The Guardian tells the sad tale of “Ugandan gay rights activist David Kato found murdered“:
One of Uganda’s most prominent gay rights activists has been murdered in his home weeks after winning a court victory over a tabloid that called for homosexuals to be killed.
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David Kato, the advocacy officer for Sexual Minorities Uganda, was bludgeoned to death in Mukono, Kampala, yesterday afternoon. Witnesses saw a man fleeing the scene in a car, and police are investigating.
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Along with other Ugandan gay activists, Kato had reported increased harassment since 3 January, when a high court judge granted a permanent injunction against the Rolling Stone tabloid newspaper, preventing it from identifying homosexuals in its pages…
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Human Rights Watch said it was too early to speculate why Kato had been killed, but added that there were serious concerns about the level of protection of members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in Kampala…
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Ugandan society is, in general, homophobic – but in recent years the anti-gay feeling has been stoked by religious leaders, a group of US evangelicals and politicians.
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In 2009, MP David Bahati introduced the anti-homosexuality bill, which calls for gay people to be imprisoned for life. Repeat offenders would face the death penalty, while Ugandans would be required to report any homosexual activity within 24 hours or face police action themselves.
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Widely condemned internationally, the bill remains before parliament. Kato was one of the leading voices against the legislation…
The NYTimes prefers a more America-centric explanation of the real victims when “Ugandan Who Spoke Up for Gays Is Beaten to Death“:
… On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Kato was beaten to death with a hammer in his rough-and-tumble neighborhood. Police officials were quick to chalk up the motive to robbery, but members of the small and increasingly besieged gay community in Uganda suspect otherwise.
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“David’s death is a result of the hatred planted in Uganda by U.S. evangelicals in 2009,” Val Kalende, the chairwoman of one of Uganda’s gay rights groups, said in a statement. “The Ugandan government and the so-called U.S. evangelicals must take responsibility for David’s blood.”
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Ms. Kalende was referring to visits in March 2009 by a group of American evangelicals, who held rallies and workshops in Uganda discussing how to turn gay people straight, how gay men sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” intended to “defeat the marriage-based society.”
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The Americans involved said they had no intention of stoking a violent reaction. But the antigay bill was drafted shortly thereafter. Some of the Ugandan politicians and preachers who wrote it had attended those sessions and said that they had discussed the legislation with the Americans.
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On Thursday, Don Schmierer, one of the American evangelicals who visited Uganda in 2009, said Mr. Kato’s death was “horrible.”
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“Naturally, I don’t want anyone killed, but I don’t feel I had anything to do with that,” said Mr. Schmierer, who added that in Uganda he had focused on parenting skills. He also said that he had been a target of threats himself, recently receiving more than 600 messages of hate mail related to his visit.
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“I spoke to help people,” he said, “and I’m getting bludgeoned from one end to the other.”
Anthropologists say that too many Africans have retained a simple tribalist mindset where every random bad event — illness, impotence, crop failure — is the deliberate result of witchcraft, and can be “cured” by identifying a scapegoat (witch) and punishing or murdering them. Modern right-wing Americans are much more socially advanced: They’ve learned that it’s better to preserve a plausible deniability by inciting their less sophisticated followers to do the bludgeonings (or shootings, or bombings, because yay American technological superiority and Gawd bless our Second Amendment remedies!), and then complain that they’re the real martyrs.
(h/t commentor Warren Terra for the link)
MeDrewNotYou
AL, I love you and everything, but you just depressed the hell out of me first thing in the morning. I appreciate Ms. Kalende calling out some of the responsible parties, but I think it’ll go over the heads of most Americans. “What, one of us doing wrong? That’s soshulist talk! Besides, all those Africans are savages anyways.”
Scott
God, I’m really getting spectacularly sick of rightwing hatemeisters who self-crucify themselves because people complain about them being assholes. Spectacularly, vomitously sick of them.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
1 – Hate mail is not a death threat. Reporters always use the hate mail number in place of the actual number of death threats, because it’s always the bigger number.
Well, i’m just glad that Schmierer draws the line at vigilante killings, even though he’s perfectly ok with the state doing the same thing for the same reasons.
Ash Can
@Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac:
When he’s on record, at least.
eric
here is a story from a few years ago….
ultimately at trial, an expert came in to explain just how bad it was in Uganda. Asylum was granted. It has only gotten worse. Had Olivia been forced to go back, the outcome was all but certain.
This has been a problem form a long time and, sadly, it is getting worse.
eric
ETA: it appears there is link fail….here is the text of the url
http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_5562490
mikefromArlington
Great. Some of our religious leaders and our elected officials have encouraged and nurtured a society of hatred over there.
