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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Do American "Evangelicals" want Ugandan homosexuals to be killed?
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Erroneous Monk
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# 10858
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Posted
I doubt it. I'm not really sure what you want to discuss, but it seems to me that there is a debateworthy point as to whether, when expressing an opinion in a context where one will be taken as "expert" you have a duty to consider how a reasonable person will react to what you say, or to consider how any person - incluidng an unreasonable one - will react to what you say.
That is to say, we could discuss whether it's credible for the three gentlemen in question to say now that they didn't intend to sway opinion in the way in which the article tends to imply they did.
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And I shot a man in Tesco, just to watch him die.
Posts: 2950 | From: I cannot tell you, for you are not a friar | Registered: Jan 2006
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LutheranChik
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# 9826
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Posted
I wouldn't say that it's a universal sentiment, nor even that conservative Evangelicals want homosexuals to be killed -- but I think wanting gay folks to go away, somehow, so that they don't have to be thought about or dealt with, is a rather pervasive if unspoken sentiment throughout much of conservative Evangelicalism. I'll add the disclaimer that this is my impression as an outsider with a dog in the fight, not as an Evangelical; I certainly feel as if my disappearance off the face of the earth would result in many sighs of relief.
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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com
Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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Dumpling Jeff
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# 12766
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Posted
Given the prevalence of AIDS in Africa, might it be more appropriate to ask, "Do American "gays" want Ugandan homosexuals to be killed?"
There are two sides to issues like this and demonizing those who seek peace and justice seems jaded to me.
But let me answer the OP. No, nearly all American evangelicals do not want homosexuals killed. They are our brothers and sisters. We want what's best for them.
Some may be misguided about what is best for homosexuals, but that's a discussion for the glue factory.
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"There merely seems to be something rather glib in defending the police without question one moment and calling the Crusades-- or war in general-- bad the next. The second may be an extension of the first." - Alogon
Posts: 2572 | From: Nomad | Registered: Jun 2007
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ToujoursDan
Ship's prole
# 10578
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Posted
Huh? What does that first sentence mean?
Most AIDS cases in Africa are caused by heterosexual transmission and childbirth.
[ 04. January 2010, 13:24: Message edited by: ToujoursDan ]
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"Many people say I embarrass them with my humility" - Archbishop Peter Akinola
Facebook link: http://www.facebook.com/toujoursdan
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
Dumpling Jeff: Promiscuous heterosexual sex is the leading vector for HIV/AIDS. It isn't a "gay" disease. (And transmission through lesbian sexual activity is minimal, although still possible.) The gay community in the West, which had its own very tragic learning curve regarding casual/unprotected sex back in the 80's, would hope that people in the developing world would learn from its experience the importance of protection, education and personal responsibility.
I'd underscore education because in some instances we're talking about vulnerable populations with a prescientific understanding of disease combined with a colonialist-created distrust of Westerners/Europeans, who still believe that HIV/AIDS is caused by "witchcraft," that advocacy of condom use as a disease preventative, or even the HIV virus itself, is a white plot to stop dark-skinned people from reproducing, who think that sex with a virgin girl will prevent/cure HIV/AIDS, etc. So perhaps that ignorance and mistrust is what others in the Christian community might want to consider addressing in their own aid efforts to combat HIV/AIDS.
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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com
Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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Honest Ron Bacardi
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# 38
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Posted
LutheranChik - I'm sure you are right. In fact we touched on this in another thread about a month ago where I argued much the same thing. Whilst not wanting to repeat that discussion, let me just draw attention to one of the other points in that NYT article:- quote:
Uganda seems to have become a far-flung front line in the American culture wars, with American groups on both sides, the Christian right and gay activists, pouring in support and money as they get involved in the broader debate over homosexuality in Africa.
This latest incursion is hardly the only one - this has been going on, on both sides, for quite some while. If one wants to understand the whole situation, you will need to know the Ugandan background and the history of these other incursions from outside. Whilst it seems fairly clear to me that these evangelicals do not want Ugandan homosexuals killed - the opposite in fact - it is nevertheless a real risk that their involvement may lead to just that. And equally worryingly, so may the insensitive incursion of western gay advocacy groups, though for different reasons. To have both slugging it out in a different culture, which neither seem to have made the effort to understand, seems to have turned very dangerous.
[ 04. January 2010, 14:18: Message edited by: Honest Ron Bacardi ]
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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Dumpling Jeff
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# 12766
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Posted
LutheranChik, promiscuous sex is the leading cause of AIDS. I'm fairly certain that the people quoted were discouraging all promiscuous sex.
I'm a firm believer in the "If you can't be good, be safe." rule, but that's not the same thing as encouraging evil. Promiscuity is not the Christian ideal and we need to spread that message as (a small) part of our religion.
