If they actually believe this shit—-that gays are mass murderers, that they’re serial killers, that they have no moral compass and are basically monsters—-then they really can’t care if Uganda starts rounding up and executing people for homosexuality, since they don’t believe that gays are really human beings with any value anyway.  Or they don’t actually believe all this shit, and so we’re forced to conclude they deliberately set out to write the most appalling anti-gay propaganda, with the intention of creating this sort of genocidal reaction.

This really is the takeaway from this story, as long as we’re talking about the leaders of the movement. There are some people—and I grew up with them—who if you laid it out for them this way, would be horrified, because they’d honestly never thought of it that way. I’ve had similar conversations with people I grew up with over abortion, hit them with the “do you support the death penalty for women who get abortions since it’s premeditated murder” question, and they seemed legitimately shocked at the possibility. None of them have become pro-choice that I know of, but they have moderated their stances a bit just because I threw the logical conclusion of their own beliefs at them.

But the leaders of these movements? They can’t plead ignorance. They know what they’re doing, and they only back away when they realize they’ve been busted and that some of their followers are likely to see them as the monsters they are.

I think that you’re right, that the sort of everyday evangelical deliberately avoids thinking about the logical conclusions for their beliefs.  They have a general sexist worldview, and look to rationalize it, and suck up this information without really thinking about what it means.  Like I was just arguing with some dude on RH Reality Check who is clearly not one of the thinking people—-I honestly think that his continued inability to remember that women have ambitions, lives, etc. isn’t malicious, but just due to the fact that he’s been brainwashed into thinking that fetuses are both precious and disembodied from women.  But the people that have diligently put together this propaganda know exactly what they’re doing.

From what I understand of this Ugandan situation, I feel that the leadership in Uganda that helped organize this is just as duplicitous as the American leadership.  But of course, the point is to whip up everyday people who don’t usually think much about this issue one way or another into a hateful frenzy.

Not that I want to let ignorant people off the hook.  I think ignorant people are ignorant by choice; they don’t think about the ramifications, because they don’t want to.

This is a both/and blog, so I vote for evil and incompetent. I think it’s quite possible that these evil men, having lived their entire lives in a country of sane people who continually clean up after them and rescue them from their own excesses, could have been recklessly unaware of what they were doing. Just hink of how many times wingnuts invoke the holocaust while touting antisemitism, or the deadly twits who tried to implement “free-market reforms” in Iraq.

Now that their rhetoric is blowing up in their faces, they’re all “shocked”. But when the whole thing starts with a bunch of whacko losers representing themselves as global experts on homosexuality, what did anyone expect?

I wish to explore a few ideas on the subject of homosexuality. Amongst certain homosexuals there exists the following point of view: “what I do is of no importance to anyone else, it is a personal and private matter”. Everything which touches upon sexual matters ceases to be private when the life or death of a nation depends on it. It is the difference between world domination or annihilation_

So here’s why the organizers of this conference and all their buddies who claim to think the Ugandan bill is too severe are full of shit.  If they actually believe this shit—-that gays are mass murderers, that they’re serial killers, that they have no moral compass and are basically monsters—-then they really can’t care if Uganda starts rounding up and executing people for homosexuality, since they don’t believe that gays are really human beings with any value anyway.  Or they don’t actually believe all this shit, and so we’re forced to conclude they deliberately set out to write the most appalling anti-gay propaganda, with the intention of creating this sort of genocidal reaction.

I have a feeling that they don’t believe any of the claims they’re making about gays being murderous, soulless demons, but they do believe that gays aren’t really fully human with rights and value. They’d be fine with them being rounded up and murdered, they just don’t care how we get there or what the supposed reasoning is.

I also hope that this whole incident wakes people up to the fact that the Christian right leadership is completely willing to lie about their intentions to secure their spot in the mainstream discourse.  Since it’s obvious that someone like Scott Lively is straight up lying when he claims he didn’t think things would get this bad, we have to think about other times Christian right leadership plays innocent when their rhetoric turns to violence, like they inevitably do when someone shoots an abortion provider.

