LGBT People Must Forge Global Solidarity Against Extremist Anti-Gay US Evangelicals
 Today marks the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO) when momentum to advance marriage equality in the United States is rapidly moving forward, while U.S. evangelicals have shifted their focus to exporting hatred toward LGBTQ people internationally.
Martin Luther King famously noted in his Letter from Birmingham Jail that “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.†This is particularly true of LGBTQ people in many places around the world whose fates are tied more closely together through the actions of one particular set of actors: extremist U.S. evangelicals in the business of exporting a virulent anti-gay agenda.
While 2013 has been a year of once unthinkable strides forward in the U.S., with rapidly shifting public opinion and breakthroughs on marriage equality, a look beyond our own borders reveals a different, but related trend in the opposite direction. In the very week that President Obama proclaimed our national journey towards freedom went through “Seneca Falls, Selma and Stonewall,†the Russian Duma passed a bill – by a vote of 390 — 1 – which would criminalize advocacy by and on behalf of LGBT people. While these events may seem unrelated, a deeper look uncovers a disturbing relationship between the advances in civil rights in the U.S. and the growing efforts to criminalize LGBTQ existence in Eastern Europe, Africa and Latin America.
Anti-gay extremists in the U.S. who have long devoted themselves to fear-mongering about the “homosexual agenda†have sought new markets abroad. As Rev. Dr. Kapya Koama, the leading researcher of this phenomenon, put it in the American Prospect, “It is homophobia, not homosexuality, that is being imported to the [African] continent by neocolonialists with an agenda: to spread U.S. culture wars worldwide.â€
Exhibit A is Rev. Scott Lively, president of Abiding Truth Ministries. In the U.S., his organization is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, but in Uganda, Lively has been free from such baggage and has marketed himself as an expert on homosexuality. He has worked with prominent clerics and government officials there since 2002 to advance his rights-erasing strategies, and in 2009 headlined an influential conference titled “Seminar on Exposing the Homosexual Agenda.†The notorious Anti-Homosexuality Bill (aka the “Kill the Gays†bill) was introduced shortly afterwards, and Lively boasts of the effect of his work in Uganda, saying that it had the effect of a “nuclear bomb.†Lively, who  describes  LGBTQ people as evil, genocidal, brutal and above all as child predators, has as his aim the criminalization of advocacy for LGBTQ rights and works to strip away the most fundamental human rights from them. In Uganda, both state repression and extra-legal violence have been on the rise as a result of the anti-gay strategies Lively has helped orchestrate. What Lively is doing in Uganda is the very definition of persecution. Sexual Minorities of Uganda (SMUG), which has been a primary target of this persecution, is suing Scott Lively for his role in this persecution; the Center of Constitutional Rights (CCR) is representing them.
While the destructive role of U.S. evangelicals in Uganda has gotten some attention, Uganda is just the tip of the iceberg. Lively himself has been active in several Eastern European countries. His “Letter to the Russian People†urged Russians to “criminalize the public advocacy of homosexuality†– the very thing the Russian Parliament has now voted to do. In Latvia, he co-founded a virulently and violently anti-gay organization, Watchmen on the Walls, which is known for its anti-gay demonstrations where gays and lesbians are pelted with bags of excrement. In Moldova, he played a crucial role in defeating anti-discrimination legislation.
Lively is just one of the players in this cottage industry. Kaoma has published two reports through Public Research Associates on the subject of evangelical extremists’ interference in Africa, noting their involvement in constitutional or legislative efforts to crack down on LGBTQ people in Kenya, Liberia, Namibia, Nigeria, Malawi, Rwanda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Meanwhile, the anti-gay American Center for Law and Justice, a Pat Robertson outfit, has recently expanded its international presence from Africa to South America, where it has set up shop in Brazil. These anti-gay evangelicals’ efforts, as Lively’s work exemplifies, go beyond fighting civil rights advances to eradicating basic, fundamental rights for LGBTQ people.