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"There merely seems to be something rather glib in defending the police without question one moment and calling the Crusades-- or war in general-- bad the next. The second may be an extension of the first." - Alogon
Posts: 2572 | From: Nomad | Registered: Jun 2007
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Dumpling Jeff
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# 12766
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Posted
Honest Ron, good post.
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"There merely seems to be something rather glib in defending the police without question one moment and calling the Crusades-- or war in general-- bad the next. The second may be an extension of the first." - Alogon
Posts: 2572 | From: Nomad | Registered: Jun 2007
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ToujoursDan
Ship's prole
# 10578
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Posted
From the article:
quote:
For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay 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.”
and...
quote:
Human rights advocates in Uganda say the visit by the three Americans helped set in motion what could be a very dangerous cycle. Gay Ugandans already describe a world of beatings, blackmail, death threats like “Die Sodomite!” scrawled on their homes, constant harassment 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 that she was impregnated and infected with H.I.V., but that her grandmother’s reaction was simply, “ ‘You are too stubborn.’ ”
Despite such attacks, many gay men and lesbians here said things had been getting better for them before the bill, at least enough to hold news conferences and publicly advocate for their rights. Now they worry that the bill could encourage lynchings. Already, mobs beat people to death for infractions as minor as stealing shoes.
No. They don't like gays specifically, not just promiscuous people.
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"Many people say I embarrass them with my humility" - Archbishop Peter Akinola
Facebook link: http://www.facebook.com/toujoursdan
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five
Shipmate
# 14492
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Posted
Having read the article, it seems that the evangelicals responsible don't want gays put to death. They are greatly convinced, however, that gays can choose to be straight just as much as they chose to be gay. The fact that isn't a choice to be gay doesn't enter into their thinking.
But then, what is the logical consequence of their actions? They don't want people to be gay, and have gone as far out of their way as Uganda to tell people that gays recruit and prey on children, neither of which are true. If you're not gay, you can't just suddenly decide to up and be gay like joining the army or something. Equally, people that prey on children are both gy and straight, and both sorts are equally vile. But if you go off to a country where the system provides for death as a common form of punishment and spread basic lies about what homosexuality is and isn't and whip up a fervor about it telling people God is on your side in this and therefore will be on theirs, what precisely did they expect?
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And Jesus said 'the greatest commandments are these: Love the Lord your God with 10% of your time and energy, and Pamphlet your neighbour with tracts' - Birdseye
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
No visible gay people = no discomfort in having to think about them/deal with them/engage with them. In the words of that great theologian The Church Lady (pond in-joke): "I'n't that con- veeeen -ient?"
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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com
Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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Erroneous Monk
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# 10858
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by five:
But if you go off to a country where the system provides for death as a common form of punishment and spread basic lies about what homosexuality is and isn't and whip up a fervor about it telling people God is on your side in this and therefore will be on theirs, what precisely did they expect?
This is what I am driving at. While I don't think the view that the evangelicals in question actively want homosexuals to be executed, how supportable is their position that they didn't expect their behaviour to have the results that it did?
Shurely not.
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And I shot a man in Tesco, just to watch him die.
Posts: 2950 | From: I cannot tell you, for you are not a friar | Registered: Jan 2006
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Matariki
Shipmate
# 14380
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Posted
I recently took part in a thread on the Christianity Today website on the proposed Ugandan legislation.
Never for one moment would I imagine that most American evangelicals want to see gays killed. However there were some extremely shrill voices on the thread. One allegation was that gays rape women and children and thus spread AIDS. Sometimes the language was really offensive; "Gays are the bubonic fleas on the backs of their liberal cheerleader rats."
Any attempt to express a more balanced - or God forbid a liberal - viewpoint met with personal abuse from a few contributers.
As has been noted, for some this is a vicarious battle in the so-called culture war. The clock will not be turned back on the rights GLBTQ people have won in the States and elsewhere in the Western world. I am sure some of their opponants sense the 'thrill' of a vicarious victory in Africa.
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"Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accompanied alone; therefore we are saved by love." Reinhold Niebuhr.
Posts: 298 | From: Just across the Shire from Hobbiton | Registered: Dec 2008
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five
Shipmate
# 14492
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Posted
This is something I just don't understand. I have gay friends, I have straight friends, I have people I know less well who might be gay or straight, and frankly unless they decide/bother to tell me (as with my gay and straight friends), how would I know the gender of the people they prefer to see naked? And unless they're asking me to be that person (whether from a gay or straight perspective), why would I care?
