Apparently, denying Californians equal rights was insufficient for many conservative religious. Indeed, messing with politics in another state (much of the Prop H8 money came from out-of-state conservatives) left them wanting. And so conservative hatemongers have moved on to East Africa—to the country to Uganda—where it is currently a crime punishable by life in prison to be homosexual.

Following a three-day conference to discuss the “hidden and dark [gay] agenda”* at which a number of American Christian leaders spoke, Uganda began to draft legislation to increase the punishment from “life in prison” to “death” (in an effort, perhaps, to become more like Iran, which has no gays). The Americans involved are, to their credit, now trying to back away slowly from the ticking time bomb they totally didn’t mean to start, you have to believe me, I swear! But let’s take a look at them, shall we?

Scott Lively has published the hilarious (and really, really sad) book Seven Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child. Not, as one might be forgiven for suspecting, a book about keeping your child from accidentally signing up for the armed forces but rather a treatise on how your child becoming gay is all your fault. Chapter 4: make sure you have a Christian, heteronormative family. Chapter 6: Homeschool. If you do it wrong, check out the book’s Epilogue, “What to Do When It’s ‘Too Late’” (it’s anybody’s guess what the errant quotation marks might mean, but beware, “gay” is quotationed throughout the book, since it’s not a real thing). Spoiler alert: Don’t let them come out, don’t be guilted into accepting them, and never give up!

The other two run what I would like to start calling “heterosexual recruiting seminars”:
Caleb Lee Brundidge is a member of the International Healing Foundation, which supports equal access to health facilities for all. HA! Just kidding, it cures teh gay. Mr. Brundidge himself used to be gay. The Foundation helps people be straight by, among other things, cradling men-who-want-to-not-be-gay in the arms of men-who-aren’t-gay-anymore. If this were a heterosexual “counseling” technique, can you imagine how fast they’d be slapped with lawsuits?

(Strangely, the majority of ex-gays are male; maybe that’s because “lesbians” “don’t exist”, either. More likely, though, it’s because of the extreme pressure that homosexual men feel in this country to “man up”; the culture of machismo that requires that men love football, cars, and beer; a culture, incidentally, that groups like the IHF are not helping.)

Don Schmierer sits on the board of directors of Exodus International, a group that helps bring attention to the post-WWII diaspora does not cure teh gay but instead “frees” people from teh gay (throughJesusChristAMEN!). *sigh* You all know about Exodus, I don’t need to go into this one.

All three, of course, say, they had no idea that Uganda would go all gay-hating on them, that they only wanted to help Ugandan homosexuals, that this is all being taken out of context ::pout::. And I’m sure that they did not go to Uganda with intent to kill anyone. But are they helping anyone? Surely they were not in Uganda to help homosexuals who are living in terror (of being arrested, of being raped to cure them, of … no, I’m gonna stop on the rape one—that just sums it up right there) but to help the terrorizers of homosexuals. They went to propagate the myth of the Gay Agenda* and they work toward making people think that homosexuality is a choice, can be cured, is the parent’s fault (indicating that it’s a bad thing, that someone needs to be blamed for), and to make the world even more heteronormative. This is bad for all of us—gay and straight alike.

Go. Read up on it. Get pissed off. And then…well, I’m not sure what then. There’s not much we in California can do for those in Uganda, but know that this is going on and keep an eye out for opportunities to work toward equality for all. Everywhere.

h/t Jana
* check out the iPhone/Touch app “My Gay Agenda or My free Gay Agenda for a light-hearted break from iCal (note: may or may not come with a personal visit from the Velvet Mafia).