Last week, Ugandan gay activist David Kato was bludgeoned to death. On Saturday, the pastor who presided* over his funeral called for gays to repent "or be punished by God." Today, President Obama, Senator Gillibrand and other notables, even the husband of Representative Giffords, appeared at a prayer breakfast sponsored by "The Family", a right wing fundamentalist organization. Among their most influential members is David Bahati, a core member of the Family responsible for the introduction of genocidal anti-gay legislation in Uganda.
Kato's death did not take place in a vacuum. The Uganda anti-gay bill introduced in parliament in October of 2009 was partially the product of an alliance between Ugandan politicians and U.S. evangelicals. Today, that global alliance had access to the most powerful politician on the planet.
President Barack Obama has a difficult relationship with gay men and lesbians. While the overwhelming majority supported him in the 2008 general election, the relationship has been strained by both activist impatience after forty years of broken Democratic promises and President Obama's own willingness to invite anti-gay bigots like Pastor Rick Warren to the table. Although the President has a fairly gay-friendly political platform, LGBT voters are accustomed to nice talk with very little follow-through. Whether the issue is DADT (which is still the law of the land, news reports notwithstanding), the Defense of Marriage Act, his announcement that "God is in the mix" on matters of sexuality and marriage, or other indicators, gay voters have a reason to be cautious with President Obama, just as they had reason to be cautious with President Clinton.
Some things are just beyond the pale, however, and today was one of them. Really, for everyone involved, attending the National Prayer Breakfast a week after Kato's murder should have given them pause. According to Jeff Sharlet, all signs point to the sponsors of today's prayer breakfast:
Let's talk about The Family's connection to Uganda, where there's, really, a draconian anti-gay bill that has been introduced into parliament. Uganda already punishes the practice of homosexuality with life in prison. What would the new legislation do?
Mr. SHARLET: Well, the new legislation adds to this something called aggravated homosexuality. And this can include, for instance, if a gay man has sex with another man who is disabled, that's aggravated homosexuality, and that man can be - I suppose both, actually, could be put to death for this. The use of any drugs or any intoxicants in seeking gay sex - in other words, you go to a bar and you buy a guy a drink, you're subject to the death penalty if you go home and sleep together after that. What it also does is it extends this outward, so that if you know a gay person and you don't report it, that could mean - you don't report your son or daughter, you can go to prison.
And it goes further, to say that any kind of promotion of these ideas of homosexuality, including by foreigners, can result in prison terms. Talking about same sex-marriage positively can lead you to imprisonment for life. And it's really kind of a perfect case study and the export of a lot of American largely evangelical ideas about homosexuality exported to Uganda, which then takes them to their logical end.
GROSS: This legislation has just been proposed. It hasn't been signed into law. So it's not in effect and it might never be in effect. But it's on the table. It's before parliament. So is there a direct connection between The Family and this proposed Anti-Homosexual Legislation in Uganda?
Mr. SHARLET: Well, the legislator that introduces the bill, a guy named David Bahati, is a member of The Family. He appears to be a core member of The Family. He works, he organizes their Uganda National Prayer Breakfast and oversees a African sort of student leadership program designed to create future leaders for Africa, into which The Family has poured millions of dollars working through a very convoluted chain of linkages passing the money over to Uganda.
GROSS: So you're reporting the story for the first time today, and you found this story - this direct connection between The Family and the proposed legislation by following the money?
Mr. SHARLET: Yes, it's - I always say that the family is secretive, but not secret. You can go and look at 990s, tax forms and follow the money through these organizations that The Family describe as invisible. But you go and you look. You follow that money. You look at their archives. You do interviews where you can. It's not so invisible anymore. So that's how working with some research colleagues we discovered that David Bahati, the man behind this legislation, is really deeply, deeply involved in The Family's work in Uganda, that the ethics minister of Uganda, Museveni's kind of right hand man, a guy named Nsaba Buturo, is also helping to organize The Family's National Prayer Breakfast. And here's a guy who has been the main force for this Anti-Homosexuality Act in Uganda's executive office and has been very vocal about what he's doing, and in a rather extreme and hateful way. But these guys are not so much under the influence of The Family. They are, in Uganda, The Family.
The Uganda campaign was rooted in fertile soil. Homosexuality is a serious offense in Uganda, and HIV educational campaigns largely avoid discussing it or engaging in any outreach to gay men. With the exception of South Africa, this is true for much of the continent north and south of the Sahara.
