Uganda-Lord’s Resistance Army: Kill all Gays

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Some Ugandans think Gay people should be subject to Capital Punishment

For the past two years, Christian Ugandan fundamentalists are fighting to enact an Anti-Gay bill.

An anti-homosexuality Bill, also known as the “Kill the Gays Bill,” is proposed in Uganda. The proposition would broaden criminalization of same-sex relations by introducing the death penalty for people who have previous convictions, are HIV-positive, or engage in sexual acts with people of the same sex.

As noted by the Daily Beast:

The country is weighing proposed legislation that would punish homosexual acts with life imprisonment, imprison anyone who “aids, abets, counsels, or procures another to engage in acts of homosexuality” for seven years (including landlords who rent to gays), and jail for three years anyone with “religious, political, economic, or social authority” who fails to report anyone violating the act. The legislation also mandates a death sentence in cases of same-sex rape and for active homosexuals living with AIDS, while undefined “serial offenders” would also face capital punishment. Gay-rights activists, in Uganda and abroad, say the bill promotes hatred and could hamper efforts to combat HIV/AIDS.

The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) wants to extradite gay individuals for punishment in Uganda, which includes extradition from other countries to receive “trial” there. The bill includes penalties for individuals, companies, and media and non-governmental organizations that support LGBT rights.

LRA feels the bill does not go far enough. The organization demands a theocracy in Uganda with laws based on apocalyptic Christianity focusing on the Ten Commandments and traditional Acholi spiritualism. They are willing to murder to achieve their goal.

The LRA, led by Joseph Kony, a self-proclaimed “spokesperson of God” and “spirit medium” believes he hears voices in his head and thinks a deity talks to him. Under his leadership, LRA abducted some 30,000 children to use as soldiers, kept women as sex slaves, attacked and raped civilian populations, and forced them into Uganda’s Christian militia.

On Friday, President Obama ordered deployment of 100 armed military advisers to central Africa to help regional forces combat the LRA, which signals an escalation of American involvement in the region.

In a letter to Congress, President Obama stated,

For more than two decades, the Lord’s Resistance Army has murdered, raped and kidnapped tens of thousands of men, women and children in central Africa. The LRA continues to commit atrocities across the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan that have a disproportionate impact on regional security

[He also wrote] in the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States increased, comprehensive U.S. efforts to help mitigate and eliminate the threat posed by the LRA to civilians and regional stability

In January 2011, gay Rights activist, David Kato, sued a local newspaper which outed him as homosexual. Witnesses told BBC they saw a man entered Kato’s home. Frank Mugisha, executive director of the gay rights group, told BBC he was “devastated.” He was killed by someone who came in his house with a hammer, meaning anyone else could be the next target

The “preacher” justified anti-gay violence when David Kato, Uganda’s leading gay advocate, was murdered. Lively wrote, It is as if the militant ranks of ‘Code Pink’ were transported back to 1890s America to agitate for ‘sexual freedom.’ Our great grandparents would not have countenanced this. There would have been violence, as there has now been in Uganda

Unsurprisingly, Rush Limbaugh began his broadcast, by describing the LRA as a notorious renegade group that has terrorized villagers in at least four countries with marauding bands that kill, rape, maim and kidnap with impunity. However, the radio host differentiated the term “Lord” from “God.”

Whether Limbaugh used this opportunity to tarnish President Obama’s standing is open to speculation. His response to the president’s deployment of 100 military advisers, disregarding the same actions by George W Bush, in a segment of his radio show headlined, “Obama Invades Uganda, Targets Christians.”

I’m sure you’ve heard by now that President Obama has sent 100 “advisers” to Uganda to help take out the Lord’s Resistance Army, a particularly brutal terror group that operates in that country as well as in the Congo, Sudan and the Central African Republic. As a general rule, I think this is a bad idea without much deliberation and consultation with Congress. This is, after all, how the Vietnam war began. It should not be a unilateral decision; the public should at least have some understanding of why it’s happening and what the goals are.

[Limbaugh thinks the president’s policy is bad because the LRA is a good Christian group.]

