Kill this Bill, not gays

Real world problems have kept me away from the blog for a while but, as the Manx press don’t seem interested, I have to post something here about a nasty bit of legislation in Uganda, and the sheer hypocrisy of Manx evangelicals about such stuff.

This all started as the latest misleading salvo in the particularly mean-minded letters page debate about overseas aid. As I’ve said before, I’ve felt hamstrung because the major local defenders of the principle are mainstream churchgoers and a major beneficiary mainstream religious aid agencies (e.g. Christian Aid, Tearfund), while the most virulent attacks come from individuals who spout fundamentalist variants of free market views on charity - or indeed any form of compassion.

From my day job in our finance sector I am painfully aware of huge irony, in that the viciously deceptive American magazines from which such misanthropes quote freely are heavily underwritten by ‘educational foundations’ formed to channel money towards the ‘Tea Party’ tendency of Republicanism, and the biggest donors to those foundations are wealthy evangelicals eager to avoid tax. 

But when Manx supporters of a dubious religious aid agency wrongly claimed that the international community was cutting Ugandan aid because of Ugandan political corruption I saw red. So in response, I sent a letter to the Indie outlining the history of the horrendous ‘Kill the Gays’ Bill which has actually caused aid to be frozen since 2009.

In particular I linked the Bill’s sponsor, David Bahati, to the Fellowship Foundation (a US-based Christian and political organisation - better known as ‘the Family’-  which arranges an annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington), and also explained how the Bill originated in the March 2009 Ugandan tour of Abiding Truth Ministries (another US evangelical group) to promote The Pink Swastika, a very silly book co-authored by Abiding Truth’s president, Scott Lively, which presented Nazism as a ‘gay conspiracy’.

The Indie never printed it. Not sure why. Maybe they’re as bored as I am by the sad procession of knuckle-dragging throwbacks who think we should cut all aid, or the almost as pathetic attempts by some of the key recipients to retain it, but on the present terms (i.e. the public get no say in the matter, we just hand our tax money to a self-elected bunch of numpties with vested interests, who decide which of their mates get it all this year).

Or maybe the Indie just won’t risk upsetting those key advertisers who insist evangelical twaddle gets printed ad nauseum, and pull their ads when anyone points out what twaddle it is or the damage religiots actually do in the world.

Whatever.

The point is the Bill is back on.

In fact Ugandan politicians seem to have promised it as some sort of sick ‘Christmas present’ to their rich but retarded Yank bible-bashing friends.

 In fact Rebecca Kadaga, Speaker of the Ugandan parliament, actually used those words ‘(Christmas present’, that is, not ‘rich but retarded Yank bible-bashing friends’.

As I said in the unprinted letter, we in the West need to stop blaming easy targets for African poverty. Instead, it is high time we acknowledged that myths and prejudices we created, and hateful parasites whose activities we failed to prevent, are a major factor in the problem.

So you could help by signing two emergency protests to the Ugandan government. You can find them at www.allout.org/uganda  and http://www.avaaz.org/en/uganda_stop_gay_death_law/?tyOERab. But you have to sign NOW. Even the end of this week could be too late to save lives.
27/11/12 Update - if you want to send a message to five US senators who are members of the 'family' mentioned above, there's a petition at http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6535/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=12199 .