Even if I took the hard core evangelical Romans line (which, for the record I do not), as sins go this is something that is entirely between two consenting adults and other people are not harmed by it. There isn't the "is it murder" question of abortion. Property isn't damaged, unless they're particularly vigourous, but that can happen with straight sex too. In terms of a sin,, it is a much more personal one between a person and their God. I don't see these people travelling to Uganda to exhort them to honour the Sabbath Day and keep it holy, and they appear to have totally missed the admonishment not to lie. And they can't tell who's gay and who's straight just by looking at them, so they're already engaging with them and they don't even know it.
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And Jesus said 'the greatest commandments are these: Love the Lord your God with 10% of your time and energy, and Pamphlet your neighbour with tracts' - Birdseye
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by five:
Having read the article, it seems that the evangelicals responsible don't want gays put to death. They are greatly convinced, however, that gays can choose to be straight just as much as they chose to be gay. The fact that isn't a choice to be gay doesn't enter into their thinking.
My take on it was that the evangelicals in question don't want to be blamed for gays being put to death and their response was primarily one of public relations.
quote:
Mr. Lively and Mr. Brundidge have similar remarks in interviews or statements issued by their organizations. But the Ugandan organizers of the conference admit helping draft the bill, and Mr. 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.” Later, when confronted with criticism, Mr. Lively said he was very disappointed that the legislation was so harsh.
<snip>
[Rev. Kapya] Kaoma was at the conference and said that 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.”
They seem genuinely perplexed that they were taken seriously. I'm amazed that anyone could argue that homosexuality is a society-destroying evil, that it is correctable, that gays are literally Nazis who are coming after your children, and not expect a response along these lines.
There is some interesting parallelism going on here with the Mediæval blood libel, the idea that Jews stole Christian children for ritual sacrifice. The details have changed a bit (rape and recruitment instead of murder and cannibalism) but the central message ('they' are coming for your children) is the same.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Matt Black
Shipmate
# 2210
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by five:
This is something I just don't understand. I have gay friends, I have straight friends, I have people I know less well who might be gay or straight, and frankly unless they decide/bother to tell me (as with my gay and straight friends), how would I know the gender of the people they prefer to see naked? And unless they're asking me to be that person (whether from a gay or straight perspective), why would I care?
Even if I took the hard core evangelical Romans line (which, for the record I do not), as sins go this is something that is entirely between two consenting adults and other people are not harmed by it. There isn't the "is it murder" question of abortion. Property isn't damaged, unless they're particularly vigourous, but that can happen with straight sex too. In terms of a sin,, it is a much more personal one between a person and their God. I don't see these people travelling to Uganda to exhort them to honour the Sabbath Day and keep it holy, and they appear to have totally missed the admonishment not to lie. And they can't tell who's gay and who's straight just by looking at them, so they're already engaging with them and they don't even know it.
Agreed completely (does that mean the Apocalypse is nigh? ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif) ). This is a particularly odious and fascistic law and these particular US evangelicals have got their fingers rather badly burned; hopefully they will learn from their mistake but the damage to Ugandan gays has, regrettably, already been done - the genie is out of the bottle and I fear that there is going to be no returning it.
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"Protestant and Reformed, according to the Tradition of the ancient Catholic Church" - + John Cosin (1594-1672)
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
Croesos wrote quote:
There is some interesting parallelism going on here with the Mediæval blood libel, the idea that Jews stole Christian children for ritual sacrifice. The details have changed a bit (rape and recruitment instead of murder and cannibalism) but the central message ('they' are coming for your children) is the same.
Indeed. In fact it may be worth spreading that line of enquiry a bit further. There are also parallels with the Satanic Ritual Abuse (link) panics of much more recent origin. The weirdest thing about those was that though they appear to have origins in certain American religious circles, they subsequently got imported into the UK by secular concerns. In fact, they all represent moral panics of a particularly dangerous kind.
Which is highly relevant because the culture wars themselves are a huge, reciprocal moral panic. Yet another reason why the export of that is so dangerous.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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Dumpling Jeff
Shipmate
# 12766
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Posted
I happen to agree with them that there is a "gay agenda". I feel it is encouraging promiscuity. I think the message they promote encourages teens (children at least legally) to have sex.
I remember being in collage and watching the gay groups target high school kids with provocative cultural events like films. They were trying to find new converts and have sex with them.
I accept this as part of any culture. Teenagers seek new experiences and have sex. It's part of growing up.
I do think those who go into other cultures and start stirring trouble are misguided. Here in the states, with our long history of freedom of speech, such mud-raking is done to try to rise above the background noise. But in other cultures it will be taken in other ways. I can see this might be a problem.
But I also think some of you are confusing the message with the medium. The basic message that promiscuity is wrong can only help Africa. Children are dying. They are dying after large amounts of scarce resources are spent schooling them.
