Showing posts with label Uganda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Uganda. Show all posts

Saturday, August 09, 2014

Under U.S. and UN Pressure, Uganda Laws on Homosexuality Set Aside for Now


Under U.S. and UN Pressure, Uganda Laws on Homosexuality Set Aside for Now

Austin Ruse
NEW YORK, August 8 (C-Fam) The constitutional court of Uganda has ruled the laws against certain predatory homosexual activity is unconstitutional, ending however briefly the international conflict the laws have aroused in the United States and other industrialized nations.
The law was struck down on procedural grounds, the court determining the law was enacted without the requisite number of lawmakers present when it was passed. The constitutional court is not the highest court in Uganda and the Attorney General is already talking about appealing the decision to Uganda’s Supreme Court. The Uganda Parliament could also reenact the law with the required number of Parliamentarians present.
The law called for lengthy prison sentences for, among other things, deliberately infecting another person with the AIDs virus and the rape of an underage person. Commentators in the west have spread the false rumor that gays were being imprisoned simply for “being gay.”
International pressure against Uganda for the law has been intense. Donor countries, including the United States, had recently frozen $120 million in aid to cash-strapped Uganda in protest of the law, this even though Uganda is one of the poorest countries in the world and is also one of the United States’ key military allies in the region against Islamic terrorists in Sudan, South Somalia, and the Central African Republic.
Many are critical that the Obama administration has made LGBT one of America’s foremost foreign policy agenda items, even though the world seems to be melting down in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Israel and elsewhere. The Administration, charged with dithering in all these crisis areas, reiterated the LGBT policy this week as African leaders met in Washington DC for the largest such gathering in history.
Critics point out that at a time when Christians around the world are being hunted, tortured and murdered, the Obama administration seems not to care, indeed barely mentions the issue. This is particularly vexing to Christians since they comprise 77% of the adult population of the US while gays comprise only 1.6%, according to new numbers released by the Center for Disease Control. That would be 187,000,000 Christians whose fellow religionists are being killed by terrorists, while gays number only 3.8 million, half as many as Methodists, one of the smallest denominations in the US.
The president of Uganda has said that one of the reasons he signed the law was because of the intense pressure brought by the rich countries against Uganda. No less than Foreign Policy Magazine covered this issue a few months ago, citing not just President Obama but pundits on leftist television channels like Rachel Madow on MSNBC. The President of Uganda and others saw this as a new form of colonialism, in this case sexual colonialism; the rich west trying to impose a new morality that Ugandans find offensive. Uganda has a long history of resisting gay initiatives. In fact, the Catholic Church around the world celebrates a feast day for Charles Lwanga and his companions, young African men who resisted the homosexual overtures of the King and were martyred for their resistance.
The Ugandans have also insisted the law has been deliberately misinterpreted by western commentators who often say the law makes it illegal simply for “being gay.” In fact, all provisions of the law have to do with actions and not “being.” Based on this plea, Sweden recently returned as a donor to Uganda.
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Christian minister accused of “Crime against Humanity”

