Uganda Update: UK, Canada Vocal Against Anti-Gay Bill, US Silent

Over the weekend at the Commonwealth conference in Trinidad, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni the UK strongly opposed the African nation's draconian bill that would authorize the death penalty for gay people. Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper also attacked the proposed legislation publicly and on the record, saying, "We deplore these kinds of measures." The week before, Museveni had blamed the increase in Uganda's gay population on "European homosexuals" who "are recruiting in Africa."

Also at the conference, Stephen Lewis gave an excellent, widely quoted speech comparing the bill to fascism and apartheid. Peter Tatchell points out 40 of the 53 Commonwealth nations still have laws banning homosexuality and most of these are the legacy of Britain's colonial rule.

Meanwhile, the White House has been silent. So far the only U.S. official to comment has been the mid-level State Department ambassador at large and PEPFAR czar, Eric Goosby. Confronted by Newsweek, he said his role is "not to tell a country how to put forward their legislation." Goosby further diffused the issue by broadening it to a generalism, "I'm very concerned about any decision that any country — including our own — would make to target a group that's in the population, and that's always been in the population, by excluding them from a service or passes legislation that criminalizes their behavior." 

Last week, Terry Gross broke the story on Fresh Air that the Uganda legislation came from the religious political cabal The Family. Read her interview with author Jeff Sharlet and, if you can stand to, study his bestselling book on the fundamentalist powerbrokers like John Ensign and Mark Sanford who are bringing us closer to their goal of complete theocracy.

Yesterday, Rick Warren refused to condemn the anti-gay legislation, saying, "It is not my personal calling as a pastor in America to comment or interfere in the political process of other nations."

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