This encourages less to be spent on schooling and more to be spent on training child armies. The whole culture suffers. It affects the whole continent and the whole world.
Instead of decrying these people, join them. Talk about how they may be misguided about the causes of homosexuality but the idea of forming close knit families is a good one. Help be part of the solution.
Africa has plenty of people willing to suppress free speach. Love and compassion is what Africa and the rest of the world is short on.
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"There merely seems to be something rather glib in defending the police without question one moment and calling the Crusades-- or war in general-- bad the next. The second may be an extension of the first." - Alogon
Posts: 2572 | From: Nomad | Registered: Jun 2007
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Stetson
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# 9597
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Posted
quote:
The weirdest thing about those was that though they appear to have origins in certain American religious circles, they subsequently got imported into the UK by secular concerns.
It was secular concerns who spread the panic in North America as well. It likely wouldn't have gotten as far as it did had the belief been confined to fundamentalists.
Basically, from what I can tell, you basically had a perfect storm of groups coming together to create the SRA panic...
1. Christian fundamentalists who believed that Satanists were running amuck all over the place, raping children and eating babies...
2. Pseudo-feminist and "pro-child" advocates who believed that every allegation of sexual abuse had to be accepted as valid, lest we abet the perpetrators, and...
3. Tabloid media(Geraldo, Oprah etc) who put far more stock than was warranted in what the "pro-child" people had to say.
I'm not a knee-jerk Oprah hater, but I do think she's gotten off a little too easy for her role in perpetrating that hysteria, which, after all, damaged dozens if not hundreds of peoples' lives. I remember a show she did on the topic of SRA, and it was obvious to anyone with a lick of sense that the people making the allegations were full of crap. Yet Oprah dutifully led the audience in booing anyone on the panel who expressed skepticism.
It also probably didn't help matters that the skeptical panelists included a self-announced Satanist(who dressed in black and had stereotypically "evil" eyebrows, but actually made the most sense of anyone on the show) and a fairly obnoxious science-fiction writer.
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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LutheranChik
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# 9826
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Posted
quote:
I happen to agree with them that there is a "gay agenda". I feel it is encouraging promiscuity. I think the message they promote encourages teens (children at least legally) to have sex.
I guess I missed this memo somewhere in my psychosexual formation. Others?
When you talk about "them," Jeff, you're talking about me and about a good many other Shipmates. Just a reminder before you start painting us with your broad brush again.
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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com
Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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Pre-cambrian
Shipmate
# 2055
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dumpling Jeff:
But I also think some of you are confusing the message with the medium. The basic message that promiscuity is wrong can only help Africa.
Except that if you read the article again - or even ToujoursDan's helpful extract in his post above - you will see that the message is nothing to do with promiscuity, it is all about hating and demonising gays. A message that you seem to be doing your own bit to stoke up with your
quote:
They were trying to find new converts and have sex with them.
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"We cannot leave the appointment of Bishops to the Holy Ghost, because no one is confident that the Holy Ghost would understand what makes a good Church of England bishop."
Posts: 2314 | From: Croydon | Registered: Dec 2001
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Louise
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# 30
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Posted
I wrote a bit on an earlier thread about how the situation in Uganda is a variety of witch-hunting and linked to this very good historical blog post which had a bit to say about why gay men especially might be picked as victims.
Some people want scapegoats, perhaps for disease or conflict or social breakdown, or change in a society. Christian witch-hunting developed first out of heresy hunting, and then later in the wake of the Black Death became the Satanic panic we're all familiar with, which stepped up a gear during the religious wars and divisions that came in the wake of the Reformation. It was a historical sister to anti-semitism and the first sodomy scares.
It's interesting that the modern version is centred round not so much 'enemies of God' but 'enemies of the family'/'enemies of children' as if the family has become the be-all and end-all, something which I think is interesting when you consider how radically non-family centric the life of Jesus is, yet this gets turned into 'What it's all about'.
I think similar things to the historical dynamics of scapegoating are at work. Some people don't like social change, they want someone to blame for it, and it's far easier to go after gay people than to wrestle with divorce and remarriage and the emancipation of women and the pressures of the economy on families.
In Westernised societies (which were to a large extent alerted to the dangers of demonisation and marginalisation of groups, and which have robust human rights laws and defenders), the most such people can do is slow down acceptance and make a last stand in the churches, where adherence to 'scripture must be right at all costs or my salvation is unsure' makes people reluctant to admit the obvious fact staring them in the face that their gay neighbours are harmless and that the people destroying heterosexual marriage are, in fact, us heterosexuals.
But when you apply the toolbox of scapegoating to a country which has far worse problems, far fewer checks and balances, and which has historical and cultural resonances with an anti-gay message, then you're really playing with matches.
