How Uganda became a front in U.S. gay-rights debate

KAMPALA, Uganda — Last March, three American evangelical Christians whose teachings about "curing" homosexuals have been widely discredited in the U.S. arrived in Uganda's capital, to give a series of talks.

The theme of the event, according to Ugandan organizer Stephen Langa, was "the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda" — and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family.

For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, presented as "experts" on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to change people from homosexual to heterosexual, how homosexual men often sodomized teenage boys and how "the gay movement is an evil institution" whose goal is "to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity."

The three men now find themselves on the defensive, saying they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that could lead to what came next: a bill to impose a death sentence on homosexuals.

One month after the conference, a previously unknown Ugandan politician who boasts of having evangelical friends in the U.S. government introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, which threatens to hang homosexuals.

Donor countries, including the United States, are demanding that Uganda's government drop the proposed law, saying it violates human rights, although Uganda's minister of ethics and integrity (who previously tried to ban miniskirts) recently said, "Homosexuals can forget about human rights."

The Ugandan government, facing the prospect of losing millions in foreign aid, now is indicating it will back down, slightly, and change the death-penalty provision to life in prison for some homosexuals. But the battle is far from over.

Instead, Uganda seems to have become a far-flung front line in the American culture wars, with U.S. groups on both sides — the Christian right and gay activists — pouring in support and money.

"It's a fight for their lives," said Mai Kiang, a director at the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, a New York-based group that has channeled nearly $75,000 to Ugandan gay-rights activists and expects that amount to grow.

The three Americans who spoke at the conference — Scott Lively, a missionary who has written several anti-homosexual books, including "7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child;" Caleb Lee Brundidge, a self-described former gay man who leads "healing seminars;" and Don Schmierer, a board member of Exodus International, whose mission is "mobilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality" — now are trying to distance themselves from the bill.

"I feel duped," Schmierer said, arguing that he had been invited to speak on "parenting skills" for families with gay children. He acknowledged telling audiences how homosexuals could be converted into heterosexuals, but he said he had no idea some Ugandans were contemplating the death penalty for homosexuals.

"That's horrible, absolutely horrible," he said. "Some of the nicest people I have ever met are gay people."

Lively and Brundidge have made similar remarks. But Ugandan organizers of the conference admit helping draft the bill, and Lively has acknowledged meeting with Ugandan lawmakers to discuss it. He even wrote on his blog in March that someone had likened their campaign to "a nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda." Confronted with criticism later, Lively said he was disappointed that the legislation was so harsh.

Human-rights advocates in Uganda say the visit by the three Americans helped set in motion what could be a dangerous cycle. Gay Ugandans already describe a world of blackmail, death threats such as "Die Sodomite!" scrawled on their homes, constant harassment, occasional beatings and even so-called correctional rape.

"Now we really have to go undercover," said Stosh Mugisha, a gay-rights activist who said she was pinned down in a guava orchard and raped by a farmhand who wanted to cure her of her attraction to girls. She said she was impregnated and infected with HIV, but that her grandmother's reaction was simply, " 'You are too stubborn.' "

"What these people have done is set the fire they can't quench," said the Rev. Kapya Kaoma, a Zambian who went undercover for six months to chronicle the relationship between the African anti-homosexual movement and American evangelicals.

Kaoma said the three Americans "underestimated the homophobia in Uganda" and "what it means to Africans when you speak about a certain group trying to destroy their children and their families."

"When you speak like that," he said, "Africans will fight to the death."

Conservative Christian groups wield enormous influence in mostly rural Uganda. This is the land of proposed virginity scholarships, Jesus songs playing in the airport, "Uganda is Blessed" bumper stickers on Parliament office doors and where the president's wife, an avowed born-again Christian, suggested a virginity census to fight AIDS.

Bush administration officials praised Uganda's family-values policies and steered millions of dollars into abstinence programs.

Some of America's best-known evangelical personalities have passed through here recently, often bringing anti-homosexual messages, including the Rev. Rick Warren, who visited in 2008 and has compared homosexuality to pedophilia. (He recently condemned the anti-homosexual bill, seeking to correct what he called "lies and errors and false reports" that he played a role in it.)

Many Africans view homosexuality as an immoral Western import, and the continent is full of harsh homophobic laws. In northern Nigeria, gay men can face death by stoning. Beyond Africa, a handful of Muslim countries, such as Iran and Yemen, also have the death penalty for homosexuals. But many Ugandans said they thought that was going too far. A few even spoke out in support of gays.

"I can defend them," said Haj Medih, a Muslim taxi driver with many homosexual customers. He said they did not pose a threat to him, that he instead was afraid of police and the government. "They can arrest you and put you in the safe house, and for me, I don't have any lawyer who can help me."