Reminder: Inhofe and The Family bear responsibility for Ugandan violence against suspected gays

[BurtWorm]

Here's a blast from the past to jog the memory:


http://www.examiner.com/international-lgbt-issues-in-national/uganda-anti-gay-bill-supported-by-us-congressmen-and-evangelists

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) has taken at least 20 "missionary" trips overseas since he's been in office, allegedly paid for by U.S. taxpayers, using military transport. He is especially fond of Uganda, boasting that he has "adopted" the East African nation. In fact, he is so fond of Uganda, he has invited its leaders to become members of the not-so secret, secret society known as the Family in D.C., according to Jeff Sharlet, whose new book, "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power" exposes just that.



Sen. James Inhofe wants gays dead? (Photo: AP)


...

According to Sharlet, Inhofe took David Bahati under his wing, making him a core member of the Family. Bahati is the author of Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill. The Bill creates a new crime called "aggravated homosexuality" in Uganda and imposes automatic life imprisonment or the death penalty for its offense. "Aggravated homosexuality" is defined by the Bill as sex with a disabled person, having HIV/AIDS, use of drugs or alcohol that leads to gay sex, knowing a gay person and not reporting it, or speaking positively about same-sex marriage.

Bahati is head of the Family-sponsored Africa Leadership Forum,. It's likely the "Bahati Bill", as it is commonly known in Uganda, will become law, because of the Family's financial support, power, and influence in country. Sharlet says the Family has poured millions of dollars into the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality campaign, and considers Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni as the "key man" for the Family in Uganda. Sharlet says Museveni can go to Brownback or any other Family member if he wants money for arms or anything else, and stays at the Family-owned Cedars House when he's in D.C.

Sharlet, who lived with the Family in its C-Street House near Capitol Hill and became part of current leader Doug Coe's inner circle, told NPR the Family believes in "Elite Fundamentalism" - that is, that Jesus had one true message for a core group of the elite and powerful, another for those in a somewhat "outer circle," and the most common one known to the masses, who "couldn't handle the truth."

...

[Ian David]

1. I hope that Inhoffe is outed as gay by an American paper while he's traveling in Uganda. n/t

[HillbillyBob]

7. Hell I hope hes caught doin the deed .

nt

[Hannah Bell]

2. And Rick Warren & the whole international fundie mafia.

[HopeHoops]

3. Yeah, I HATE gays. I can't stand anyone who is happy. GRRRR.

Oh, wait. Did he mean the NORMAL and natural kind of gay? Who can be "happy"-gay with assholes like him running around?

What a shitbag.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

4. We bear a great deal of responsibility --

for what is now going on in Uganda. Our religious nutjobs have poisoned many Africans' minds and souls against gays. It is a perversion and I condemn Inhofe and his filhtyilk wholeheartedly.

[BurtWorm]

5. What you say is absolutely right. We bear responsibility for this.

It's our religious nutjobs who are engaging in proxy crusades and culture wars, using Africans as their personal playthings. The damage they're doing is HUGE, and there has to be something Americans can do to check them, doesn't there? I don't know what, but there has to be. A public campaign to shame them, maybe, though judging from some of the sites I was just looking at for Ugandan missionaries, I don't think shame is in their repertoire of feelings, unfortunately.

[foxfeet]

6. K&R

[Octafish]

8. No, they're not NAZIs.

The NAZIs were like them.

[Canuckistanian]

9. When is this scumbag up for re-election?

He's been a chancre on the Senate for too long.

[Shallah Kali]

10. Report| Globalizing the Culture Wars: US Conservatives, African Churches, & Homophobia

A groundbreaking investigation by Political Research Associates (PRA) discovered that sexual minorities in Africa have become collateral damage to our domestic conflicts and culture wars. U.S. conservative evangelicals and those opposing gay pastors and bishops within mainline Protestant denominations woo Africans in their American fight:
http://www.publiceye.org/publications/globalizing-the-culture-wars/index.php

Lou Engle Supports Principled Stand of Ugandan Anti-Gay Bill Promoters
http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/sarahposner/2836/engle_supports_%22principled_stand%22_of_ugandan_anti-gay_bill_promoters

Lou Engle Only One of Many of Sen. Brownback's New Apostolic Reformation Apostle Problems
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2010/10/17/11135/471/Front_Page/_Lou_Engle_Only_One_of_Many_of_Sen_Brownback_s_NAR_Apostle_Problems

Transforming Uganda - video
http://www.vimeo.com/8749833

Bios of American and Ugandan Leaders in "Transforming Uganda"
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2010/10/14/213822/52

Six Reasons Americans Should Care About What Is Happening In Uganda
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2010/10/14/154827/99

Resource Directory for the New Apostolic Reformation
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2010/1/20/131544/037

Sam Brownback Under Fire For Ties To Controversial Evangelist Lou Engle
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2010/10/12/192218/65

The Secret Political Reach Of 'The Family'
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=120746516


Elite Fundamentism - The Fellowship's gospel of Capitalist Power
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/stories/2008/23...

