Leave it to American fundie "Christians" to screw up Africa more than The Brits ever could. @VICE #Uganda
— Tim Andrews (@TimAndrewsHere) May 16, 2015The latest episode of HBO’s VICE, “A Prayer for Uganda,” exposes what American Christian extremists, like Scott Lively, have done to the country of Uganda. A poor, landlocked nation of about 37 million people, Uganda has become synonymous with its “Kill The Gays” bill, that was debated for year, generating international condemnation and fear. It became law and then was tossed out by the Ugandan Supreme Court, but only on a technicality…. [Member of Parliament David Bahati] makes clear he and his country support the culture these American Christian extremists have brought to Uganda - one that teaches, falsely, that gay people are all pedophiles, homosexuality is a choice, it is evil, and children must be protected from it at all costs.
When you find yourself wondering if the stories about the American Taliban are really true, this story should help convince you evil is afoot in the name of Jesus Christ. I’m not going to pretend that these hateful cretins, whose souls have been blackened by their hatred and homophobia, represent anything even faintly redolent of Christianity. If your faith allows you to believe that killing another human being simply because of their identity is not only acceptable but honorable, you have no faith. You’re a monster using religion to camouflage your violent hatred of those who mostly just want to be left alone to life as they see fit.
What they’ve done in His name is export a virulent and violent brand of hatred and homophobia camouflaged as Christianity they could never sell here in the U.S. These are people who honestly believe that gays not only deserve to be killed for their apostasy and wickedness, but DESERVE to be killed.
It’s been said that the first step toward genocide is to deny your enemy their humanity. We’re seeing that at work in Uganda, with devastating results. It’s What Jesus Would Do, don’tchaknow??
American Christians have brought this culture to Uganda. While the nation has never been gay friendly, the country’s war on homosexuality is a direct response to the teachings of American Christians.
Scott Lively, head of Abiding Truth Ministries, which appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of anti-gay hate groups, is currently on trial in America in a lawsuit for crimes against humanity.
Lively is familiar here in Oregon as the former second in command of the Oregon Citizens Alliance, a virulently hateful anti-gay group that tried to turn Oregon to the Right on homosexuality and abortion from 1986 through the late ’90s. Having struck out here, Lively has endeavored to export his militantly hateful “Christianity,” first to Russia and most successfully to Uganda. Lively is to Christianity what Torquemada was to the Spanish Inquisition.
Never open and welcoming to their LGBT community before Lively and his fellow travelers) came along, Ugandans have been turned into active warriors against homosexuality largely because of U.S. “Christian” propaganda. The “Kills the Gays” bills was set in motion by American religious activists who want to be able to destroy the LGBT community but know they’ll never be able to do it in the U.S.
VICE correspondent Isobel Yeung - that’s her face in the top right image - interviewed poor, working class men. She wrote later, “I don’t ever recall feeling as heartbroken as the week we spent shooting this.”
The men tell her that the first thing she needs to know about their culture is “we hate is homosexuality.” That is the first thing of which they are proud. Not arts, science, their families, their heritage - not even their perverted interpretation of Christianity.
Advocating genocide is every bit as Christian as Jeffrey Dahmer was about veganism. There’s simply no rational way to square the teachings of Jesus Christ- who taught love, tolerance, and acceptance- with calls to beat, rape, and kill homosexuals. Because of the work of American activists, Ugandans are taught from an early age that homosexuality is perverted and evil, that being gay is a choice, and that gays are pedophiles who must be stopped from recruiting and harming children- by any means necessary.
Americans spreading their hateful, homophobic “Christianity” have helped to create a culture in Uganda in which virulent hatred of homosexuality and homosexuals is a source of tremendous pride. People believe they’re doing the Lord’s work when they rape lesbians and kill gay men. They believe they’re protecting children when filling their minds with the hateful propaganda spread by Americans who believe they and they alone are the followers of the One True Faith.
It’s hard not to despair for humanity when I run across a story like this, but this isn’t the first time in history that Christianity has been used to justify genocide. One could start with the Crusades and work their way through history up to and through Nazi Germany to the present. True Christianity may not teach rape and murder in the service of the faith, but there are plenty willing to use it as a cloak worn to justify their hatred and homophobia- for if God is for us, who can be against us?
It’s no wonder I’m good without God.