Monday, June 23, 2014

UN Elects Ugandan as President, Pushing Back on US LGBT Pressure


UN Elects Ugandan as President, Pushing Back on US LGBT Pressure

By Wendy Wright
NEW YORK, June 20 (C-FAM) Western pressure on African countries to liberalize policies on homosexuality has had a boomerang effect, uniting Africans against it and resulting in what some see as a new non-aligned movement of countries.
Last week the United Nations elected a Ugandan as president of the General Assembly over  last-ditch efforts by activists who, along with the Obama administration, have condemned Uganda’s recently enacted law against homosexual acts.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activists called on the Obama administration to deny Sam Kutesa's visa, but by election day at the UN, their petition had only gathered 13,466 signatures.
Kutesa is Uganda’s foreign minister and defended the law internationally, stating promotion and exhibition of homosexuality “is wrong for our young people and it offends our culture.”
Africans called Western criticism of Uganda an attack on national sovereignty and some noted, “the Western world criminalizes almost all of these same offenses” as the amended law, such as homosexual rape.
The role of president of the General Assembly is symbolic though prominent. The highest profile task is presiding over the assembly as heads of state address its 193 members each year.
The position is rotated annually among regions. It is Africa’s turn, and the African Union--most of which ban homosexual acts--put forward only one candidate.
In February, Uganda’s President Museveni hinted he sought closer military ties to Russia because of U.S. meddling on LGBT issues. Russia has also defied criticism of its ban on exposing children to homosexual propaganda.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched the first salvo for international LGBT rights in a speech at the UN in 2011. Soon after, President Obama announced he would condition foreign aid on LGBT rights.
African leaders predicted the U.S. policy would provoke a “significant diplomatic confrontation.” Kenyans said, “Those who live as gays need help to live right and we should not be supporting them to live in a wrong reality.”
In March, Africans were forced to abandon their resolution on AIDS after it was amended by governments advocating for sexual rights. The resolution sponsored by African countries struggling with the deadly disease was tailored to address public health and protecting women and girls.
European, U.S., and Latin American delegates, who view AIDS as a political opportunity to advance sexual rights, demanded the resolution remove references to reducing the number of sexual partners and delaying sexual initiation.
After Western countries lost in lengthy negotiations, they eventually outmaneuvered the Africans using a technicality in the last moments of the conference. One disheartened African delegate said, “It’s all about sex, sex, sex for them.”
A senior U.S. diplomat recently warned about the Obama administration’s heavy-handed approach, CNSNews reports. Richard Hoagland co-hosted the first LGBT “pride celebration” at the U.S. embassy in Pakistan in 2011. A week later, protesters said the U.S. had “unleashed cultural terrorism on us.”
Speaking at an event on global LGBT rights, Hoagland cautioned some countries “will react to our values and goals with backlash” against homosexuality.
Last week a U.S. senator introduced a bill to make LGBT rights a permanent feature of U.S. foreign policy.
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Monday, March 10, 2014

US wants to combat anti-homosexuality movement worldwide


US wants to combat anti-homosexuality movement worldwide

By Julio Severo
The Associated Press reported on February 26 that the United States, “troubled” by an anti-homosexuality movement in Uganda and across much of the world, is launching a new effort to combat what Secretary of State John Kerry described as a “threat to human rights.”
Comparing a Ugandan anti-homosexuality law to oppressive government crackdowns on German Jews in the 1930s, Kerry said that according to the AP report, he was going to direct American ambassadors to look at “how we deal with this human rights challenge on a global basis.” He said 80 nations worldwide have anti-homosexuality laws on some levels, and he called the one in Uganda — which does not apply capital punishment — “atrocious” and “flat out morally wrong.”
Now, in the definition of the US government, anti-homosexuality movements (groups opposing gay “marriage” and other homosexual perversions) are a “threat,” because US officials see the homosexual behavior as a noble “human right.”
Do “human rights” rape and kill? They did so in Uganda. According to Scott Lively, in the past the African nation had a law that required all men and boys in Uganda to submit to the homosexual seduction of its ruler, King Mwanga. By official count 22 young men were executed under this law.
When Ugandans began to convert to Christianity in the 1800s, a group of Catholics led by Charles Lwanga refused to allow themselves to be sodomized by the King. Enraged, King Mwanga had them torturously bound, marched 37 miles and then roasted alive in a fire pit. The date of their execution was June 3rd, 1886, and is today a national holiday commemorating Uganda’s rejection of homosexuality and commitment to Christian values.