Jeff Sharlet: Yes, exactly, and in fact they latched on to Museveni after Siad Barre the former dictator of Somalia died, and that was a relationship they'd forged through Senator Chuck Grassley, the conservative Republican from Iowa and still in office in the United States, and he went to see Siad Barre who was Muslim, and he said, 'Look, I want to talk to you', Barre had been a Soviet client and now he was looking to switch sides. He said, 'I want to talk to you, I can arrange meetings for you with the Pentagon, but first we need to talk about Jesus, we need to pray.' And these dictators were no dummies, they understood that the price was being exacted, which was an ideological one, a theological one, and guys like Soeharto, of course Muslim as well, were more than happy to pray to Jesus in exchange for this massive military aid. Museveni is really only the latest of these characters, who, it's pretty transparent the relationship. I write in the book about Museveni makes friends with a major family businessman, a guy named Dennis Bakke, who was at the time the CEO of AES, one of the largest energy corporations in the world, at a mid-'90s National Prayer Breakfast, and then gives Bakke a new big contract for a $500-million hydroelectric dam, which Uganda doesn't need. Well everybody's making money, they all think they're doing God's work, and they're being supported effectively by the American government, which is sort of subsidizing this kind of thing.

Stephen Crittenden: Just going back to Uganda, one public policy outcome of this connection with President Museveni is that through him, they were able to export a Christian fundamentalist abstinence program into Uganda's policy about how to deal with AIDS. In the 1990s Uganda was being held up for its ABC policy, Abstinence, Be faithful, use a Condom. Ten years later, the results are very poor.

Jeff Sharlet: It's one of the most dismaying tragedies in the fight against AIDS. Uganda was a country that had really turned around. It had a high AIDS rate, and through using this program had turned it around, had actually successfully rolled back the AIDS rate. But because it became so enmeshed with the American Christian Right, and the American Christian Right is part of President Bush's AIDS program, was able to put pressure on these countries to drop the 'C' from the ABC. So they still want Abstinence, they believe in abstinence, but they don't want Condoms. And indeed Uganda backed very sharply away from condoms, and as predictably as any scientist could have told you, the AIDS rate skyrocketed, and people are dying again. And the most horrifying part about that, for some of these people, that's not a problem. I spoke to Senator Sam Brownback about this, who has worked actually with Senator Clinton to change the laws governing US foreign aid to make it so that we can't give money to any organisation that works with prostitutes. The example Brownback's Chief Legislative Director gave me, he said he would rather a Thai prostitute die of AIDS than have her soul imperilled by using a condom. And it's just an absolutely horrifying vision of what the Gospel says.



God and the Fight Against AIDS
April 28, 2005
Helen Epstein
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2005/apr/28/god-and-the-fight-against-aids/?pagination=false

The Less They Know, the Better
Abstinence-Only HIV/AIDS Programs in Uganda
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2005/uganda0305/index.htm

[BurtWorm]

12. This should be an OP

:thumbsup:

[Jakes Progress]

11. inhofe and the family don't see it as responsibility, but as an accomplishment.

These people are proof that the human race is devolving.

[LibertyLover]

13. I'm looking forward to reading Sharlet's new book "C Street"

The Family's teachings remind me strongly of gnosticism. One truth for the hoi poloi and the truth for the inner elite.

[Overseas]

14. Here's a link to Jeff Sharlett's article about it

Straight man's burden: The American roots of Uganda's anti-gay persecutions -- http://harpers.org/archive/2010/09/0083101

[GTurck]

15. It just hit me...

C Street members are Gnostics. They were the early sect that posited that The Gospel had secret knowledge only given to the superior believers and the rest of humanity was stuck with the "fairy-tale" of the Cruxificion. I am amazed that this sect has lasted this long but here it is on C Street in the Family.:evilgrin:

[Shallah Kali]

16. actually the hidden knowledge hook is pretty standard for cults

the first few layers of a group are pretty clueless to the groups ultimate aims. Only after enough teaching and mucking around with the inductee's mind so they are unlikely to rebell do they get to know what is really going on.

"The Family" and it's use of cells, explained
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/4/6/14135/88564

A history of cell-church groups, revised

In my initial history of cell-church groups, I had noted that the earliest use I had documented for the use of cell-groups in any manner was the late 40s-early 50s within the Assemblies of God (a group known for its promotion of neopentecostal dominionism--being quite possibly the originators of it from a very early period).

Recent research I've done regarding the history of the violent "Joel's Army"/"Joshua Generation" group "Watchmen At The Walls" has pushed back the use of cells in church steeplejacks probably to the late 1910s-early 1920s (again originating with the Assemblies)--and recent info from Sharlet which is to be published in his upcoming book "The Family" indicates that not only did "The Family" originate the practice but cell-church groups may have already been in semi-common use politically.

Specifically, Sharlet has traced the origin of political cell-church usage in "The Family" to one Frank N.D. Buchman, who may well have become acquainted with the practice via the use of cell-churches in China (later notable promoters of highly abusive cell-churches in China and among Chinese emigre communities include Watchman Nee and Witness Lee). In the 20s, he eventually was kicked out of China--in no small part because he accused other missionaries of being homosexuals.

Buchman well may have been one of the first dominionists in the US not affiliated with a neopentecostal church; he was a Lutheran, and in 1921 onward he founded an early dominionist group originally known as "The Oxford Group" and later becoming known as Moral Re-Armament (it has since gone through another reinvention and is known now as Initiatives of Change, and would superficially appear to have toned down some of its rhetoric).