I wish this were true, but it doesn’t seem like the Tiller murder had any effect on the national discourse or the willingness of the mainstream news to ignore the obvious, or even promote evil. I doubt the Ugandan bill will expose religious leaders in any lasting way either. Sadly, I don’t think most people in America will notice or care until something similar gets suggested here, and even then…

I have two points that are sort of tangential to the main point of this post:

1) I think there’s a double standard between male homosexuals and lesbians, because the common view is that sex is about and for men.  If two women have sex, it doesn’t really even count in their eyes because there’s no penis involved.  For many evangelicals, it probably doesn’t even occur to them that lesbians even exist.  If women are indifferent to sex, why would they bother doing it if not to please a man or get pregnant?

It’s also much less threatening to a patriarchal worldview.  Sex with a man is seen as degrading to them, so when two men have sex, at least one of them is being degraded.  They don’t like the idea of men facing the same degradation that women get.  But when two women have sex, they’re already degraded so it doesn’t matter as much. 

2) I think a lot of wingnuts use Hitler/Holocaust comparisons simply because they know those things are considered bad by the general public.  I think many evangelicals secretly (or openly) admire Hitler or are at least indifferent to the murder of people who weren’t even Christian.  We know that these people are hateful of all other religions, including other Christians who aren’t exactly like them.  They only reference the Holocaust for the shock factor, and they only publicly support Israel in Middle-Eastern conflicts because they hate the brown Muslims even more than they hate Jewish people.

I wonder sometimes how much of the argument that gay men “recruit” teenaged boys is tied into the history of child molestation by members of the priesthood? Does the argument gain credibility in evangelical circles because of that history?I can’t imagine that it would hurt.

IND,

I can remember the “recruit” slur from as far back as Anita Bryant, and I’m sure it goes back even farther than that. I don’t remember hearing about church abuse scandals until well into the 90s, though. It’s possible (even probable) that wingnuts conflate the two now, although they ignore the fact that just as many girls were abused as boys.

Here’s the thing they never acknowledge: whatever implications child rape has for homosexuality, it has the same ones for heterosexuality.

So here’s why the organizers of this conference and all their buddies who claim to think the Ugandan bill is too severe are full of shit.  If they actually believe this shit—-that gays are mass murderers, that they’re serial killers, that they have no moral compass and are basically monsters—-then they really can’t care if Uganda starts rounding up and executing people for homosexuality, since they don’t believe that gays are really human beings with any value anyway.  Or they don’t actually believe all this shit, and so we’re forced to conclude they deliberately set out to write the most appalling anti-gay propaganda, with the intention of creating this sort of genocidal reaction.

Every word of this, of course, applies equally well to the so-called “right to life” movement. The only things that are real and sincere about all these people are their spiteful bigotry and their deep-seated obsession with controlling the lives of others.

”...and they only publicly support Israel in Middle-Eastern conflicts because they hate the brown Muslims even more than they hate Jewish people.”

I think it’s more than just that.  They support the existence of Israel for two reasons: easier access to certain holy sites, and the idea that the existence of Israel is necessary to provoke Armageddon, which is necessary to bring about the Second Coming.

Actual Israelis/Jews they feel indifferent toward, if they’re not actively hostile toward them… 

***

I have to wonder if the Uganda thing is a “dry run” of the kind of stuff they’re itching to do here in the US.  A chance to see just how far they can push things and get away with it…

***

And the continuing blurring of political philosophy epitomized by Jonah “Mommie’s Big Man” Goldberg’s All Liberals are Fascists and They Invented Fascism Even Though Republicans Told Them Not To is indeed setting the stage for further rightwing incursions into America life.

Which I guess is good news for Jonah:  He will finally have accomplished something. 
(Not something of value, in fact the exact opposite, but at least it’s something…)

@Incertus:

No, I think that the “gay men recruit”  thing is more about projection and the way that straight patriarchal men behave toward women, especially young women. With a side order of how hot gay sex must be so that no straight teen could resist it.

As a straight man who used to have mostly gay male friends, I was often struck by how weird it felt to be the object of another man’s sexual gaze. If someone were both weird about sex and believed that the relationship between a man and his intended sex partner was inherently predatory (see above) then “weird” could easily escalated to “threatening to the point of panic”.

