Uganda Death March

The National Prayer Breakfast has become a tradition. The first one was in 1953. Presidents have attended as part of the "show and tell"...making a show of professing Chrisitan values under the approved auspices of the sponsor group, a group which has preferred to remain in the shadows, The Family.

Because of the controversy surrounding members of The Family and their involvement in the desecularization of the government of Uganda, they are beginning to find it hard to remain as shadowy puppet masters.

Rick Warren was recently spotlighted as a Family member and was forced under pressure to  denounce the proposed Anti Homosexual Death Penalty legislation now being considered in Uganda.

Barack Obama became the latest in an unbroken line of American Presidents to attend The Annual National Prayer Breakfast last Thursday. He was under pressure from many liberal groups to not attend as a protest to the Ugandan legislation.

For better or worse, because he could have broken the tradition and changed, he went. To his credit, though, he used the occasion to confront the members and call out the Ugandan laws as odious. In reporting the event, the media omitted almost any mention of The Family. The Washington Post only in passing but the New York Times to their credit, did a very nice piece which gave some background and explained the groups involvement in Uganda.

People are beginning to be outraged by the proposed Ugandan laws. The conservatives excuse them, saying that it only covers child molesters and persons convicted of spreading HIV. Others excuse the laws saying that they woud only cover those convicted of having gay sex "more than once". But the facts are much worse than that.   Here are two examples of people who could be put to death:

• Someone who has gay sex once and doesn’t turn his partner in to the authorities.
• A straight person who doesn’t turn in a gay friend after hearing about about a couple romantic evenings.

You don’t have be gay to be executed under this bill. Here’s how easily the government could put you to death:

1. The death penalty applies to anyone convicted of “aggravated homosexuality.”
2. Aggravated homosexuality includes all “serial offenders.”
3. A serial offender is “a person who has previous convictions of the offence of homosexuality or related offences.”
4. Related offences (Part III of the bill) include not ratting out your gay friends (if you are a person of religious, political, economic, or social [!] authority).

Here it is as a diagram:

It’s a two-strikes-and-you’re-dead bill.  And if you dig into the logic, merely keeping silent about someone who’s keeping silent is enough to count as a strike.

Read the bill. It’s much worse than we’re being told.