So it should be no surprise, according to Lively, that modern Ugandans are very unhappy that homosexual political activists from Europe and the United States are working aggressively to re-homosexualize their nation.
To compare an anti-homosexuality law in Uganda to oppressive government crackdowns on German Jews in the 1930s is immoral, cynical, and opportunistic. According to the book The Pink Swastika, German Jews suffered crackdowns from a mostly homosexual Nazi government elite. The comparison would be appropriate if Kerry had condemned political, economic and diplomatic crackdowns on Uganda and other poor because of their laws protecting their societies against homosexual threats.
It is very easy to use Uganda in preposterous comparisons that serve the purpose of immoral propaganda on behalf of the Western pro-homosexuality imperialism. Uganda has no power to resist the haughty Western nations. And now Uganda is under a Western blackmail: if it does not repel its anti-homosexuality law, its poor population will not receive foreign assistance, which will instead be directed to “human rights” groups.
It is very easy also for the US and European officials to chastise Russia for its law protecting children from homosexual propaganda. Russia is not Uganda, but it is a regional power that represents no significant threat to the pro-homosexuality superpower. Besides, Russia represents no financial advantage for the Western powers. It has no massive investments in Western banks.
What you will not see is the US and European officials condemning Saudi Arabia, whose Textbooks for Islamic Studies, officially used by the Saudi Ministry of Education, say:
“Homosexuality is one of the most disgusting sins and greatest crimes.... It is a vile perversion that goes against sound nature, and is one of the most corrupting and hideous sins.... The punishment for homosexuality is death… [the perpetrator] is to be burned with fire. It has also been said that he should be stoned, or thrown from a high place.”
Have you heard Kerry say “atrocious” and “flat out morally wrong” at some point? Can you see America “troubled” by an anti-homosexuality movement in Saudi Arabia and launching the first effort to combat it? Can you hear the US government describing anti-homosexuality laws in Saudi Arabia as a “threat to human rights”?
If America does it, I can overhear American bankers and Wall Street growling and yelling with pain.
Saudi Arabia treats homosexuality much worse than Uganda does and receives no condemnation. The difference is: Uganda receives assistance money from the Western powers; Saudi Arabia has massive investments in big Western corporations and banks.
America just does not touch Saudi Arabia. When Muslim terrorists mostly from Saudi Arabia attacked the US in 9/11, in return the US invaded Iraq (the enemy of the Saudis and an ally of Russia).
Some years ago, a homosexual from Saudi Arabia had his asylum request denied by the US government. Obviously, the US government has no interest in asylum seekers from Islamic nations as Saudi Arabia, which brazenly kill homosexuals. But let a homosexual Russian request asylum by alleging that he was denied his “human rights” when the anti-propaganda law in Russia prohibited him from having access to children.
If Uganda were Saudi Arabia, it could in the Saudi way treat homosexuality whatever way it wished, unopposed and without worry, and America would turn a blind eye.
If it were Saudi Arabia, Russia could similarly kill homosexuals, under the same American blind eye. Because Russia is not Saudi Arabia, even Google felt free to mock Russians by putting homosexual symbols in its website to directly confront Russia during Sochi Olympics. Its mockery was aimed at the Russian law banning gay propaganda to children.
“Google has made a clear and unequivocal statement that Russia’s anti-LGBT discrimination is indefensible,” said Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin, whose Washington-based gay group has been lobbying American corporations to condemn the Russian law (whose punishment is fines, not death) signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in July.
Can you visualize a similar campaign against the Saudis, who do not fine, but kill homosexuals?
The US government also mocked Russians. Obama did not go to Sochi and made sure that the world understood his decision: he sent prominent gay athletes to Sochi. He showed no interest in Russian children and their well-being and protection. His only worry was to show support to the gay agenda. In fact, this is the top priority of his foreign policy. Homosexuality first, children later…
The global anti-homosexuality movement, defined by Kerry as a “threat” to “human rights,” would never be a threat if, as Saudi Arabia does, it had massive investments in the US, even if its pro-family campaigns were aimed at killing homosexuals, just as Saudi Arabia does.
Will the effort by the US government to combat the global anti-homosexuality movement bother Saudi investors and killers?
The US combat is an ongoing effort to grant voice and power to gay supremacists and silence their opponents. In 2011, WND reported,
“The Obama administration has announced it intends to make the United States the global sex cop, with plans to try to intervene in the workings of other nations where homosexuality is not promoted as well as plans to create special provisions for homosexuals and those with other lifestyle choices to gain special admittance to the U.S.”
And in 2013, according to the Family Research Council, “The Washington Blade, D.C.’s gay newspaper, praised the Obama administration for creating an army of international lobbyists for same-sex ‘marriage,’ anti-discrimination laws, and homosexual ‘rights’ around the world.”
To advance gay “marriage” and other noble “human rights,” the US government is determined to combat the anti-homosexuality movement around the world, including in Uganda and Russia. The Saudis and other Muslim investors? They have always had special exemption from whatever ideological and homosexual imperialism America imposes on everybody else.
Let Muslim terrorists from Saudi Arabia attack America, and America will attack everybody, except the Saudis. And as a proof of her loyalty, America will have a CIA director converted to Islam in Saudi Arabia! (In 2013, WND reported that the current CIA director John Brennan had an Islamic conversion in Saudi Arabia.)
Let Saudi Arabia kill homosexuals, and America will condemn everybody else, including Russia, which has no law for killing homosexuals.
Whatever insanity Muslim extremists in Saudi Arabia do, America will blame and chastise everybody else, especially conservative Christians.
If the pro-homosexuality, pro-Saudi America which wants to be a global cop against conservative Christians is not a Babylon (sheer confusion), then what is she?
Source: Barbwire
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Thursday, March 15, 2012