See, I heard about church abuse scandals in the early 80s in Louisiana, because there was a case of a priest who’d been shipped from parish to parish and had a history of molestation surround him. But even if it didn’t make the news, the locals knew the story. They often kept it hushed up out of a sense of shame and guilt, but everyone knew what was happening. Look at the stories coming out of the Irish investigation into the Church and you can see that the abuse dates back fifty, sixty years at least, and I believe—though I’d have to pull out my copy of Inferno to be sure, that Dante goes after a couple of priests for the same thing. That’s in 1300.

I want to be clear. I’m not suggesting that there’s an iota of accuracy to what Lively is saying. I’m just wondering if some people believe him because of the history of the Church when it comes to sexual abuse of children.

I agree, the church abuse scandals have nothing to do with creating the recruitment claim. That’s been around, as Egnu Cledge says, for far too long.

I think a lot more of it has to do with the closet, and with the belief that homosexuality is a behavior rather than an orientation.

The idea of gay teens and children is far more accepted today than it used to be. Look at it from the perspective of someone in the70’s or early 80’s, or from a modern fundamentalist evangelical perspective.

Someone who is and always has been straight (people are who you think they are, that’s how pigeonholes work) suddenly one day up and announces that he (it’s always he) is gay. It is nearly impossible to wrap the mind around the idea that this was always true about them and they are only now saying so - it feels like a real change. Straight people suddenly turn gay, like something out of a bad 50’s movie.

If you also have a worldview that is hostile to either truth or science, the concept that genetics could be more complicated than “both parents were straight, therefore none of the kids could be gay, and gay people would die out because they can’t reproduce” is inconceivable.

Therefore, being gay is a learned behavior, and since good Christian kids certainly didn’t learn it at home (unless there was child abuse from some secret gay person), then it has to be recruitment by evil gays.

So here’s why the organizers of this conference and all their buddies who claim to think the Ugandan bill is too severe are full of shit.  If they actually believe this shit—-that gays are mass murderers, that they’re serial killers, that they have no moral compass and are basically monsters—-then they really can’t care if Uganda starts rounding up and executing people for homosexuality, since they don’t believe that gays are really human beings with any value anyway.  Or they don’t actually believe all this shit, and so we’re forced to conclude they deliberately set out to write the most appalling anti-gay propaganda, with the intention of creating this sort of genocidal reaction.

Well, there’s another possibility. They just didn’t think about what they were saying, at all… they just said what they’re used to saying, and are in such insular little bubbles that they don’t even understand that they’re saying such vicious, hateful things.

I don’t say this to excuse them - I say it to point out just how sick (in the sense of “needing to heal”) this country has become in so many ways. People saying this kind of thing should be shamed and marginalized to the point that they’re unwilling to show their faces in public. But, obviously, they’re not. They’re accepted by a sufficiently large number of people that they think that what they’re saying is perfectly acceptable.

What really bugs me, deep down, is that none of them are going to feel any responsibility for this. They’re going to blame this on Uganda.

@Amanda:

You said this:

“I think that you’re right, that the sort of everyday evangelical deliberately avoids thinking about the logical conclusions for their beliefs.”

That’s exactly what it is.  I think most of it is that garden-variety Evangelicals, for the most part, don’t have a clue what their leaders are really like.  Rick Warren, the purpose driven cuddle monster, has his paws ALL OVER that country, but I highly doubt that the average Saddleback member is jonesing to kill gay people.  Here’s where the problem comes in though:  When you point out to them, ever so gently, that many of their leaders are cynical liars, they clam up and stick their fingers in their ears.  They don’t want to know, because the patriarchal church/family structure that informs their lives is so deeply ingrained that for you to point out that “Hey, the shit Dobson says is actually kind of sick,” or “Yeah, I know you think Tony Perkins is a good guy, but…” or in this case, “Yes, I know The Purpose Driven-Life meant a lot to you, but you really need to do some research on how Rick Warren conducts himself when the American media can’t see him,” they simply can’t/won’t listen.

Conundrums.

This is Evan Hurst, btw.  So confusing to remember where I comment under my real name and where I have a handle.

LHW,

I think they know exactly what they’re saying (note the addition of the Rawandan genocide to their accusations). They’re only disappointed this got picked up by the rest of the world before it could go into effect.

“I have to wonder if the Uganda thing is a “dry run” of the kind of stuff they’re itching to do here in the US.  A chance to see just how far they can push things and get away with it…”

This is exactly what I was thinking. Uganda is a test for them. They call Liberals fascists, but they’re the ones who want the country to look like nazi Germany.

