I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention to what’s been going on in Uganda lately, but you should know that it’s really, really bad for gays there. Like, get-murdered-with-a-hammer bad.
Gay-rights advocate David Kato was killed last month after his photo appeared on the cover of Ugandan tabloid “Rolling Stone” (not to be confused with the American music magazine) that proclaimed in huge block letters across its cover: “100 Pictures of Uganda’s Top Homos Leak.” Next to the headline is a little yellow banner reading, “Hang them.”
Kato wasn’t hung, but he was beaten to death with a hammer. The cops say it was just a robbery. But gay advocates in Uganda aren’t buying it. Considering the level of antigay hatred in Uganda — the country is considering a bill that would call for the execution of gays — you can hardly blame them for not taking the police’s word for it.
According to a statement by Val Kalende, chairwoman of gay-rights group Freedom and Roam Uganda, “David’s death is a result of the hatred planted in Uganda by U.S. evangelicals in 2009. The Ugandan government and the so-called U.S. evangelicals must take responsibility for David’s blood.”
One of those “U.S. evangelicals” Kalende is referring to is Scott Lively, president of Abiding Truth Ministries and the author of a book that claims the Nazis were all gay. Back in 2009, Lively and two other American evangelical Christians went around Uganda giving talks about homosexuality.
According to The New York Times, “thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys” and how gays are evil and want to destroy marriage and replace it with free-for-all orgies.
A month later, the “kill the gays” bill was introduced.
Coincidence? Well, no.
And while Lively has said he doesn’t support the “kill” part, he does think that making homosexuality illegal is a “step in the right direction” for Uganda.
After Kato’s murder, Lively went on the defensive, denying any culpability and basically saying that Kato’s murder was no big deal in light of the real murder in Uganda: the murder of the whole country by gay activists.
In a Feb. 5 rant, Lively claimed that “Uganda is being murdered” by a Western-led “army of agitators … who now seek to re-homosexualize Ugandan culture” and the only logical response to such an attack is violence.
“And that is, of course, the strategy: the agents provocateur are goading unsophisticated natives into over-reacting, while the ‘gay’ media lie in wait to catch the images and spin the propaganda that is even now poisoning the gullible against the Ugandans,” he writes.
Wait, what? People who are horrified by the “kill the gays” bill are all a bunch of suckers? Right. And, yes. The “gay media” just loves it when gays get murdered. Anything for a good story. Building the gay revolution one body bag at a time.
“These very media have rushed eagerly to judge [Kato’s murder] a hate crime and to blame those, like me, who have spoken against homosexuality in Uganda,” Lively continued. “It is the central (but patently false) narrative of the left that all criticism of homosexuality leads inevitably to violence and murder.”
Um, no. All criticism of homosexuality doesn’t “inevitably lead to violence and murder.” Duh. The kid who calls you a dyke in gym class because you tagged him out in dodge ball doesn’t “inevitably” punch you in the face, nor does your grandmother “inevitably” stab you and your partner to death after refusing to come to your commitment ceremony.
But what’s happening in Uganda goes beyond “criticism of homosexuality.” LGBT Ugandans are the subject of constant harassment and state-sanctioned violence. That Lively holds up a country that is seriously considering a law to literally kill gay people just for being gay as an example of a place where people can respectfully disagree about homosexuality shows a serious — and dangerous — disconnect with reality.
D’Anne Witkowski is a freelance writer and poet. When she’s not taking on the creeps of the world, she reviews rock ’n’ roll shows in Detroit with her twin sister.