Christian minister accused of “Crime against Humanity”

Christian minister accused of “Crime against Humanity”

Scott Lively targeted by an international homosexualist plot

By Julio Severo
Two years ago, Scott Lively, author of “The Pink Swastika”, addressed members of the Ugandan Parliament, which was considering a bill criminalizing homosexuality. Lively urged an emphasis on therapy rather than punishment, and, after the bill was released he opposed the death penalty provision.
Scott Lively: accused of “Crime against Humanity”
Now, on March 14th a lawsuit was filed in an American court alleging that Lively committed the “Crime Against Humanity,” by speaking against homosexuality in Uganda. The plaintiffs say that his address in Uganda is a cause of action in international law. The plaintiffs are the homosexualist organization Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), and the law firm which filed the lawsuit, the Center for Constitutional Rights, a George Soros-funded Marxist group.
If Rev. Lively were a Russian citizen living in St. Petersburg, the second largest city in Russia, he would be safe. Recently, St. Petersburg passed a pro-family law banning homosexual propaganda. But Lively is an American citizen, living in a society where Christian and anti-homosexualist messages are increasingly under ban. When a hate crime law is passed, everything is possible, and America has such law, which was used specifically to make the lawsuit against Lively possible.
Rev. Lively has never advocated violence against homosexuals. Even so, the lawsuit makes it appear that his preaching against homosexuality in Uganda has been the singular cause of persecution of homosexuals in that country. According Lively, “The centerpiece of the SMUG evidence that homosexuals have been persecuted in Uganda is the murder of their leader, David Kato, in 2011. Glaring omitted from the complaint is the fact (well known to SMUG) that Kato was killed by a ‘gay’ prostitute whom Kato had bailed out of jail to be his live-in lover. This man confessed to bashing in Kato’s head with a hammer for failing to pay him as promised and was prosecuted for the crime”.
Gay activists live risky lives with their lovers and male prostitutes, and should Christian ministers be blamed for their immoral choices?
I suppose that if Lively were a Muslim cleric visiting Uganda and preaching death to all homosexuals, he would be left in peace by homosexualist groups, by George Soros-funded groups and even by American hate crime laws.
Capital punishment is used frequently against homosexuals in Muslim nations, even when these homosexuals did not commit any rape of children or another major crime. Yet, international groups never charge these nations of “Crimes against Humanity”. Certainly, there are Muslims preaching death to homosexuals. Where are the Western “human rights” groups to say that these Muslims committed “Crimes against Humanity”?
The lawsuit against Rev. Scott Lively is a very dangerous precedent for all Christians fighting the gay agenda. A powerful orchestration of homosexualist and socialist individuals and groups is using a gay group in Uganda to have Lively prosecuted as a “Criminal against Humanity”! If their efforts succeed, no pro-family Christian in the West will be safe.
You will not be safe. I will not be safe.
In my case, I fled my country, Brazil, to escape from pressures, persecutions and legal actions from federal prosecutors incited by ABGLT, the largest gay group in Brazil that, by the assistance of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was accredited in the UN system in 2009.
My departure from Brazil, with my pregnant wife and little children, should have been enough to make ABGLT forget me, but this is not so. Intercepted messages from ABGLT show that it has instructed Brazilian gay groups to find my location.
Because of the massive and powerful influence of the pro-sodomy US government, gay groups have an “open season” on pro-family Christians.
While Russians in St. Petersburg are under the protection of a law banning homosexualist propaganda, Western Christians face threats for their pro-family message.
Pro-sodomy America and Europe have made the West a treacherous place, where pro-family Christians have to live under oppressive and deceiving hate crimes laws. And Brazil and other Latin American nations have been docilely copycatting these laws.
“Crime Against Humanity” is a very serious legal threat. If such baseless, ridiculous charge can be leveled against Lively as an American pro-family Christian, what will happen to Brazilian pro-family Christians?
Keep your eyes open: new Gulags for American and Brazilian Christians are coming, but not from Russia.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Rick Warren attacks anti-homosexuality bill