Those in the U.S. committed to the full civil and human rights of all people, including LGBTQ people, have a particular obligation in this situation. It’s not our fault that these anti-gay fanatics are peddling hate and oppression elsewhere, but as we are tied together in a single garment of destiny, it is very much our responsibility to speak out and do all we can to keep them from doing further harm. LGBTQ people around the world are fighting for their lives and their rights on their own terms on their own turf. Standing in solidarity with them, our most useful contribution to their struggles is to address the American origins of the attacks on their rights and existence.
Image by the official International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia campaign via Facebook
Vincent Warren is the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR).Â
Â
This piece is one in an ongoing series of articles that the Center for Constitutional Rights is contributing to The New Civil Rights Movement about their legal work, which addresses some of the most important civil rights and civil liberties of our time.
Enjoy this piece?
… then let us make a small request. The New Civil Rights Movement depends on readers like you to meet our ongoing expenses and continue producing quality progressive journalism. Three Silicon Valley giants consume 70 percent of all online advertising dollars, so we need your help to continue doing what we do.
NCRM is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. From unflinching coverage of religious extremism, to spotlighting efforts to roll back our rights, NCRM continues to speak truth to power. America needs independent voices like NCRM to be sure no one is forgotten.
Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Help ensure NCRM remains independent long into the future. Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to NCRM, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click here to donate by check.
 |
A MAGA “civil war” is playing out across the right-wing ecosystem, sapping attention from the ideas that once powered the base and held GOP leaders to power. Now, the movement appears more consumed by infighting than achieving political goals.
MAGA is being drained of “its political muscle, leaving it defenseless as the Trump administration revisits policies previously opposed by the base,” according to Axios. The strength of MAGA “lies in its ability to rally influencers, politicians and activists behind a hard-charging conservative agenda.” But that “superpower is faltering amid a cascade of bitter personal feuds.”
The National Pulse’s editor-in-chief Raheem J. Kassam told Axios, “There’s no focus on anything philosophical or even ideological right now.”
READ MORE: ‘Where Is Antifa Headquartered?’: FBI Official Struggles Defending Top Threat Label
“It’s all just a cacophony of grifters tussling over audience and ego,” Kassam said. “So, corporate America gets to wield power with the admin virtually unencumbered by scrutiny from the base.”
Serving up a series of examples, Axios reported that on issues such as artificial intelligence, marijuana, Venezuela, and redistricting — all of which “would have triggered significant MAGA backlash” earlier — there has been “mostly crickets.”
Trump reportedly will loosen federal regulations on marijuana soon — an act that once would have attracted MAGA influencers to scream about “pothead culture,” Axios noted. This time, however, the news “barely made a ripple on right-wing social media.”
The “America First” president seizing a tanker loaded with Venezuelan oil and refusing to rule out boots on the ground to overthrow the Maduro regime “barely pinged on MAGA’s radar.”
MAGA influencer CJ Pearson told Axios that “the movement is wholly consumed right now on personality clashes. That is a recipe for electoral doom, and it’s unfortunate to see the unity that we saw after Charlie [Kirk]’s death dissipate so quickly.”
READ MORE: ‘His Heart Just Ain’t in It’: Report Reveals Trump’s ‘Achilles Heel’
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against Fulton County, Georgia, demanding records related to the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden.
Trump “has increasingly pressured his administration to find widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, despite those claims having been debunked and dismissed in dozens of cases by the courts,” The Washington Post reported.
The lawsuit calls for Fulton County to hand over to DOJ “all used and void ballots, stubs of all ballots, signature envelopes, and corresponding envelope digital files from the 2020 General Election in Fulton County.”
READ MORE: ‘Wall of Resentment’: Trump’s ‘Affordability Weave’ Isn’t Working Says Columnist
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, according to the Post. “indirectly and without evidence accused Georgia officials of ‘vote dilution'” in a statement.
“States have the statutory duty to preserve and protect their constituents from vote dilution,” Dhillon said.
“At this Department of Justice,” Dhillon added, “we will not permit states to jeopardize the integrity and effectiveness of elections by refusing to abide by our federal elections laws. If states will not fulfill their duty to protect the integrity of the ballot, we will.”