Anya
American evangelicals and followers of the wahabi brand of Islam have been spreading their brand of Christianity and Islam to Africa, for decades now. This is ruining the indigenous African culture. When you mix these two brands of fanatical religion with poverty, people always find a group to scapegoat.
Matthew B.
In fairness to the New York Times, I expect they’re aware of exactly how outrageous that quote sounds, and stuck it in the story to get a dig at Schmierer while maintaining their cloak of impartiality. American papers do that sort of thing a lot. British papers can usually make their sympathies a bit more obvious.
Chris
Sub-Saharan Africa is one giant competitive playground for evangelizing religions (Islam, Catholicism and all kinds of Protestant sects mostly backed by American mega-churches). It’s also a nice place to implement all the policies that the religious right thinks are needed for a perfect world, but know they could never implement or advocate at home.
I always keep Uganda in mind when listening to righties prattle on about how savage and violent the Muslims are compared with how peaceful and nice the Christians are. And we’re supposed to believe they give a shit about the fate of women and homosexuals in Saudi Arabia when all the time they’re spending lavishly to finance this… sure.
scav
The NYT had that immediately adjacent to
Some Conservatives Boycott Conference Over Gay Group’s Role for a good chunk of time yesterday.
Yusifu
Which anthropologists have said “too many Africans retain a simple tribalist mindset”? It sounds like you’re invoking Evans-Pritchard and his followers, a line of argument more than 70 years old and condemned now for its casual racism. Homophobia in many places in sub-Saharan Africa is awful, as are many recent forms of witch-finding. But neither one is a manifestation of some sort of imaginary “tribalist” past; they’re responses to contemporary events, admittedly rather exotic to westerners. And Africans are no stupider, or less sophisticated, than anyone else.
kerFuFFler
“Naturally, I don’t want anyone killed…”~evangelical worker
But are these evangelicals decrying the legislation that would turn homosexual behavior into a capital offense? If not, then I really don’t see how they can say that they do not want anyone killed.
Persia
@mikefromArlington: That’s exactly it. I’m so fucking angry over this.
@Yusifu: Hell, I just read yesterday about a new creation museum in Kentucky with unicorns. Don’t tell me Africans are ‘backward’ with a straight face after that.
eric
@Yusifu: Yes, and to your point, is there anything more “tribalist” than the anti-immigrant, anti-hispanic rumblings in Arizona? Perhaps the tribalism of southern whites’ claim to a distinct culture so valued that it must ever be protected from the advancing dark hordes.
JGabriel
Don Schmierer, Anti-Gay Evangelist:
Since Mr. Schmierer clearly hates all those “bludgeoning” Americans, maybe he should consider moving to Uganda?
.
Anya
@Yusifu: This
@eric: But you’re forgetting one important distinction: Europian tribalism good, African tribalism backward.
scav
I was assuming that AL doesn’t believe it because that whole tribalist thing doesn’t match what I learned in anthro classes as well as mixing categories by describing beliefs relating to religious cause and effect (the whole god-as-grumpy-gumball machine type religious systems) with terms describing social organization (and an old version of that as well). I was hoping it was there to make the obvious bridge to Homosexuals caused Katrina mindset.
PurpleGirl
@Yusifu: Thank you for your comment and the information.
eric
@Anya: indeed, though to recast…European tribalism, white; african tribalism, black.
It is also interesting to hear evangelicals trying to convert folks from their primitive superstitious habits of athropomorphizing natural events. good times.
Joey Maloney
@Yusifu: FFS, read the whole paragraph. It’s clearly snark.
MonkeyBoy
@Yusifu:
I would amend that to say that “Africans are inherently no stupider… “. African culture seems to include more violent magical thinking than much of the developed world – such as the belief by some that sex with a virgin will cure AIDS.
The only somewhat comparable belief in the USA I can think of is that executing people thought to be criminal is moral – a practice frowned on in much of Europe.
Hillary Rettig
and they also get their minions to do economic violence, and then also feel martyred
eric
@MonkeyBoy: is that more violently magical than the belief of hundreds of millions that a white jesus with flowing locks will ride on a giant white steed while carrying a sword and shield to bring about the end of time?
there is less societal scientific sophistication, perhaps.
there are PLENTY of americans, black and white, that firmly beleive that they can be healed by the “power of prayer”
Persia
@eric: Or the ‘power of positive thinking.’ It’s not just confined to American Christians.
Chris
@eric:
Mmm hmmm… A month or two ago, my desk and my forehead got acquainted after I read a missionary friend on facebook talk about how he met a guy from one of those primitive third world religions and tried to explain to him the inconsistencies in his belief system.