Rick Warren attacks anti-homosexuality bill

Meanwhile, Evangelical Alliance Ireland supports pro-homosexuality bill

By Julio Severo
Gay activists, who despise the divine condemnation of homosexuality, do not hesitate to use and distort the words of Jesus Christ to teach Christians that the only way for Christians to be able to demonstrate love for homosexuals is by supporting the approval of anti-“homophobia” bills.
Without such support, homosexual militants insist that Christians deserve labels as “homophobic”, hypocrites, murderers of homosexuals, etc. Their insistence is steady throughout the media. Their charges against Christians are incessant.
If constant dripping will eventually wear away a stone, then it seems that homosexual dripping is wearing away the evangelical resistance.
In Ireland, a pro-homosexuality bill received the support from the Evangelical Alliance Ireland (EAI), which explained its stance by saying that if Jesus Christ did not discriminate, so Christians are not also supposed to discriminate. EAI declared,
“Co-habiting couples are a reality — this legislation seeks to deal with that reality from a legal perspective. We may disagree on the detail of the legislation but as followers of a just and compassionate God we can recognise the justice and fairness of providing some legal protection for the reality of both same-sex and opposite-sex cohabiting relationships”.
On the other hand, Rick Warren embraced similar stance to use God’s compassion to condemn a heavy anti-homosexuality bill in Uganda. This African nation, which formerly had homosexual kings that abused boys, still faces today sexual abuses against boys. Moreover, Uganda is under international pressure to support the gay agenda. But it was not to condemn vehemently homosexual abuses against boys that Warren meddled in Uganda.
Differently from Islamic nations as Iran, which executes homosexuals arbitrarily, the Ugandan bill condemns to capital punishment only men persistent in homosexuality, homosexuals that rape boys and HIV homosexuals that infect other people.
Warren explained his motives to meddle in Uganda,
“We are all familiar with Edmund Burke’s insight that, ‘All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.’ That is why I'm sharing my heart with you today. As an American pastor, it is not my role to interfere with the politics of other nations, but it IS my role to speak out on moral issues.”
Yet, Warren, whose experience includes meetings with religious Muslims leaders, does not use his role to speak out to Muslims that they should stop persecuting Christians. He also does not use his role to speak out against the Islamic laws that condemn homosexuals to death.
In his own nation, the United States, Warren has refrained from using his role to speak out against aggressive homosexual bills. He has also refrained from bothering Obama and his administration, which are explicitly pro-abortion and pro-homosexuality. Before the Obamanian majesty, instead of using his role to speak out on abortion and homosexuality, Warren limits himself to a smooth-tongued behavior.
The Ugandan bill is likely not to be approved, because international opposition — stemming from homosexual groups, UN and EU — has been massive.
In my view, the most problematic part of this bill is the imposition on Ugandan citizens to denounce to police homosexual practices. That imposition would harm Christian ministries that help homosexuals.
But Warren’s view is that the heavy Ugandan bill does not reflect the Gospel.
Yet, let’s talk plainly. What is the law that reflects the Gospel?
Does a law that condemns, fines, arrests or executes murderers reflect the Gospel?
Does a law that condemns, fines, arrests or executes pedophiles reflect the Gospel?
Does a law that condemns, fines, arrests or executes rapists reflect the Gospel?
Let’s be realistic: the Gospel does not condemn, fine, arrest or execute anyone. The Gospel did not come to condemn, fine, arrest or execute any criminal. The only kind of condemnation the Gospel mentions is eternal condemnation, making it clear that men that choose to live in sin shall be condemned to eternal death, being destined to suffer in Hell, eternally separated from God.
The Gospel came to save sinners. That is its exclusive occupation. So if because of the Gospel human laws cannot condemn homosexuality, then because of the same Gospel they cannot condemn murders, rapes and pedophilia