I think far too much is being made of the 'Well they had tactless foreigners too!' card. When I checked it out I saw that major persecution of gay people (including rape and murder) pre-dated any intervention by the US Bishop who was being blamed on the last thread, for denouncing the state of affairs there.
L.
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Posts: 6918 | From: Scotland | Registered: May 2001
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ToujoursDan
Ship's prole
# 10578
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Posted
quote:
I remember being in collage and watching the gay groups target high school kids with provocative cultural events like films. They were trying to find new converts and have sex with them.
Who exactly is this "they" who are trying to have sex with high school kids? And how exactly can kids be "converted"?
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"Many people say I embarrass them with my humility" - Archbishop Peter Akinola
Facebook link: http://www.facebook.com/toujoursdan
Posts: 3734 | From: NYC | Registered: Oct 2005
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Matariki
Shipmate
# 14380
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Posted
Well said LutheranChik,
I must have missed the Gay Agenda pep talk too. Personally I always thought it was about making the world a bit more fabulous. ![[Cool]](cool.gif)
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"Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accompanied alone; therefore we are saved by love." Reinhold Niebuhr.
Posts: 298 | From: Just across the Shire from Hobbiton | Registered: Dec 2008
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
They were trying to find new converts and have sex with them.
I spent a bit of time in univeristy doing political activism in close proximity to the campus gay group, and I never got the impression that the main aim was specifically to recruit teenagers for sex. I dunno, maybe stuff was going on at their closed-door meetings that I wasn't privy to, like some kid walks in and all the old trolls start eyeing him and then trying to convince him that of course he must be gay and why don't you come to our apartment after to find out. But I doubt it. In fact, some of the gay guys I knew were just as keen on recruiting women for the group, so where would that get them, sexually speaking?
I do agree that some of them had a rather grating tendency to overestimate the chances that a given individual might be gay. But I don't think this was because they wanted to sleep with each and every one of them. Like I said, gay men would also say this about women they assumed were repressed lesbians.
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Dumpling Jeff
Shipmate
# 12766
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Posted
Pre-cambrian, I call it as I see it. Many of the twenty five year old wanted to have sex with twenty year olds and many of the twenty year olds wanted to have sex with seventeen year olds.
That's how the world works. It happens in the gay subculture and in the straight subculture. It happens in the Humanist subculture and in the Evo-Christian subculture. The heart wants what the heart wants.
Oh and re-quoting from above: quote:
“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.” [my bold]
Sexual promiscuity is very much an issue.
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"There merely seems to be something rather glib in defending the police without question one moment and calling the Crusades-- or war in general-- bad the next. The second may be an extension of the first." - Alogon
Posts: 2572 | From: Nomad | Registered: Jun 2007
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
Actually Louise, I agree with most of that. If your comment was about my contribution to that thread, then the point I was making there was relating to the potentiation of an already existing situation into something far more dangerous, which duly happened. (If it wasn't, just ignore this - I've been away for several weeks).
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dumpling Jeff:
Instead of decrying these people, join them. Talk about how they may be misguided about the causes of homosexuality but the idea of forming close knit families is a good one. Help be part of the solution.
I'm not sure which "these people" DJ is suggesting we find common cause with. The ones proposing the death penalty for gay "repeat offenders"? Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively and those like him who believe gays are a cancer on society? Those who believe "close knit families" and "gay families" are mutually exclusive groups? There doesn't seem to be a lot of common ground these groups would be willing to occupy with any homosexual.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Spiffy
Ship's WonderSheep
# 5267
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dumpling Jeff:
I remember being in collage and watching the gay groups target high school kids with provocative cultural events like films. They were trying to find new converts and have sex with them.
Funny. I remember being part of those gay groups putting on the film festivals and I sure as shootin' don't remember that being on the business meeting agenda. Mostly it was about film rights and event space rental fees and okay, whose turn was it to bring the coffee and donuts? Seriously, people, there's a signup sheet for a REASON!
Of course, I went to college, not collage, which could be part of the problem...
[ 04. January 2010, 17:17: Message edited by: Spiffy ]
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Posts: 10281 | From: Beervana | Registered: Dec 2003
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Louise
Shipmate
# 30
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
quote:
They were trying to find new converts and have sex with them.
I spent a bit of time in univeristy doing political activism in close proximity to the campus gay group, and I never got the impression that the main aim was specifically to recruit teenagers for sex.
Same here. As the student union projectionist, I even screened the Gay Awareness Week films. The person who accidentally booked the most explicit film (because it was German and she didn't realise how er... full on it was) was the entirely heterosexual film and theatre convener. I regret to inform that it didn't lead to anyone attempting hot gay sex with either myself or Emma. Nor can I report a single known convert. In fact I think it might have put some of the more sensitive souls off for life and driven them back to ovaltine, and fluffy slippers.