Writing for the Guardian in May of last year, columnist Madeleine Bunning identified several "complex roots" underlying African homophobia. That context is, inter alia, indigenous cultural elements, urbanization, anti-Western resentment, and a "crisis of masculinity" resulting from the intersection of the other factors. She leaves out a desire to compete with Islam for converts. Regardless, the point is clear enough: White evangelicals did not have to invent homophobia in Africa, but when they arrived to plant seeds they discovered fertile soil:
But within Uganda deeply-rooted homophobia, aided by a US-linked evangelical campaign alleging that gay men are trying to "recruit" schoolchildren, and that homosexuality is a habit that can be "cured", has ensured widespread public support for the bill.
President Yoweri Museveni appeared to add his backing earlier this month, warning youths in Kampala that he had heard that "European homosexuals are recruiting in Africa", and saying gay relationships were against God's will.
"We used to say Mr and Mrs, but now it is Mr and Mr. What is that now?" he said. In a interview with the Guardian, James Nsaba Buturo, the minister of state for ethics and integrity, said the government was determined to pass the legislation, ideally before the end of 2009, even if meant withdrawing from international treaties and conventions such as the UN's Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and foregoing donor funding.
"We are talking about anal sex. Not even animals do that," Butoro said, adding that he was personally caring for six "former homosexuals" who had been traumatised by the experience. "We believe there are limits to human rights."
This is nothing new, of course; Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has long held out gay men and lesbians as scapegoats, describing homosexuality as "an alien practise" that destroys nations. This view is popular and bipartisan in Zimbabwe; as leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai "totally agree[s] with the president" on few issues, but gay men and lesbians (particularly the former) is one of them.
Homophobia has always been in a problem in virtually every society, but there are strong signs that as developed nations have started to reach a consensus on combating it, religious and secular opposition has concentrated on traditional and underdeveloped nations. Russia is appealing a decision by the European Court of Human Rights that struck down Moscow's ban on annual gay pride marches. In rejecting the ban, the court noted that Mayor Luzhkov "had vowed to never allow a gay pride parade in Moscow no matter what. He called gay parades "satanic" and "weapons of mass destruction," and called gay people "faggots" ("gomiki")."
In Moscow, law enforcement authorities have been unwilling to shield gay men and lesbians at these events from violent attacks by ultranationalists and fundamentalists, a trait they share with police in Indonesia, where conferences on gay rights have been disrupted by conservative Islamist opponents.
Reacting to Kato's death, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton argued that his "tragic death underscores how critical it is that both the government and the people of Uganda, along with the international community, speak out against the discrimination, harassment, and intimidation of Uganda’s LGBT community, and work together to ensure that all individuals are accorded the same rights and dignity to which each and every person is entitled." Her boss, President Barack Obama, released an even stronger statement that same day, condemning murders in Honduras and Uganda, and asserting, without qualification, that "LGBT rights are not special rights; they are human rights."
Still, his ambassador to Zambia just this week insisted that the United States will not push for decriminalization of homosexuality, but will instead "respect Zambian traditions, cultures and history," going so far as to urge Zambians to "uphold their values," which includes the criminalization of homosexuality and a longstanding tradition of state-sponsored homophobia. Ambassador Storella was appointed by President Obama last year; maybe the ambassador was speaking out of turn. But it is interesting to note that despite the president's strong words, there has been no change in on-the-ground advocacy, and the idea that promotion of human rights, or even basic respect, for gay Africans would be part of the US foreign policy agenda in Zambia or anywhere else appears to be little more than an illusion designed for HRC cocktail dinners.
The news is not all bad; there are straight Ugandans with a platform who get it, and they're taking the opportunity to speak out:
Alan Kasujja, host of a breakfast radio show in Kampala, used his broadcast on Friday to urge Uganda to turn its back on homophobia and focus on other issues.
"I have tons of friends who are gay," Kasujja told Reuters. "These are people who I have gone to school with, who I have worked with. They are our brothers and sisters, our children.
"So am I supposed to join ill-informed, undereducated people who advocate for them to be ostracised? Sorry, I cannot be part of that," he said.
Gay activist murder prompts Ugandan reflection
Whatever one thinks about the president's commitment to gay rights here in the US, we can say this much: He never approved of the law in Uganda, and he spoke out against it at the time, and the statements released last week were forceful. But this week's statements made by Storella and President Obama's failure to address the issue at the prayer breakfast today underline an important point driven home with each wikileaks revelation: There's a division between what our leaders say at home to garner praise and what they are willing to do through their spokespeople abroad, or in negotiations with foreign leaders.
President Obama is going to have a difficult re-election campaign, but he will almost certainly be able to count on LGBT support. They will support him financially, in the voting booth, and as volunteers. To earn and sustain this support, he will be able to point to the videos he made for the "It Gets Better" campaign as well as the videos made by Clinton and others within his administration. He will be able to point to the passage of a federal hate crimes act in 2009, and, presumably, the eventual repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in 2010-2011. These are significant accomplishments, but there are just as many reservations: On the DOMA litigation and the Obama administration's insistence that anti-gay discrimination is almost always constitutional, on the failure to require nondiscrimination in the military context, on the failure to implement all of HRC's recommendations, including a prohibition against employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity for federal contractors...these and other issues are important.