As far as the Gospel is concerned, we love homosexuals, pedophiles, murderers, rapists, etc. We love them because Jesus loves them and wants to save them. Yet, this does not mean that we should oppose laws that condemn homosexuality, pedophilia, murders, rapes, etc.
Twenty years ago, International Amnesty got in touch with me asking for my support against death penalty in Texas, because in the 1980s I was a member of a team that ministered, by correspondence, to prisoners in death row in Texas. My mission was to minister to Spanish-speaking prisoners. All of them had committed gruesome murders.
Can the Gospel save such criminals? Of course! For a long time I talked about Jesus’ love to them, sending Christian literature in Spanish, etc. Yet, whether they wanted to open their hearts to Jesus or not, my view is that they should pay their social debt.
Human laws were fulfilling their role, condemning a murderer with maximum penalty. My mission was only to lead the murderer to know the love of Jesus Christ.
There is a separation between law and Gospel. The State should fulfill its role to punish those that violate just laws. The role of the Gospel is not to destroy just laws, but only to fulfill another role: to reach out all the sinners with the message of salvation.
It is unfortunate that in his own country, Warren has refrained from using his role to speak out on behalf of Christian efforts to defend natural marriage against systematic assaults from the homosexual movement. Doubtless, Warren does not want to offend and infuriate homosexual groups or the liberal media, which does not praise of kind of defense.
Apparently, that same media, which does not condemn Islamic laws against homosexuality, is condemning the anti-homosexuality bill in the Christian Uganda. And, with all of these spotlights, Obama enters the stage.
Obama defends openly the murder of innocent unborn babies. If Warren, who in his public opportunities with Obama, has never used his role to speak out against such murderous inclinations, why is he now meddling in Uganda? Where is his consistency?
Is it fair for Warren to remember his “role to speak out on moral issues” only to Uganda, and not to Obama and his administration? Is it fair for Warren to be forceful and vehement only to Uganda, and not to Obama and his administration?
I like Warren when he says what is fair. But it is hard to appreciate when he and others, in the name of a smooth-tongued Christian love, seem to demonstrate more interest in getting media sympathy than challenging the unfair standards imposed by liberal trends.
As the Apostle Paul teaches in Romans, we have to transform ourselves by the renewing of the way we think. Without this regular transformation, we are inevitably dragged by the maelstroms, fads and traps of this world. Without this regular transformation, we get entrapped by the way the world thinks. Without this regular transformation, the Gospel becomes, instead a message of salvation and deliverance from sin, a creature in the image of human ideas and wishes:
In the hands of gay activists and liberal and progressive Christians, the Gospel is a tool to promote the acceptance of sinners with their sins. They use the Gospel to preach insistently that the only way for Christians to prove that they are as compassionate as their God is by supporting bills stemming from the entrails of the homosexual movement.
In the hands of Christians that want to please both sides, the Gospel is a tool of political, social and religious conveniences.
In the hands of the Holy Spirit, the Gospel is a tool distinct, but not opposed, from laws condemning sin. A fair law deals with misdeeds by punishing the violator. The Gospel deals with sinners to save them from eternal condemnation, without exempting them from paying their social and criminal debts here on the Earth.
Without this understanding of the separation between law and Gospel, you can easily stumble into the same delusions of the Evangelical Alliance Ireland.
May these examples help us to be balanced, impartial and fair on the law and Gospel.
Portuguese version of this article: Rick Warren ataca lei anti-homossexualismo
Read more:
Int’l Pressure on Uganda to Accept Homosexuality Caused Over-the-Top Sanctions: Christian Activist