L.
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Posts: 6918 | From: Scotland | Registered: May 2001
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ToujoursDan
Ship's prole
# 10578
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Posted
I knew I was gay when I was in high school. I was fully aware of the fact. But when I was in high school in the early 80s, being called a "fag" and imitating effeminate behaviour was the highest form of ridicule. You couldn't be openly gay then at that age.
Beyond that there was no information to help me make sense of who I was. My parents didn't speak about it. There was nothing in our school library about it. I didn't know any openly gay people as role models living in a white-bread conservative suburb.
It was confusing. I am not an effeminate man, so how could I be gay? I was attracted to other male schoolmates though. And the stigma was so strong I wasn't comfortable asking questions. What if someone figured it out and the cat was out of the bag?
I would have given my eye teeth to have a "gay group" come to my school and present something... anything... that gave me some hope and direction. The goal of gay films, etc., isn't to make converts out of anyone. It's to help closeted high school kids like me make sense out of our feelings and to help my heterosexual classmates become more tolerant of kids who are different. High school can be a very cruel place for a kid that doesn't fit in.
In fact, more information leads to less promiscuity. When you can see examples of stable healthy relationships you realize that anonymous sex or fleeting trysts aren't all there is to sex.
The proposed law in Uganda does NOTHING to stop promiscuity. It doesn't target polygamy or prostitution. It merely targets gay people and those who know them. Knowing a gay person in Uganda and not informing on them will become a crime.
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"Many people say I embarrass them with my humility" - Archbishop Peter Akinola
Facebook link: http://www.facebook.com/toujoursdan
Posts: 3734 | From: NYC | Registered: Oct 2005
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
... let me just draw attention to one of the other points in that NYT article:- quote:
Uganda seems to have become a far-flung front line in the American culture wars, with American groups on both sides, the Christian right and gay activists, pouring in support and money as they get involved in the broader debate over homosexuality in Africa.
Its understandable that the New York Times sees everything through a red-white-and-blue tinted lens, because its trying to sell news to Americans. But this really isn't something nasty Americans are tricking the gullible Africans into doing believing. If you all went away Africans would still have these problems and these debates. I doubt if it helps anyone in Uganda or Malawi to treat their problems as if they were merely a reaction to American "culture wars".
Much of the online discourse about this from liberal American Christians has been deeply, if (I hope) inadvertantly, racist, not seeing Africans as actors or agents in their own stories but as passive re-actors to things done to them by Americans. (Its also worth saying that from outside the USA - even from somewhere as culturally linked to the US as Britain, never mind from East Africa - the sides in the US "culture wars" seem a lot more like each other than they might to Americans)
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
There are also parallels with the Satanic Ritual Abuse (link) panics of much more recent origin. The weirdest thing about those was that though they appear to have origins in certain American religious circles, they subsequently got imported into the UK by secular concerns.
Not really weird. Over here that was an anti-Christian panic. "Look at these loony believers, they are all weird, you can't trust them with your children". To modern agnostic secularism ALL firmly held religious ideas are dangerous superstition. Which is one reason that the liberal establishment regards all evangelism and proselytisation as aggression - as all religious ideas are equally false it is an abuse to try to pollute anyone's mind with any of them. They can admire cultural religion, which is seen as a sort of atavistic folk tradition, especially amongst "primitive" peoples (not that they would use those words) in a sort of touristy pop-anthropological "when do the natives dance?" sort of way; and for similar reasons they can at least tolerate catholic ritualistic Christianity (especially when indulged in by poor peasants) but they cannot bear any serious engagement with low-church Protestant styles of Christianity.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
I think far too much is being made of the 'Well they had tactless foreigners too!' card. When I checked it out I saw that major persecution of gay people (including rape and murder) pre-dated any intervention by the US Bishop who was being blamed on the last thread, for denouncing the state of affairs there.
There is a tendency among some leftists(and I say some) to want to absolve members of oppressed groups for their own self-inflicted SNAFUS. It's fairly predictable, actually. You can almost see them at their keyboards, and they come across an article along the theme of "Third-world Country Does Something Bad", and their immeidate impulse is to type the name of the Third World country, the name of the bad thing, and the words "American evangelical Christians" into the search engine in the hopes that some linkage can be found. Then, their off to their favorite blog of message board to spread the good news that of course those people in the third-world country would never have dreamed of doing such a dastardly thing had it not been for evil American influence.
That said, in this particular matter, I don't think Rick Warren et al can be let off the hook for their involvement in the Ugandan anti-gay fiasco. Though obviously the Ugandan leaders were quite willing to listen to the message being offered.
