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Uganda
hears anti-gay call 04 Jan
2010- Kampala, Uganda- Last March, three American evangelical Christians,
whose teachings about ''curing'' homosexuals have been widely discredited in the
US, arrived in Uganda's capital to give a series of talks.
The theme of the event, according to Stephen
Langa, its Ugandan organiser, was ''the gay agenda - that whole hidden and dark
agenda'' - and the threat homosexuals posed to the traditional African family.
For three days, according to participants and
audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and
national politicians, listened to the Americans, who were presented as
''experts'' on homosexuality.
The visitors discussed how to change people
from homosexual to heterosexual, how homosexual men often sodomised teenage boys
and how ''the gay movement is an evil institution'' whose goal is ''to defeat
the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual
promiscuity''.
One month after the conference, a previously
unknown Ugandan politician who boasts of having evangelical friends in the US
Government introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, which threatens to
hang homosexuals and has put Uganda on a collision course with Western nations.
Donor countries, including the US, are
demanding that Uganda's Government drop the proposed law. The Ugandans, facing
the prospect of losing millions in foreign aid, are now indicating that they
will back down, slightly, and change the death penalty provision to life in
prison for some homosexuals. But the battle is far from over.
The three Americans who spoke at the
conference - Scott Lively, a missionary who has written anti-homosexual books;
Caleb Lee Brundidge, a self-described former gay man who leads ''healing
seminars'', and Don Schmierer, a board member of Exodus International, whose
mission is ''mobilising the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a
world impacted by homosexuality'' - are now trying to distance themselves from
the bill.
But the Ugandan organisers of the conference
admit helping to draft the legislation.
Gay Ugandans already describe a world of
blackmail, death threats like ''Die Sodomite!'' scrawled on their homes,
beatings and even so-called correctional rape.
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