Brody's Notes... ABCNews Nightline On Uganda-Preaching Hate

By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) Mar 11 | Since March of 2009, Editor-In-Chief Jim Burroway of the LGBT News & Commentary website, Box Turtle Bulletin, has been vigorously pursuing the unfolding story of the Uganda Anti-Gay movement. Burroway & his contributors dedicated considerable coverage as they documented the duplicity of several noted American Anti-Gay pastors as they inspired what has now culminated in a virulent homophobia that has spread across that African nation.

Burroway has been joined in his efforts globally in the blogosphere by prominent citizen-journalists at The Bilerico Project, and Pam's House Blend, as well as the mainstream LGBT Media organisations & ordinary bloggers decrying the hate speech and campaigning by the American influenced Anti-Gay activists in Uganda, which led to a proposed piece of legislation that would have called for the death penalty for some queer folk there if passed by the Ugandan Parliament.

Last night, ABCNews broadcast a short segment on World News with Diane Sawyer followed by a lengthy expose by ABCNews correspondent Dan Harris on Nightline.

Highlighted were the on-going efforts of Uganda Anti-Gay minister Martin Ssempa, whose animated style has made him one of the most popular preachers in that African nation. But it's his virulent homophobia that's put him at the center of an international uproar.

Standing onstage in black velvet robes, despite the stifling heat in the open-air church, Pastor Martin Ssempa's face is a mask of disgust.

"Anal licking!," he shouts, directing the crowd's attention to the images of hardcore gay pornography that he's projecting via his laptop. "That is what they are doing in the privacy of their bedrooms."

"Everything having to do with eating of poop&heterosexuals do not eat poop," Ssempa said. "And if they do, they are misguided, they are not real heterosexuals. We don't practice, that's an abomination. It's like sex with a dog, sex with a cow; it's evil."

Ssempa makes no apologies for his statements. In a recent entry on his blogsite, the minister wrote:

"YES PEOPLE WEPT OUT TO GOD TO SAVE US FROM THE GREAT PUNISHMENT COMING ON THE EARTH WHEN THE SINS OF SODOM ARE PRACTICED. WE ARE BAFFLED HOW ANYONE CAN DEFEND THE ABOMINABLE? EZEKIEL 8.10 ..and He said to me "go and see the wicked abominations they are doing there"

In the Nightline segment, Harris reported that the bill was introduced several months after a visit by several American evangelicals, who spoke at a conference called the "Seminar on Exposing the Homosexual Agenda."

One of them was Scott Lively, a pastor from Temecula, Calif., who believes that countries like Uganda can still protect themselves from what he sees as the scourge of the gay agenda.

"These are good Christians; better Christians than there are here in the states," says Lively. "They care about each other. And I think the reason they're pushing so hard on this law is that they don't want to see what happened to our country happen over there."

He told the conference's audience, made up of teachers, social workers, and politicians that "even though the majority of homosexuals are not oriented towards young people, there's a significant number who are. And when they see a child from a broken home, it's like they have a flashing neon sign over their head."

Lively, who is the president of Defend the Family, is also the author of a book called "The Pink Swastika", which argues that the Nazi Party was a homosexual movement.