“I think a lot of wingnuts use Hitler/Holocaust comparisons simply because they know those things are considered bad by the general public. “

And I think, for a good number of them, that’s the sum and total of their thought process.  I’ve seen it in action - where the Holocaust or Nazis are brought up for the sheer shock value of being equated to it, without any rumination on just who is really like that.

The good news is that pressure from the White House and some congressmen has forced Pres. Museveni to oppose the bill, and his power is almost dictatorial over there. Chances are this bullet’s been dodged, but the heat should stay on for good measure.

For some reason this post dredges up the following Google ad:

“Gay Juif - L’amour sous une bonne etoile pour tous les juifs celibataires”

Or…

“Gay Jew - Love under a favourable star for all celibate Jews”

It’s like a spambot madlib.  In French, which is only inferior for spam purposes to Russian.

I think there is a certain need to emphase the depravity of what those guys were doing…

The Taiping Rebellion, a civil war that left tens of millions of people dead and was a major factor in preventing China from joining the modern world at least as fast as Japan, was touched off by American missionaries who were doing crappy work.

In Uganda, there are evil millenialist folk christian armies already tramping the countryside along the less regulated borders when these guys came to the scene.  Then they promptly play on the scene that has only recently calmed down.  The results of their activities are not a surprise.

The good news is that pressure from the White House and some congressmen has forced Pres. Museveni to oppose the bill, and his power is almost dictatorial over there. Chances are this bullet’s been dodged, but the heat should stay on for good measure.

That’s good news, but at the same time, it’s only barely so. Anyplace where such a bill could be considered, much less a step away from inplemented, is already a hell-hole of staggering proportions for gay citizens. Most likely, as soon as the bill is dropped, America will go back to not thinking about Uganda.

Célibataire means “single,” not “celibate.” It’s one of the more common faux amis.

The “recruit” thing developed, I suspect, out of homophobes applying their hopes to what used to be the most common pattern for gay people, which is to have a lot of closeted same-sex encounters, before coming out.  And while this goes on, they have dates with members of the opposite sex.  So coming out is interpreted as turning gay.  They interpreted this as “recruiting”—-the sex turned you gay, and may have been forced, especially since gay people start having sex in their adolescence like straight people do.  But of course, rational people see what it is, which is that gay people are expressing their sexuality in the closet when young because they are afraid.

But now that homophobia is retreating, many gay kids are coming out long before they even kiss a member of the same sex.  A lot of them never even pretend to be straight.  So there’s no sense that a straight kid “turned” gay.

Or, what Lymis said.

I love the parallel of what they say and what they do.

When we argue morality, the Christianists argue that absent the threat of punishment from a watching God all humans will go nuts and do horrible things to each other.

In Uganda, away from the threat of punishment from US law and the watchful media they gleefully drive a process which will cause humans that they approve of to do horrible things to humans they disapprove of.

See, I heard about church abuse scandals in the early 80s in Louisiana, because there was a case of a priest who’d been shipped from parish to parish and had a history of molestation surround him. But even if it didn’t make the news, the locals knew the story. They often kept it hushed up out of a sense of shame and guilt, but everyone knew what was happening.

Me too.  There was a priest in my tiny, small town, Catholic church when I was very small (late 70s, early 80s) who got dumped on us because he was being moved around for molesting boys.  He did the same thing to a couple of the kids in our church (one of my cousins was one of them), so the adults all wrote to the diocese to have him removed.  Then we got a new priest, who was all sorts of awesome and wonderful (and who is still a close family friend, even though most of my immediate family left the church ages ago).  But I don’t think it even crossed anyone’s mind to try to get Fr. A prosecuted or to get the law involved in any way, the automatic response was just to get the diocese to remove him.  Last I heard he was living a nice life in a retirement home for priests.

So, while I don’t think the whole “gays recruit straight people” thing comes solely from this, I do think it probably is a factor in why a lot of people find it easy to believe.  I imagine that it’s a combination of many factors, including what Lymis and Amanda said above.

Egnu:

I think they know exactly what they’re saying (note the addition of the Rawandan genocide to their accusations). They’re only disappointed this got picked up by the rest of the world before it could go into effect.

