US religious fundamentalists behind Ugandan gay death penalty scheme

This video from the USA is called Right-wing Supports Uganda “Kill the Gays” Law.

This 6 January 2010 video from the USA is called Rachel Maddow: Rachel Maddow-The Family’s role in Ugandan anti-gay hate_2.

By Yana Kunichoff, Truthout, in the USA:

The “Family” – Who Really Is Behind This Secret Organization?

Thursday 30 December 2010

“Jesus plus nothing” is the mantra of the Fellowship, also known as the Family, a secret, fundamentalist Christian organization peopled primarily by devout policy makers and high-ranking individuals. Though the nonbeliever’s view of religion can often be dismissive when faced with such catchphrases, in “C Street,” a nonfiction account of the extended reach of the Family, these phrases fuel moral crusades with real, and terrifying, impact.

Sharlet first introduced the world to the unseen hand of the Fellowship in “The Family” in 2008, in which he reported on the organization’s beginnings in the 18th century, uncovered the role of the Family in America’s legislative system and uncovered the role of religious fundamentalism in our supposedly secular nation.

In his latest book, Sharlet traces the powerful orthodoxy’s chilling influence on governments both inside and outside of the United States as well as the devastating effects of fundamentalism within the military. He uses the Fellowship’s Capitol Hill boarding house, C Street, as a passageway to a broader discussion of the Family’s influences, which range from mediating the marital disputes of Congressmen to increased military aid for countries whose prominent politicians have connections (spiritual or otherwise) with the Family. …

According to Sharlet, the Family had “cells in the governments of seventy nations by the late 1960s, more than double that of just a few years earlier.” These cells operated, as many of the Family’s projects do, through God – “the Catholic generals and colonels who rotated coup by coup through the leadership of Brazil, Guatemala, El Salvador … consented to the Protestant ministrations of the Fellowship in return for access to American congressman.”

More recently, after meetings between members of Sri Lanka’s own prayer breakfast and Congressional representatives of the Family, the small, Southeast Asian country received more than $50 million in military aid between 2004-2007. In the previous three years, from 2000 to 2003, it only received a fifth of that amount, and in 2008, Sri Lanka was accused of “intentionally and repeatedly” wantonly shelling civilians, hospitals and humanitarian operations with weapons that, it is likely, came from American military aid.

Most vivid is Sharlet’s focus on the Fellowship’s activities in Uganda, where, in 2009, a bill was introduced into the Ugandan Parliament that would condemn to death individuals convicted of “aggravated homosexuality,” which includes “simply sex, more than once,” and three years in prison “for failure to report a homosexual within twenty-four hours of learning of his or her crime.”

Sharlet draws links between the Family and evangelical church leaders and politicians championing the bill in Uganda (including David Bahati, who introduced the legislation into Parliament); the Family has donated millions of dollars to Uganda for “leadership development” – more, writes Sharlet, than it has invested in any other foreign country.

Ugandan opposition leader says he won’t prosecute gays: here.

USA: Georgia homeless shelter denies access to gays, lesbians: here.

European Parliament calls on Lithuania to shelve anti-gay law: here.

Fundamentalist Christian was wife-beater: here.