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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ToujoursDan
Ship's prole
# 10578
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Posted
According to the article itself, things were getting better for Uganda's gay and lesbian population BEFORE right-wing American ex-gay ministers and preachers started intervening in Uganda's law.
What about the right of Uganda's LGBT population to live in peace?
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"Many people say I embarrass them with my humility" - Archbishop Peter Akinola
Facebook link: http://www.facebook.com/toujoursdan
Posts: 3734 | From: NYC | Registered: Oct 2005
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
Pre-cambrian, I call it as I see it. Many of the twenty five year old wanted to have sex with twenty year olds and many of the twenty year olds wanted to have sex with seventeen year olds.
That's how the world works. It happens in the gay subculture and in the straight subculture. It happens in the Humanist subculture and in the Evo-Christian subculture. The heart wants what the heart wants.
Okay, but you're admitting then, aren't you, that this isn't confined to gay campus groups. 25 year old campus Conservatives probably want to have sex with 20 year olds in their club, and the 20 year old campus Conservatives might want to have sex with the 17 year olds. That doesn't mean the whole point of the club is to facilitate sexual encounters.
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
There is a tendency among some leftists(and I say some) to want to absolve members of oppressed groups for their own self-inflicted SNAFUS. It's fairly predictable, actually. You can almost see them at their keyboards, and they come across an article along the theme of "Third-world Country Does Something Bad", and their immeidate impulse is to type the name of the Third World country, the name of the bad thing, and the words "American evangelical Christians" into the search engine in the hopes that some linkage can be found. Then, their off to their favorite blog of message board to spread the good news that of course those people in the third-world country would never have dreamed of doing such a dastardly thing had it not been for evil American influence.
That said, in this particular matter, I don't think Rick Warren et al can be let off the hook for their involvement in the Ugandan anti-gay fiasco. Though obviously the Ugandan leaders were quite willing to listen to the message being offered.
I'm not sure why your first paragraph was included except as a way to let Rick Warren et al "off the hook". I'm don't see how Google searches by"some [unnamed] leftists" is relevant to Lively, Brundidge, and Schmierer trading on their supposed expertise in how to combat the evil gays to influence the Ugandan legislature other than to create some sort of absolving equivalence.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
According to the article itself, things were getting better for Uganda's gay and lesbian population BEFORE right-wing American ex-gay ministers and preachers started intervening in Uganda's law.
Fair enough. But I have to wonder HOW much better things really were getting if all it took was one conference by three speakers to set in motion the cycle of beatings, rape, and homicidal legislation that we see happening now.
If the three Americans had gone to Sweden to give their speech, I doubt we'd be seeing the same results.
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
quote:
I'm not sure why your first paragraph was included except as a way to let Rick Warren et al "off the hook". I'm don't see how Google searches by"some [unnamed] leftists" is relevant to Lively, Brundidge, and Schmierer trading on their supposed expertise in how to combat the evil gays to influence the Ugandan legislature other than to create some sort of absolving equivalence.
The first paragraph was just sort of riffing on a general trend I've noticed, and was not meant to be precisely applicable to the Ugandan situation. If you look at my second paragaph, you'll see that I preface my remarks with "in this particular matter", as a way of distinguishing Uganda from the trend I was referring to.
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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ToujoursDan
Ship's prole
# 10578
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Posted
Does that make their assessment of their plight any less valid?
I find it interesting that few have discussed LGBTs in Uganda, given that they are the ones being targeted and the ones who have appealed to those "racist" liberals in the west for assistance.
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"Many people say I embarrass them with my humility" - Archbishop Peter Akinola
Facebook link: http://www.facebook.com/toujoursdan
Posts: 3734 | From: NYC | Registered: Oct 2005
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
Fair enough. But I have to wonder HOW much better things really were getting if all it took was one conference by three speakers to set in motion the cycle of beatings, rape, and homicidal legislation that we see happening now.
If the three Americans had gone to Sweden to give their speech, I doubt we'd be seeing the same results.
An interesting analysis of the growing links between evangelical American churches and African congregations by Rev. Kaoma was linked in the original NYT article. You should give it a read.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Dumpling Jeff
Shipmate
# 12766
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Posted
Yes Stetson, I admit it's a broad cultural problem (phenomenon?). The difference isn't that Christians' behaviors are different; it's that our message is different.
We are hypocrites. We call each other to a higher standard even as we fail to live up to it.
But that beats a message of "It's good to have sex with whomever." The reason for this is because promiscuous sex hurts people. More even than spreading disease it spreads hurt feelings. Envy, jealousy, anger, and hatred are the fruits of this tree.