You might be right - it’s certainly possible. And there’s a certain mental change that occurs when you repeat certain ideas over and over. If you woke up each morning and told yourself “Barack Obama has a mustache” and repeated that idea throughout the day, one day you’d wake up, and see him and think “Oh, when did he shave off his mustache?” It’s possible to completely manufacture memories and thoughts and feelings.

Say enough hateful rhetoric, and you’ll start to believe it. There’s a reason the Holocaust happened, and it wasn’t that enough of Germany wanted to see Jews, gays, Romani, etc., murdered. It was that enough people in power were willing and able to do so that the rest of the people involved got caught up in the frenzy.

But I think (and, I must admit, desperately hope) that it’s still just an abscess, just poison in a pocket that needs to be lanced by people treating these folks as the hateful bigots they are.

The Taiping Rebellion, a civil war that left tens of millions of people dead and was a major factor in preventing China from joining the modern world at least as fast as Japan, was touched off by American missionaries who were doing crappy work.

Not really:

Anti-Manchu sentiment was strongest in the south among the laboring classes, and it was these disaffected who flocked to join the charismatic visionary Hong Xiuquan.

After Hong failed to pass the examinations that would make him one of the elite, he became very ill. After spending many days in bed sick, he broke from his illness, and his personality changed. He had received a pamphlet from a protestant missionary in 1836 after his last failed attempt at the Imperial Examination, his cousin, Li Ching-Fang, noticed a the pamphlet on a bookshelf inside Hong’s house. After reading it, Li suggested that Hong should read the material. After studying the material, Hong Xiquan claimed that the illness he had after his imperial examinations was in fact a vision to the effect that he was the brother of Jesus, who was sent to rid China of the corrupt Manchurian/Qing rulers . After his vision, he felt it was his duty to spread Christianity and overthrow the foreign rule of the Qing. Hong’s associate Yang Xiuqing was a former firewood salesman of Guangxi, who claimed to be able to act as a voice of God to direct the people and gain political power. [2]

The sect’s power grew in the late 1840s, initially suppressing groups of bandits and pirates, but persecution by Qing authorities spurred the movement into a guerrilla rebellion and then into civil war.

Link

For some reason, Uganda is a perfect type of laboratory for test-driving evil.  Remembering now the Ugandan “minister”, who spoke at Palin’s Wasilla wacko church, whose claim to infamy is starting a hateful, ignorant campaign to incite Ugandans to implicate, isolate, and intimidate “witches” in his country. Many innocent women (likely more independent than most women - their actual “crime”) were driven into poverty and turned into victims of violence by that man and his idiot sheep, and had to flee their homes. Palin was actually in church the day he spoke and of course said nor did nothing to counter her fellow opportunistic ignoramus about his own personal contribution to terrorism.

These Americans inciting hatred and violence against gays in Uganda are just like that Ugandan “minister”, but with the added evil layer of colonialism, condescension, and thinking they were getting away with murder. Those Americans deserve the penitentiary in Uganda, and when they are released back to the U.S., they deserve more penitentiary time here.

If they actually believe this shit—-that gays are mass murderers, that they’re serial killers, that they have no moral compass and are basically monsters—-then they really can’t care if Uganda starts rounding up and executing people for homosexuality, since they don’t believe that gays are really human beings with any value anyway.

I’ve heard a similar thing to this, and the other comments here, said on other blogs, and I have to wonder: why are they getting a pass?  Everyone is making so many excuses for them.

Why is everyone skirting around this possibility:

They do believe what they are saying, and they don’t passively “not care” if gay people are executed, they actually want and like this as an outcome.

Why is this not considered?  Because they can’t really be as wrong and cruel and evil about this as the Ugandans who drafted the law?  Why?  Because the American Far Right is better than Ugandans?  Aside from stupid, this assertion strikes me as simply racist.

“Why is this not considered?  Because they can’t really be as wrong and cruel and evil about this as the Ugandans who drafted the law?  Why?  Because the American Far Right is better than Ugandans?  Aside from stupid, this assertion strikes me as simply racist.”

I agree! 

Our looney American Far Right is as bad or worse than the looney Far Right in any country on Earth!  We aren’t going to let some Negro wingnuts in Uganda <strike>upstage</strike> downstage American wingnuts, goddammit!  American wingnuts are totally committed to being the <strike>best</strike> worst wingnuts evah! 

