Kill a Queer for Jesus: Start with David Kato

In recent months, the country of Uganda has been threatening to pass a bill that will criminalize homosexuality, with the death penalty as the ultimate price, and three years in prison for any one NOT turning in a homosexual. This has radicalized the country, with local newspaper, The Rolling Stone (no ties with the American Rock Rag, or the British super group) publishing lists of "Known Homosexuals!" with pictures and captions like "Hang Them!"

On January 26, 2011, at around 2am, David Kato was brutally beaten to death in his home. Sato, a former school teacher, was the Litigation officer for SMUG, Sexual Minorities Uganda. He was very active in the campaign for the rights of gays and lesbians in that African Nation, calling himself the "First Out Ugandan."

Why does this matter to America? Because our radical right evangelicals are largely responsible for the climate of hate and fear that has bloomed in Uganda.

"Both opponents and supporters agree that the impetus for the bill came in March during a seminar in Kampala to "expose the truth behind homosexuality and the homosexual agenda".

The main speakers were three US evangelists: Scott Lively, Don Schmierer and Caleb Lee Brundidge. Lively is a noted anti-gay activist and president of Defend the Family International, a conservative Christian association, while Schmierer is an author who works with "homosexual recovery groups". Brundidge is a "sexual reorientation coach" at the International Healing Foundation."

Further, the Author of the Bill, David Bahati is a self professed member of the The Family, that super secretive Evangelical Political Action Group that funded C Street, and includes Senator James Inhofe, (R-OK), Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL). Senator Inhofe has made 20 trips to Uganda between 1999 and 2008, at a cost of more than $187,000 in taxpayer dollars. How does his stance "I'm guilty of two things. I'm a Jesus guy, and I have a heart for Africa." play into the recent events in that troubled nation?

Has the rabid right exported homophobia, less and less tolerated in America, and with growing political ramifications, to this third world nation? How direct was the involvement between American politicians, and the movement to criminalize and murder gays and lesbians? And will any of these groups acknowledge their part in the growing crisis where the "Corrective Rape" of perceived lesbians is a daily crime where Homosexuals are identified by name, picture, and address in the media, and where brave men, standing up for equality and justice are beaten to death in their own homes?

And how long will we sit quietly by, letting events unfold, letting the guilty bury the evidence of their misjudgments until their message of hatred and bigotry is somehow lost and these missions were "for the common good?"

I am happy to say that when I called Senator Mark Pryor's office, to ask if he was still a member of the Family, his aide said he was not, and she did not believe he had ever been. This is in direct contradiction to the majority of the evidence I have on hand, but if Senator Pryor is distancing himself from these bigots and hate mongers, so much the better. If anyone has evidence to the contrary, I would like to hear it.

What were these evangelicals doing in Uganda? There are two possible answers, and I really want to know which applies; were they deliberately spreading hatred and radical action that they knew they could not get away with in the United States, and they saw an opportunity to actually create a genocidal pogrom designed to decimate a third world nation, or did they go over there with their homophobia, unacceptable in its pure vitriolic form, and suddenly realize, too late, that they were waving a lit torch around a gunpowder factory? Did they preach against the homos, and when they found a receptive audience, step up the rhetoric, not realizing that the country does not have the cultural checks and balances of America, and let this monster get out of control? Either way, they need to start stepping up and claiming responsibility for their actions, and working to calm the tempest they have created, or David Kato will be the first Martyr of many.