Dude. You worship a trinity and you call yourself a monotheist. See any inconsistencies there?
Elvis Elvisberg
Anthropologists say that too many Africans have retained a simple tribalist mindset
Um…
Omnes Omnibus
@Elvis Elvisberg: Read that in the context of the entire paragraph and you will see the snark.
Chris
@eric:
… and quite a few of these guys outright refuse to go to hospitals or use modern technology to save themselves.
Which always reminds me of a story I heard in church. During a flood, a priest climbs onto his roof to escape the rising waters. Three boats come by one at a time, each offering to take him to safety, and each time he declines, saying “thank you my son, but God will save me.”
Of course, the water eventually reaches him and drowns him. At the pearly gates, he asks God, “Lord, I prayed and I prayed and I prayed; why didn’t you save me?” God replies, “Are you blind? I sent you three boats!”
NonyNony
@Chris:
you don’t even have to go that far. How about these inconsistencies:
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:26
“You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.” Luke 18:20
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” Luke 6:27-28
And that’s just in one book from (supposedly) a single author. It gets worse when you start looking across the Biblical books. Any evangelical missionary who believes that the Bible is the Word Of God and is complaining about the inconsistencies of more “primitive” religions needs to take a Bible to the head. Anyone can rationalize inconsistencies away if they work at it hard enough, and evangelical missionaries tend to be some of the best at it.
Southern Beale
Speaking of gunmen going global, I heard on Terry Gross’ show last night that the NRA is going global. They registered as an official lobbyist at the United Nations back in the 90s I think … maybe it was the 80s. I’m just fascinated by this — the “national” rifle association going international. Why? Whatever for? And I wonder how many of their wingnut members know they are trying to arm brown people?
I find it very odd. Can anyone shed any light on this?
scav
@NonyNony: yes, those are clearly the deeply meaningful and spiritually enlightening inconsistencies to be pondered mindfully as opposed to those other kind of inconsistencies that are just dumb.
shortstop
It’s just not possible to depict in words how fucked-up and breathtakingly callous this statement is.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Chris: The way I heard it, before the flood the police came to the church to get the preacher to leave, and he wouldn’t. As the waters rose, a boat came for him, but he said God would save him. As the waters rose still higher, and he was clinging to the roof of the church, a helicopter came to rescue him; but he refused again.
He died.
When he got to Heaven he demanded to know why God hadn’t saved him. “Oy. I sent you a car, I sent you a boat, I sent you a helicopter. Whaddaya want from me?”
Anya
@MonkeyBoy:
That has nothing to do with “African culture” (there is not such a thing, since Africa is a freaking continent) but more to do with fear and hysteria as a result of the wide spread of an uncontrollable disease and the failure of the government to educate the public.
Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@MonkeyBoy: Fuck you.
Here’s some violent, magical thinking for you. Queers cause earthquakes and hurricanes and terrorist attacks and disease, so killing them is a good thing and saves lives in the long run. That’s not an African idea, SFB, it’s American Christian, and its been promulgated from pulpits and television sets my entire life. How about the idea that “God” made white people, while a secondary deity of evil created all the other ethnicities out of mud and turned them loose to wreak havoc on “God’s” chosen people, and should be destroyed. Again, not African.
Violent magical thinking is characteristic of ignorant humans the world over, and the fact that you ascribe it to African cultures in particular says more about you and your ignorance of African cultures and history than it does about Africa. At least the self-consciously bigoted put their hate out in the open to blaze. It’s the unconscious bigotry of patronizing, would-be liberal fucks like you that do the greater damage.
Chris
@Southern Beale:
Define “international.”
I’m sure the NRA’d be happy to expand to Europe; I’d be surprised if they did the same in the Middle-East. Remember, “rights” like those in the Second Amendment are meant to apply only to certain people – those outside the tent don’t deserve any (or “haven’t earned them,” or whatever such nonsense).
asiangrrlMN
Oh dear.
Someone call out the whaaaaaambulance for this asshat. And, for all the death threats/hate mail, etc. he claims he’s received, HE is still alive. Just as are the other rightwinger hatemongers who demonize other people to the point where they (the other people) are seen as inhuman. Funny how that works.
Dee Loralei
Rachel has been all over this Ugandan story for months, especially it’s ties to The Family on C Street. Last night she said they would have an indepth exclusive report tonight. I look forward to her insight and passion on this murder.
El Cid
I suppose we’re supposed to ignore the machinations of Frances Fox Piven, the Tides Foundation, and ACORN?