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I realize it’s early in the morning to deal with the sociopathic levels of dishonesty that characterizes the leadership of the religious right, but I have to highlight this excellent piece of reporting in the NY Times on the responsibility that American evangelicals have for the Ugandan “death penalty for gays” bill. Of course, what said evangelicals were counting on was the relative indifference the America press has towards foreign countries, especially developing nations. The evidence on hand suggests that the Americans involved in encouraging and writing this bill figured that the press would blame the Ugandans solely—-under the assumption that they’re living in a backwater, etc.—-and not look into the role that Americans played. And they would have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for that incredibly appealing lesbian show host on MSNBC! Maddow refused to let this story go, and now the NY Times is coming forward and demonstrating how the cries of protestation from the evangelicals with ties to the Ugandan anti-gay movement are basically dishonest.
Like this dishonest piece of shit:
“I feel duped,” Mr. Schmierer said, arguing that he had been invited to speak on “parenting skills” for families with gay children. He acknowledged telling audiences how homosexuals could be converted into heterosexuals, but he said he had no idea some Ugandans were contemplating the death penalty for homosexuality.
“That’s horrible, absolutely horrible,” he said. “Some of the nicest people I have ever met are gay people.”
Except, of course, that Schmierer was there to do a talk on how homosexuality is a choice and that people leave the lifestyle behind, which is a belief promoted by the religious right in order to justify throwing people in jail for being gay. (He calls this “parenting skills”.) Like with the anti-choice movement, you have to ignore their claims about what they’re doing, and look at the big picture, especially legally. A lot of legal justice for gays and lesbians has come about as people start to see it as an identity, like race or class status—-and you can’t arrest people for what they are, just what they do. By claiming it’s a choice, the religious right hopes to get homosexual sex reclassified as a choice that can be criminalized.
As Rachel Maddow showed, the religious right putting forward “ex-gay” people as shield against criticisms that describe them as hating gay people isn’t working. The implication of having “ex-gays” around has always been, “Hey, we let them use the toilet even though they’ve sucked a cock, what more do you want?” But of course, the real reason to have ex-gays around is to give the hateful lies about gay people some authority, the implication being that those who actually did the deed know for a fact that gays are the evilest evil to ever evil. When an ex-gay claims that gays recruit by raping children, wingnuts can feel good about themselves, because they say, “Hey, he should know.” But of course, that’s simply not true, because the religious right has created huge incentives for so-called ex-gays to lie about their previous (and often ongoing) sexual behavior and habits, in order to keep the esteem and the paychecks coming. And to get all expense paid trips to Uganda to do seminars on how gay men want to rape your children. Here is the description given by the NY Times:
For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, 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 “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.”