures.  If only on this score, Rowan Williams was prudent to stay clear.

Too bad nobody gets worked up about the actual executions in Iran et alia.  There might be required the actual doing of something instead of claiming faux victimization in futuro.  Much better to concentrate on the future than the present and actual, right, Integrity?

Ah - if the Ugandan solons drop execution and life imprisonment, do we have a good use of government power?  Are there criminal penalties for being homosexual?  Or is the punitive power of the state reserved for situations where minors are abused?

I find it amazing that such animosity exists about all of this.  Children of God are children of God, regardless of country of origin or residence, sexual orientation, gender, political affiliation, or any other qualifier we have a tendency to add.  It is progress, albeit at tiny step, when we manage to really act like followers of Jesus Christ and manage to do some little bit to insure reasonably equal treatment of all.  I do not care who managed to influence anyone in Uganda to leave out the death penalty in the proposed legislation.  I do care that another human being might be able to live her/his life without some of the fear they encounter for being who they are, whether that is gender, party affiliation, sexual orientation or whatever.  The Gospel lesson for the last couple of Sundays has included the phrases:  “brood of vipers! hypocrites!”  The irritation was directed at those who would miss the spirit of the law while trying to force the letter of the law on their fellow human beings.  Jesus entire ministry was centered around right relationships (righteousness) between human beings and between human beings and their Creator.  We still don’t get it.  Far too much of our energy and time is devoted to sorting God’s children into categories rather than bringing them into the fellowship.  It’s God’s role to sort them out, not ours. 

Bruce Garner
Atlanta