CARNAL NATION

Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church (left)
and Ugandan Minister Martin Ssempa (right).

The Ugandan anti-homosexuality law, which would make same-gender sex punishable by imprisonment and apply the death penalty to lesbians and gays who are HIV-positive, is shameful enough in itself. But even more shameful is the fact that there's evidence that the law may have come about with the support and encouragement of United States congressmen and fundamentalists.

The fundamentalist group known as The Family (or The Fellowship) has recently gotten a lot of unwelcome attention as several of their members—such as Senator John Ensign and Governor Mark Sanford—found themselves embroiled in high-profile scandals involving sex and political corruption. The Family is well-connected politically: they own a house on C Street in Washington, DC which serves as a second home for conservative politicians such as Senator Sam Brownback, Representative Bart Stupak, and Senator James Inhofe. And according to Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, Ugandan MP David Bahati, who introduced the anti-gay legislation, is a "core member" of The Family. Ugandan President Yoweri Musevini, who supports the legislation and says that homosexuality is a European corruption of Africa, is also considered by The Family to be their "key man" in Africa, and has had close relations with the group since 1986.

Sharlet was interviewed by Terri Gross on NPR's Fresh Air last week and detailed the connection between The Family and the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda. Of Bahati, Musevini and the Ugandan ethics minister, Nsaba Buturo, Sharlet says that "these guys are not so much under the influence of The Family. They are, in Uganda, The Family." Thanks to his connections with The Family, Sharlet says, Musevini has a direct line to American politicians such as Inhofe and Brownback when he needs favors such as military aid. Inhofe has paid especially close interest to Africa in general and Uganda, even going so far as to say that he has "adopted" the country.

Although The Family may seem especially sinister, given its combination of secrecy and political connections, the association of American fundamentalists with Ugandan homophobia are much broader than that one single group. As the Guardian reports, the original impetus came from a seminar held last March in Uganda's capital, Kampala. The seminar, organized by a Ugandan pastor named Steven Langa, who teaches that gays pay children to recruit their friends into homosexuality, featured three American fundamentalists as speakers: Scott Lively, President of Defend the Family; Don Schmierer, a board member of "ex-gay" organization Exodus International (note: Exodus International has officially said it opposes the bill); and Caleb Lee Brundidge, a "ex-gay therapist" with the International Healing Foundation. Immediately following the seminar, a petition was circulated and submitted to parliament, ultimately resulting in the bill.

And according to Newsweek, Pastor Rick Warren, who created controversy when Barack Obama selected him to give the invocation at his inauguration in February, has refused to condemn the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Warren's response to a request for his position on the bill attempted to strike a "neutral" stance:

The fundamental dignity of every person, our right to be free, and the freedom to make moral choices are gifts endowed by God, our creator. However, it is not my personal calling as a pastor in America to comment or interfere in the political process of other nations.

Warren's plea for neutrality is particularly disingenuous given his association with Ugandan minister Martin Ssempa, who has given addresses and seminars at Warren's Saddleback Church in Orange County, California. According to The Daily Beast, in Uganda, "Ssempa’s stunts have included burning condoms in the name of Jesus and arranging the publication of names of homosexuals in cooperative local newspapers while lobbying for criminal penalties to imprison them." Warren has since distanced himself from Ssempa, claiming that "Martin Ssempa does not represent me; my wife, Kay; Saddleback Church; nor the Global PEACE Plan strategy." (The latter is Warren's program for charity work in the Third World, especially Africa.)

In his Atlantic Monthly blog today,  conservative gay writer Andrew Sullivan condemned Warren, saying: 

He lies. He has taken sides, whenever possible, to stigmatize, demonize and now physically threaten the lives of gay people in his own country and abroad. And his silence on this issue means the deaths of others. Warren needs to come out and condemn this law as evil, which it is. And to stop hiding his own enmeshment with the most virulent forms of fundamentalist hatred under the veil of media-savvy benevolence.