Uganda Protest Thurs./5:30 PM/JFK Building, Gov't Center, Boston Mass.

Local Protest Targets Nat’l Prayer Breakfast Organizers’ Ties to Anti-Gay Bill in Uganda
Boston LGBT activists will gather in front of the John F. Kennedy Federal Building at 5:30 PM today to decry American fundamentalists’ export of their recycled homophobia to Africa. The secretive right-wing network so-called “The Family,” which sponsors this morning’s National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, is linked to the notorious Anti-Homosexuality Bill (“AHB”) pending in the Ugandan Parliament; a measure which would intensify existing persecution of LGBT people in the East African country. See http://www.facebook.com/l/a9dad;www.religiondispatches.org/archive/sexandgender/2250/religious_leaders_urge_obama_to_condemn_ugandan_anti-gay_bill_at_prayer_breakfast “The Family,” which attracted notoriety when two of its leaders—Sen. John Ensign of Nevada and Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina—confessed to adultery last year, was the subject of an exposé by author Jeff Sharlet.

Among the speakers at the protest will be the Rev. Kapya Kaoma, an African Anglican priest who authored a report documenting the campaign by leaders of the American Religious Right to mobilize anti-gay sentiment in Africa, Globalizing the Culture Wars, http://www.facebook.com/l/a9dad;www.publiceye.org/publications/globalizing-the-culture-wars/ . The event will also promote a letter-writing campaign, organized by students of the Gay/Straight Alliance of Brookline High School, to urge the Obama Administration and Senators Kerry and Brown to pressure the Ugandan government to abandon the genocidal AHB. This evening’s protest is organized by the Anti-Violence Project of Massachusetts (AVPM”) and Join the Impact MA (“JTIMA”), a grassroots LGBT direct action group which plays a prominent role in the youth-led movement the New York Times has dubbed “Stonewall 2.0.” See http://www.facebook.com/l/a9dad;www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/us/politics/12protest.html .

AVPM Chair and JTIMA Board member Don Gorton, an Episcopalian, commented: “US fundamentalists claim to obey Christ’s command to ‘love thy neighbor’ even while opposing equality for LGBT Americans down-the-line. Their active promotion of state-sponsored homophobia in Africa puts the lie to specious claims of “Christian love,” and exposes the hatred which drives their opposition to gay rights in whatever form. We execrate their bigotry and hypocrisy, as French writer Emile Zola denounced the anti-Semitism motivating the Dreyfus Affair in the 1890’s in his celebrated J’Accuse.”