The Anti-Homosexuality Bill moving through the Uganda Parliament seeks to expand the country’s laws against homosexuality, a crime already punishable by life imprisonment. The current legislation, which is expected to pass, would impose the death penalty for LGBT people who have previous convictions of homosexuality, have had sexual relations with someone under age 18 or are sexually active and HIV-positive. The law also would mandate up to three years in prison for individuals who don’t report known homosexuals to the police within 24 hours, and up to seven years for individuals or companies that support the LGBT community.
While President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other top U.S. officials have condemned the legislation, author Jeff Sharlet, contributing editor to Harper’s and Rolling Stone, has claimed the antigay effort has strong ties to the U.S. political scene.
Sharlet, author of “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power,” has been touring the talk-show circuit and airwaves in the past few weeks to discuss the connection he found between the Uganda leaders pushing the legislation and some high-ranking U.S. politicos.
Sharlet’s book profiles The Family, also known as The Fellowship, a secret association of wealthy politicians and other elite, some of whom live in a townhouse on C Street in Washington, D.C. — a house that had been listed with the IRS as a church but just last month lost its tax-exempt status. Sharlet, who lived undercover for a month at the house, said the brotherhood goes back to 1935, when it was formed in opposition to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. The organization emphasizes Christian values and founded and organizes the National Prayer Breakfast, a multi-denominational annual service attended by international political leaders.
Through his research, Sharlet uncovered documents that point to Congressman Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) as having been a member of The Family for several decades.
When asked about Pitts’ involvement with the organization, Pitts’ spokesperson Andrew Wimer said: “Rep. Pitts has been involved with the National Prayer Breakfast for many years. That is a mainstream, bipartisan, interfaith event that brings together people of all ideologies and backgrounds,” and noted that he “believe[s] the C Street house was established by people involved with the National Prayer Breakfast. I have no idea how many residents themselves are active with the prayer breakfast.”
Congressman Michael Doyle (D-Pa.) has lived in the C Street house for the past several years.
Matt Dinkle, spokesperson for Doyle, who is a proponent of several pieces of pro-LGBT legislation, confirmed the Congressman “rents a room in a building that they own” but said he was “not really” a member, although he noted that “he will occasionally meet with other folks who are associated with the organization.”
Sharlet, who spent several years researching The Family through archival documents and interviews with Family members and affiliates willing to speak about the organization, said there are several links between the organization and Uganda.
The prime sponsor of the antigay bill, David Bahati, Sharlet says, is “on record” having worked with The Family in organizing the Ugandan National Prayer Breakfast and is a “core” member of the organization. Sharlet also found, through researching The Family’s IRS forms, that it has given millions of dollars to the Cornerstone, a Ugandan leadership academy that operates the African Youth Leadership Network, which Bahati oversees.
Sharlet also maintains that Uganda president Yoweri Museveni, an advocate of the bill, has been connected to The Family for more than 20 years, and that The Family has referred to Museveni as its “key man” in Africa. Museveni’s “right-hand man,” the country’s ethics minister Nsaba Buturo, also a strong proponent of the legislation, has also worked with The Family, Sharlet claims.
Doyle told PGN that he is personally unaware of any Family involvement in the antigay bill and condemned the legislation.
“I have no knowledge of any connection between that organization and the legislation in Uganda; however, as a member of Congress with a 100-percent rating by the Human Rights Campaign and a member of the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus, I find this legislation bigoted, hateful, despicable and abhorrent, and I strongly believe it shouldn’t be approved in any form in any country in the world,” Doyle said.
Pitts also spoke out against the bill in a statement provided to PGN.
“Human rights are universal. What the Ugandan legislation proposes to do is unambiguously wrong and I hope they will not proceed with it,” Pitts said. “We need to remember that there are other countries — like Iran, Saudi Arabia and Somalia — that currently execute gay people. I hope those countries will receive at least as much attention, along with countries that execute people for their political and religious beliefs.”
Sharlet claims the idea for the bill was initially discussed among some participants at the Ugandan National Prayer Breakfast in October 2008 and that some members of The Family have known about it since.
“We will never know how much each person has known, but I do know that The Family has known since last year,” he said.
Sharlet noted the organization has operated under a shroud of secrecy since its inception and that Family director Doug Coe — who has compared the commitment to Jesus that he teaches to the blind devotion Nazis gave to Hitler — has said, “The more invisible you make your organization, the more influence you’ll have.”
The Family has been in the headlines frequently in the past year after news broke that several reported members — Sen. Jon Ensign (R-Nev.), South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) and former Rep. Chip Pickering (R-Miss.) — had extramarital affairs.
The Family has a strong anti-union bend, believes in a laissez-faire market and has worked on certain foreign-affairs issues, but does not typically focus much on social issues, Sharlet said.
He noted, however, that Pitts, whose district encompasses Lancaster, Chester and Berks counties, has been influential in drawing The Family’s attention and political support toward the issue of anti-abortion.
“One could argue that Joe Pitts really changed the direction of the organization,” Sharlet said. “They were originally focused on economic and foreign affairs and not really dealing with social issues, but Joe Pitts was able to redirect them to the abortion debate.”
Pitts and U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), who is also reportedly a Family member, recently authored an amendment to the healthcare-reform bill that seeks to prevent federal funds from being used for abortions, a measure that passed in the House.
Pitts was also the crafter of a 2003 amendment to an HIV/AIDS funding bill, the majority of which was directed toward Africa, that required that 33 percent of the funding be used only for abstinence-until-marriage programming, and Sharlet said Pitts used his connections in countries like Uganda to work against condom distribution.
Uganda’s rate of HIV infection had drastically decreased from the 1980s and ’90s, but the numbers have been on the rise in the past several years, which Sharlet surmised could be connected to the emphasis on abstinence instead of comprehensive sexual education that includes access to condoms, thanks to legislators like Pitts.
“Joe Pitts, more than any other single person, has contributed to increasing the AIDS rate in Uganda. That’s a strong statement, but what he did led to a reversal in what had been a real success story in fighting HIV,” said the author.
Sharlet added that, regardless of The Family members’ often-conservative political views, the organization should be compelled to tap into its deeply rooted international connections to work against the Ugandan legislation.
“The reality is that most American members don’t want this to happen. But the fact is they didn’t exert their influence and they continue to refuse to assert their influence. It’s a case study in poor character.”
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].