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"There merely seems to be something rather glib in defending the police without question one moment and calling the Crusades-- or war in general-- bad the next. The second may be an extension of the first." - Alogon
Posts: 2572 | From: Nomad | Registered: Jun 2007
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
I went to a university with a lively gay and lesbian community, in a city with a lively gay subculture, and I never felt "recruited" into that scene in the least...to the contrary, I remember my first trembling undergraduate venture into the local lesbian book coop (after several trips around the block) -- I wasn't out of the closet even to myself at that point, but on some level I felt an affinity for the women there and their p.o.v. -- only to find a rather ordinary group of moms reading to their toddlers. The local heterosexuals (including my very own stalkers) were much more sexually and culturally aggressive. And that's been my experience thereafter.
At the risk of dignifying comments by Mr. Jeff that don't warrant respect...perhaps he mistakes the common human desire to find connection and affirmation with other people like oneself for "recruitment." Think of anxious Evangelicals, Jeff, on a university campus, trying to find like minds and winding up at an ICF meeting; try and imagine, if you can, that the gay community is more like that and less like the Roman orgy you seem to have in mind.
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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com
Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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Trudy Scrumptious
BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647
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Posted
This is a fascinating conversation, but I don't see how it can be carried on without some discussion of the rights and wrongs of homosexuality, which means it belongs in Dead Horses, not here. Please feel free to continue the conversation in that corral.
Trudy, Scrumptious Purgatory Host
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Books and things.
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Posts: 7428 | From: Closer to Paris than I am to Vancouver | Registered: Mar 2004
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LutheranChik
Shipmate
# 9826
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Posted
I'm also wondering where on this thread the notion "It's good to have sex with whomever" has been affirmed; not by anyone's posts that I can find. So with whom are you arguing, Jeff?
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Simul iustus et peccator
http://www.lutheranchiklworddiary.blogspot.com
Posts: 6462 | From: rural Michigan, USA | Registered: Jul 2005
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dumpling Jeff:
Yes Stetson, I admit it's a broad cultural problem (phenomenon?). The difference isn't that Christians' behaviors are different; it's that our message is different.
We are hypocrites. We call each other to a higher standard even as we fail to live up to it.
But that beats a message of "It's good to have sex with whomever." The reason for this is because promiscuous sex hurts people. More even than spreading disease it spreads hurt feelings. Envy, jealousy, anger, and hatred are the fruits of this tree.
I would argue that "It's good to have sex with whomever" is better than the message "You cannot have sex ever, and if you do the state will hunt you down, imprison you, and possibly even execute you". Admittedly that's not a mainline Christian position, but it's the position being argued about in this thread so I can only assume it's the one DJ is advocating as a superior alternative.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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ToujoursDan
Ship's prole
# 10578
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Posted
I would like to know how making it illegal to even know a gay person yet not report that person to the cops will do anything to make Ugandan society less promiscuous?
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"Many people say I embarrass them with my humility" - Archbishop Peter Akinola
Facebook link: http://www.facebook.com/toujoursdan
Posts: 3734 | From: NYC | Registered: Oct 2005
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Túathalán
Shipmate
# 14148
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dumpling Jeff:
I remember being in collage and watching the gay groups target high school kids with provocative cultural events like films. They were trying to find new converts and have sex with them.
I have two main reactions to this paragraph - the first is to ask if you seriously believe that human individuals' sexuality can be 'converted'? For the record, I think this is just not possible, and that people who engage in homosexual sex are not converted in some way, but were homosexual or bisexual (to whatever degree) independently of any 'conversion' attempt.
The second point is that I am intrigued by the notion that a film could be a provocative cultural event; what was provocative - the films' content (such as rape or exaggerated promiscuity), or the films' type (such as a gay plotline or similar)? Or was the provocation just that some gay people ran a film at all? I'd be interested to know, as it's not something I've ever encountered here in the UK.
Posts: 129 | From: Here, where else? | Registered: Sep 2008
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Dumpling Jeff
Shipmate
# 12766
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Posted
It seems to me that at least three of you equate anyone who disagrees with whatever you think the gay agenda is as rounding up all the gays and their friends for slaughter.
If you reread my posts you will find I don't advocate that. I don't even think those you condemn advocate that.
What I do advocate, as a small part of a very serious problem in Africa, is teaching love and faithfulness. I do advocate free speech. I do advocate coming together to find solutions.
I oppose violence, official or otherwise, against people on the basis of their sexuality. This includes straights, gays, pedophiles, or zoophiles. (I would like to see pedophiles and some zoophiles locked up to protect their victims.)
LutheranChik, I hope I'm having a discussion, not an argument. But I suspect more than a few people disagree with me.
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"There merely seems to be something rather glib in defending the police without question one moment and calling the Crusades-- or war in general-- bad the next. The second may be an extension of the first." - Alogon
Posts: 2572 | From: Nomad | Registered: Jun 2007
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