This crazy web of homophobic wackitude

Our district has a couple of threads hangin' on that web, which is pretty tangled.

Today, a friend alerted me to an article in the New York Times about those crazy homophobic Ugandans: Americans’ Role Seen in Uganda Anti-Gay Push.

The upshot: Ugandan politicians pursued their notorious "execute homosexuals" bill almost immediately upon attending a conference featuring three dubious American homosexuality “experts”:

Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived here in Uganda’s capital to give a series of talks.
…
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.”

Now the three Americans are finding 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 for homosexual behavior.

One of these American anti-gays was Scott Lively. According to the Times, Lively (and the other two) have sought to distance themselves from the draconian legislation, 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.

Disappointed? Yeah, I'm positively miffed.

But wait a minute. Haven't we heard about this Scott Lively fella before?

Yes we have. Back in November (That Raghu Sure can Pick ‘em, 11/20/09), I noted that the lawyer SOCCCD Chancellor Raghu Mathur hired to defend the district against the "prayer" lawsuit, David Llewellyn, is up to his eyeballs in this kind of crap about curing those evil-doing gays. For instance, he founded the Western Center for Law and Religious Freedom [WCLRF], a public interest law firm that seems to focus on the "homosexual" problem—you know, how gays seek to "recruit" innocent Christian children and all.

Back in November, I noted a connection between WCLRF and notorious homophobe—and friend of SOCCCD trustee Tom Fuentes—Howard Ahmanson, Jr.  According to Wikipedia, Howard Ahmanson gave more than $60,000 to WCLRF.

 

Ahmanson was very close to R.J. Rushdoony, the "Christian Reconstructionist." (You might wanna look that up.) That influence was evident when Ahmanson told the OC Register (in 1984) that "My goal is the total integration of biblical law into our lives." Reportedly, Howie has backed off of that position a bit in recent years. It didn't play well for some reason.

Rushdoony, of course, thought that homosexuals should be executed. But Howie's not that wacky. According to Wikipedia,

[Ahmanson] is reported to have "never supported his mentor's calls for the death penalty for homosexuals"; rather, as the Orange County Register reported in 2004, "he stops just short of condemning the idea", saying that he "no longer consider[s] [it] essential" to stone people who are deemed to have committed certain immoral acts. Ahmanson also told the Register, "It would still be a little hard to say that if one stumbled on a country that was doing that, that it is inherently immoral, to stone people for these things. But I don't think it's at all a necessity."

Yeah, killing gays isn't necessary. So, like, Howard's become a liberal or something.

Of course, Ahmanson has been a player in the huge rift over homosexuality in the Episcopal Church. Naturally, Ahmanson has been on the side that has strong connections to those crazed Ugandans (see Arellano's correspondence with A).

But let's get back to Mr. Lively.

Evidently, the "Western Center"—founded by SOCCCD's Llewellyn—is now known as the Pro-Family Law Center of Abiding Truth Ministries. I Googled that and got the website for the Pro-Family Resource Center of Abiding Truth Ministries, which presents writings by Scott Lively, the “President of Abiding Truth Ministries and lead attorney for ATM's Pro-Family Law Center.” (That was Llewellyn's old job, I believe.)

The Pro-Family Law Center (see) seems obsessed with the EVIL that is homosexuality. PFLC sells such books as:

The Pink Swastika (by Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams)
The Pink Swastika is a thoroughly researched, eminently readable, demolition of the "gay" myth, symbolized by the pink triangle, that the Nazis were anti-homosexual.

Right, those Nazis always get such a bad rap. Bill Berkowitz (in Buzzflash) called this book, by Lively, a “Holocaust revisionist anti-gay book.” (According to Berkowitz, Scott Lively declared “war against the Southern Poverty Law Center for refusing to remove his Abiding Truth Ministries (http://www.abidingtruth.com) from its list of hate groups.”)

Clearly, this Scott Lively fella is seriously bad news. Of course, it's possible that, under Llewellyn's leadership, the organization was less daffy.

Yeah.

As I reported in November, there can be no doubt regarding Mr. Llewellyn's feelings about homosexuality. I came upon a reference to a video, entitled "The Gay Agenda," which is narrated (in part) by Llewellyn. Here's the video blurb:

…[It] is an authoritative and comprehensive explanation of the homosexual movement, and homosexual activity. The narrators on the tape are David Llewellyn, President, Western Center for Law and Religious Freedom; Stanley Monteith, M.D., author of "AIDS, The Unnecessary Epidemic;" Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D., a well known specialist in homosexuality, and author of "Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality," and many other publications; John Smid, an ex-homosexual, and Director of Love in Action, an organization which helps homosexuals who want to change to a decent way of life; and John Paulk, an ex-homosexual, and Administrator of Love in Action. Dr. Montieth gave the statistical references on homosexual acts….

These people are total nutjobs. Llewellyn is a nutjob. Lively is a nutjob.

As you know, recently, even Saddleback Church's stellar Rick Warren has been tarnished by this whole Uganda thing. According to the New York Times:

Uganda has ... become a magnet for American evangelical groups. Some of the best known Christian personalities have recently passed through here, often bringing with them anti-homosexuality messages, including the Rev. Rick Warren, who visited in 2008 and has compared homosexuality to pedophilia. (Mr. Warren recently condemned the anti-homosexuality bill, seeking to correct what he called “lies and errors and false reports” that he played a role in it.)

Did you know that, recently, the Ahmansons gave Warren a huge chunk of change? Yeah. They had a ceremony and a blow-out and a speaker series at that ridiculous star-spangled mega-church; the Ahmansons got a prize.