Hoo rah! 

America, Fuck Yeah!...

Dark Avenger @ 30

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issachar_Jacox_Roberts

That’s just the very basics.  Google him for wider commentary in his role in the rebellion and personal history before arriving in China.

And yes, I said “touched off”, not “caused”—which is actually parallel to the current situation in Uganda, as that Uganda already has a long running now quescient rebellion from Lord’s Resistance Army.  There is a great deal of very dry timber here, just as there was in late Qing China. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord’s_Resistance_Army

I said absolutely nothing unreasonable in my previous comment.

Jesus, Steve.

The man is truly a sociopath.

Our looney American Far Right

That’s your looney American Far Right, MikeEss.  Leave us non-Americans out of your hoo-hahing, thankyouverymuch.

But since fascism springs from right wing thought, this creates dissonance.

I don’t think this creates as much dissonance as I would hope. Too many people just have no freaking clue what “facism” is, or any other “ism” for that matter.  I would be surprised if they could define it let alone lay out the steps a government takes to become one.  These are people who will gladly try to tell you that Hitler was some social liberal; cause hey, Nazi = National Socialists; and then pat themselves on the back as they link the Holocaust,  to the Soviet Union and modern day France for all being part of the same evil liberal socialist alliance.

The majority of them lack the information for any conflict of ideals to actually take place inside of their head.

Okay…

I think people are getting too hung up on the anti-homosexuality aspect here.  What those missionaries did was just bloody dangerous and irresponsible to a reprehensible degree.  Moreover, it’s the murderous factionalism…gays are just in the middle of this, the excuse, not the cause or the purpose.  Our American eyes and sensibilities are misleading the thrust of events in this thread. 

Again, I really need to emphasis, this is the sort of stuff that starts bloody war that kills millions.

*not* that I don’t disagree that those missionaries would have loved to string up gay people, just saying that’s a benefit rather the goal of getting a whole bunch of people to do as you say.

shah8, I know a great deal about the Taiping Rebellion, as it is tied into my family history. One of my ancestors was rescued from a flood and sent to military school in England by General Gordon of Khartoum, he later grew up to become chief of police in Hong Kong around the turn of the 19th Century,

The fact of the matter is that nobody could’ve predicted the Rebellion from the missionary work going on there would lead to visions in someone who was more than capable of acting on them:

Visions and iconoclasm

On his visit to Guangzhou to take the civil service examinations in 1836, Hong heard a Christian missionary preaching about the religion. While there he received translations and summaries of the Bible written by the Christian missionary Liang Fa. The following year Hong failed the examinations again and apparently suffered a nervous collapse. During his recovery in 1837 he had a number of mystical visions. One involved an old man who complained to Hong about men worshiping demons rather than him. In a second one he saw Confucius being punished for his faithlessness, after which he repented. In yet another he dreamed angels carried him to heaven where he met a man in a black dragon robe with a long golden beard who gave him a sword and a magic seal, and told him to purify China of the demons. Several years later he would interpret this to mean that God the Heavenly Father, whom he identified with Shangdi from the Chinese tradition, and his older brother, Jesus Christ, wanted him to rid the world of demon worship.[2] His friends and family said that after this episode he became authoritative and solemn.

It was not until 7 years later that Hong took the time to carefully examine the religious tracts he had received. In his house Hong burned all Confucian and Buddhist statues and books, and began to preach to his community about his visions. His earliest converts were relatives of his who had also failed their examinations and belonged to the Hakka minority, Feng Yunshan and Hong Rengan.<u> He joined with them to destroy idols in small villages to the ire of local citizens and officials. Hong and his converts’ acts were considered sacrilegious and they were persecuted by Confucians who forced them to leave their positions as village tutors. Hong Xiuquan and Feng Yunshan fled the district in 1844, walking some 300 miles to the west to Guangxi, where the large Hakka population was much more willing to receive his teachings.[2] As a symbolic gesture to purge China of Confucianism, he asked for two giant swords, three-chi (about 1 metre) long and nine-jin (about 5.5 kg), called the “demon-slaying swords” (斬妖劍), to be forged.[3]</u>

I’m not really denying your perspective here.  And yes, any old tinder can be set off by many different sparks.  In that sense if Hong Xiuquan didn’t go crazy, some other Corsican would do—just as much as if Issachar Roberts hadn’t been there, it might have been some other foreigner.