Now, up until today, most Americans have never heard of the combat Lord’s Resistance Army. And here we are at war with them. Have you ever heard of Lord’s Resistance Army, Dawn? How about you, Brian? Snerdley, have you? You never heard of Lord’s Resistance Army? Well, proves my contention, most Americans have never heard of it, and here we are at war with them. Lord’s Resistance Army are Christians. It means God. I was only kidding. Lord’s Resistance Army are Christians. They are fighting the Muslims in Sudan. And Obama has sent troops, United States troops to remove them from the battlefield, which means kill them. That’s what the lingo means, “to help regional forces remove from the battlefield,” meaning capture or kill.

So that’s a new war, a hundred troops to wipe out Christians in Sudan, Uganda, and—(interruption) no, I’m not kidding…

Lord’s Resistance Army objectives. I have them here. “To remove dictatorship and stop the oppression of our people.” Now, again Lord’s Resistance Army is who Obama sent troops to help nations wipe out. The objectives of the Lord’s Resistance Army, what they’re trying to accomplish with their military action in these countries is the following: “To remove dictatorship and stop the oppression of our people; to fight for the immediate restoration of the competitive multiparty democracy in Uganda; to see an end to gross violation of human rights and dignity of Ugandans; to ensure the restoration of peace and security in Uganda, to ensure unity, sovereignty, and economic prosperity beneficial to all Ugandans, and to bring to an end the repressive policy of deliberate marginalization of groups of people who may not agree with the LRA ideology.” Those are the objectives of the group that we are fighting, or who are being fought and we are joining in the effort to remove them from the battlefield.

An LRA Ugandan survivor responds to Limbaugh’s statements in “Dear Mr. Limbaugh: Evelyn’s Appeal.”

Obama based his decision to employ troops on a May 2010 Congressional law, enacted by the Bush Administration: the “Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act.” The former president authorized the Pentagon to send a team of 17 counter-terrorism advisers to train Ugandan troops and provided millions of dollars worth of aid, including fuel trucks, satellite phones and night-vision goggles, to the Ugandan Army. The fundamentalist remnants of the LRA dispersed and regrouped in countries bordering on Uganda.

There are close links between many American anti-gay preachers, politicians, and activists, and their Ugandan counterparts. American-style evangelical Christianity is exploding in Uganda. As Jeff Sharlet reported, Bahati, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill’s sponsor, is the secretary of the Ugandan branch of The Family, the secretive American evangelical organization whose members include Sens. James Inhofe, Jim DeMint, and Tom Coburn.

Martin Sempa, a Pentecostal preacher who championed the bill was a protégé of Rick Warren. During the Bush administration, the “preacher” received at least $90,000 of American aid earmarked for abstinence promotion. Another major anti-gay activist, Stephen Langa, head of Uganda’s Family Life Network, is affiliated with Phoenix-based group Disciple Nations Alliance (DNA).

American Christians did not urge their Ugandan counterparts to institute the death penalty for homosexuality. After much public pressure, Warren spoke out against the bill. The DNA issued a lukewarm objection, noting “concerns” about the bill, but insist on the right of sovereign nations “to establish their own laws.”

The fundamental ideology of the Kill all the Gays bill arose from American fundamentalists’ influence. They elaborated homosexuality as a satanic global conspiracy bent on destroying society’s foundations, similar to the Jewish octopus in classic anti-Semitic narratives.

When Uganda’s anti-gay activists speak about homosexuality, they cite materials by Scott Lively and Paul Cameron, two of the fiercest American opponents of the so-called homosexual agenda.

Lively journeyed to Uganda in 2009 with other U.S. evangelical homophobes to stage a “Seminar on Exposing the Homosexual Agenda,” although homosexuality was already illegal. The fundamentalist stoked anti-gay animus by playing the “child molestation” card, asserting gays are looking for other people to prey upon, and that when they see someone from a broken home, it’s like they have a flashing neon sign over their head… male homosexuality has not traditionally been adult to adult, it’s been adult to teenager… The gay movement is an evil institution

He supports this further criminalizing of homosexuality in Uganda, even as some evangelicals like Rick Warren distanced themselves from it. Lively advised against capital punishment for Ugandan gays only because it might result in “public sympathy. He prefers forced “rehabilitation.”

Mad Mikes America thanks the New York Times, Alternet, the Daily Beast, and Vimeo.

Are charismatic Christians more deeply involved in Uganda’s proposed “Kill all the Gays” proposed law than the media reports?