Perhaps most alarmingly, these are not questions that mainstream LGBT groups appear to be asking. Last Friday, the Human Rights Campaign ran a column condemning Scott Lively and other US-based activists for promoting the murderous campaign against gay men and lesbians in Uganda and elsewhere, but there's nothing on Storella or any inquiry into what steps the US, as a donor nation, is taking to ensure that anti-gay discrimination is addressed or ameliorated in the countries that need it the most. We know that the United States agrees that gay men and lesbians should not be subjected to extrajudicial murder, but I would assume Ms. Rice acknowledges that as a floor and not a ceiling. What is the US doing to decriminalize homosexuality across the board? What steps are being made to tie receipt of HIV/AIDS funding to decriminalization, if any? Why are these steps not being taken, if they are not?
Today in the most repressive countries on the planet, thousands of people are risking their lives to demand accountability, human rights and the right to dissent. Here in the relative comfort of the United States, in exchange for access to the corridors of power and the briefest of nods at charitable dinners, the mainstream LGBT groups and individuals prefer to maintain their diminutive status within a larger coalition instead of asking difficult questions that might risk that status. We rightfully mock GoProud for inviting incendiary figures like Andrew Brietbart into their organization, but we are at a loss to address the seemingly contradictory messages being sent by the White House on a host of issues, to say nothing of the willingness of national organizations to lend their name to dubious coalition efforts without much promise of reciprocity, if any.
It is all well and good to call for a politics that is lived "at the intersection" of competing identities if that's one's interest, but it is another thing altogether to become an apologist for the establishment when it insists on kicking people like you in the face, provided that they are poor and/or foreign. The anti-gay movement is itself intersectional and interfaith; people of color and whites, religious fundamentalists and secular fascists, united in opposition to the basic human rights of gay men and lesbians. We need to take a look at the globalization of homophobia and ask some very difficult questions: Of ourselves, of the Obama administration, and of our supposed political allies. Gay men and lesbians have powerful opponents with deep pockets, opponents who often hide behind the cloak of religion, tradition and a veil of secrecy. The Family Research Council spent $25,000 lobbying against a resolution condemning state-sponsored murder of gay Ugandan citizens:
Joe Jervis of the blog Joe.My.God has discovered that another religious group, the anti-gay Family Research Council (FRC), spent "$25,000 to lobby Congress against approving a resolution denouncing Uganda’s plan to execute homosexuals." While the group’s efforts failed to stop the Senate bill, they may have succeeded in slowing down the House version, which "remains languishing in the House almost four months after being referred to the Foreign Affairs Committee," Jervis notes.
The extent of FRC’s influence, however, is unclear. The measure has been widely condemned around the world, from UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown to federal lawmakers of both parties in the United States. Republican senators Tom Coburn (OK) and Susan Collins (ME) both co-sponsored the Senate resolution and "five Republican representatives – Chris Smith, Frank Wolf, Joe Pitts, Trent Franks and Anh "Joseph" Cao –" wrote a letter to Ugandan President Yoweri Mouseveni urging him to do everything within his constitutional authority to stop the legislation. Smith’s involvement is particularly significant, since he has been a prominent FRC ally and has accepted $4,000 from the group in the 2008 and 2010 election cycles.
FRC’s support for the measure places it on the radical fringe of the political spectrum and out of sync with other religious groups. Many American Christian leaders have come out against the law, including prominent Evangelicals like Pastor Rick Warren. In late December of last year, Warren called on Ugandan pastors to oppose the law, but only after facing intense criticism for saying it wasn’t his "personal calling" to "comment or interfere in the political process of other nations."
There is no defense that can be offered today; the Uganda legislation did not even surface when President Obama spoke, despite the recent murder of Kato. It is difficult to imagine the president appearing before a collection of antisemites or white supremacists to offer up a moment of prayer in an attempt at "reaching out" to his opponents. But then, Uganda was just "upholding" its values, like Zambia. There's no shelter that was provided for Mr. Kato or that will be provided to other Ugandan citizens waiting for the other shoe to drop. There's no Liberation Square moment in the near future for human beings trapped under the weight of anti-gay regimes. And today, President Obama and the U.S. political establishment spat in their face. Again.
*The Guardian continues to report that the pastor presided over the funeral ceremony, but The Advocate suggests that the disruption on the part of the Anglican priest was a result of an uninvited and unwanted guest, all too familiar to American gay men and lesbians familiar with similar disruptions by the Westboro Baptist Church and the Phelps family.