To me, the perniciousness of the role played by missionaries was in how much they emphasised the difference between Kingdom of God and Kingdom on Earth in Chinese context.  Moreover, religion is one of those “fast” ways of creating an identity, and the religious aspect of the rebellion was key in precipitating a critical mass of the discontented across enough social boundaries to create something like a self-sustaining society.  If the rebellion had stayed within a Chinese context, it would have played out it’s role in weakening the Qing (who were fighting tons of rebellion during and after Taiping), and most especially would have weakened the legitimacy of the conservative Manchu attitude.  However, the ability of foriegners to both prop up and undermine Qing rule created havoc in what were always rough times in dynastic turnovers.  The religious aspect of the conflict that might have been regional or sectarian made for less negotiation and more killing of infidels.  Religious wars were always the worst until the modern day.

And oh yes, I’d love to chat about Taiping with you.  That era of Chinese history is really fascinating.

And oh yes, I’d love to chat about Taiping with you.  That era of Chinese history is really fascinating.

Fat chance.

/me cues nerdy withdrawal…

Don’t want no trouble, and if I’ve offended you, I’m sorry.

Good GOD, shah8 #39.

As if the significance of LGBTQ folk isn’t dismissed enough already.

Yes, of *course* hate begets hate.  Yes, of *course* people with such toxic prejudices as these religious leaders both Ugandan and American are going to spread them to other subgroups of society if allowed to continue unchecked.  Yes, of *course* “murderous factionalism” is dangerous to society as a whole no matter who the intended target.

None of the above facts, which I believe most of the commenters on this site would acknowledge as facts, negate the other fact that the ANTI-HOMOSEXUALITY ASPECT is extremely salient in A LAW THAT WILL KILL GAY PEOPLE FOR HAVING SEX WITH MORE THAN ONE PARTNER and IMPRISON HOMOSEXUALS FOR LIFE.

If you intended to express solidarity, in that all groups should feel threatened by the existence of a bill like this, solidarity appreciated, but poorly, nay offensively, expressed.

shah8, to say that the Christian missionaries ‘touched off’ the Taiping rebellion is totally unreasonable, and is the reason I’ve decided that any discussion of it or giving you some of my family history isn’t in the cards for the foreseeable future.

If you intended to express solidarity, in that all groups should feel threatened by the existence of a bill like this, solidarity appreciated, but poorly, nay offensively, expressed.

Such is the price of being a contrarian for its own sake.

I was not being contrarian.  Comments #31, 32, and 33 all touched on issues I had with the thread.  I just thought too much of the dialogue passively dismissed Ugandan agency and politics.  Gay, straight, whatever Ugandans should be considered in the matrix of their own culture and politics and in the wholeness of their identities.  Let’s not get into the habit of thinking that homosexuality is the *only* salient issue here.  Let’s do be cautious in understanding homosexuality is just one fragment of an identity that is made up of nationality, region, clan, gender, and religion and that accusations of homosexuality on the part of an adversarial faction is common in some societies.

This law will do more than kill homosexuals—plenty of people, regardless of their actual sexuality will be killed, arrested, or intimidated by the use of this law.  One only has to read about how sodomy laws are prosecuted in Western history to percieve that prosecutors usually have motives beyond homosexuality for persecuting gays.  In the context of a former colonialized state such as Uganda, with the traditional problems of former colonialized state, there are severe implications.  That’s why I spoke out.

I can only shrug if people think I’m dismissing LGBTQ.  Homosexuality is part of what people are, and homosexual people are people, humans first and formost and they shouldn’t be reduced to an issue.  It’s a big part of what being an ally means.

The Lively character was big in the anti gay mocement in Oregon. He was fairly well repudiated and seems to have now taken it on the road. As an resident of Oregon, I am sorry that we have foisted this person on the world.

As I said, or intended to imply, I don’t think anyone’s denying that should the bill become law, it will do substantive harm to people of various sexual and gender identities.  To speak only for myself, I certainly don’t deny that sexual orientation is only one of a mulitplicity of identities belonging to any given individual.  But it does nothing for gay Ugandans to drive them deeper into invisibilty by saying that’s not what it’s *really* about.

I only said that it wasn’t the only thing it was about.