Trump in a recorded telephone call told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in January 2021, “All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”
READ MORE: Trump Is the ‘Biggest Security Threat’ Facing America: Columnist
Two years later, a Georgia grand jury indicted Trump on racketeering charges. The case ultimately was recently dismissed after setbacks and that Trump, having since become a sitting president, could not be indicted.
Democracy Docket, which covers voting rights, elections, and the courts, called the move “a major escalation in the Trump administration’s dangerous effort to revive President Donald Trump’s fraudulent claims that the election was stolen.”
The news site also reported that Kristin Nabers, the state director for All Voting is Local, said in a statement: “This administration’s unending obsession with the 2020 election results in Georgia uses outright lies to compensate for the fact that they lost.”
“With this terrible overstep of power, the DOJ is now weaponizing laws meant to protect voters for their political vendetta,” Nabers added.
Larry Sabato, Director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics called it “More insane nonsense.”
READ MORE: ‘Where Is Antifa Headquartered?’: FBI Official Struggles Defending Top Threat Label
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s “signature” weave — where he goes off-script and off-topic — is not working for Americans when it comes to affordability.
That’s according to CBS News correspondent John Dickerson, writing at The Atlantic.
His weave was “on display” this week during a speech that the White House promoted as focused remarks on the economy, but his comments included, Dickerson noted, “the topics of tariffs, U.S. Steel, fracking, wind turbines, electric-vehicle mandates, immigration, crime, gender policies, Obamacare, the Fed, his election victories, rare-earth negotiations, a D.C. terror attack, and ‘the lips that don’t stop’ of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.”
READ MORE: Trump Is the ‘Biggest Security Threat’ Facing America: Columnist
The problem, he noted is, “now that the engine of the U.S. economy is smoking, the American people are looking for a technician, not an improv comic.”
Trump is hitting “a wall of resentment,” according to Dickerson, who pointed to a Politico poll which, he noted, found that “nearly half of voters—including 37 percent of Trump’s own 2024 coalition—said that the cost of living is the ‘worst they can ever remember.'”
There’s more.
“Only 31 percent of U.S. adults now approve of how Trump is handling the economy, a new AP/NORC poll found, down from 40 percent in March,” he reported. “It’s the lowest economic approval that AP/NORC has registered in either of Trump’s two terms. In a recent CBS News/YouGov survey, a majority of respondents said that his policies are driving up food and grocery prices.”
During times of crisis other presidents have worked to get results:
“Franklin D. Roosevelt passed 15 major bills in 100 days. Ronald Reagan, in the teeth of double-digit unemployment, pushed for sweeping tax cuts week after week. Bill Clinton built an economic ‘war room’ before he even took office, and his team introduced what has now become a political cliché: focusing ‘like a laser beam’ on the economy. Barack Obama instituted a morning economic briefing that put the issue on par with national security. Each practiced the same principle: If you can’t solve the problem fast, at least get caught trying.”
READ MORE: ‘Where Is Antifa Headquartered?’: FBI Official Struggles Defending Top Threat Label
He say that now, Trump is trying. “Kind of.”
Despite talking about “affordability” during his Pennsylvania speech, he also knocked it.
“The president’s most focused message on affordability is that affordability concerns are a hoax. He used that word, or an equivalent, several times on Tuesday, as he has in Oval Office remarks, in a Cabinet meeting, and on social media.”
The “unavoidable truth, no matter how hard you weave,” Dickerson wrote, is that “his argument is weak because he has to overcome people’s lived experience.”
READ MORE: ‘You’re a Loser Dude’: Carville Scorches Trump as ‘Done’
Image via Reuters
‘Grifters’: A MAGA Civil War Is Eating Away at Its Own Power
‘Political Vendetta’: DOJ Blasted for Suing Fulton County Amid Debunked Fraud Claims
‘Wall of Resentment’: Trump’s ‘Affordability Weave’ Isn’t Working Says Columnist
Trump Is the ‘Biggest Security Threat’ Facing America: Columnist
‘Positively Authoritarian’: White House Tweets and Deletes ‘Naughty List’ of Journalists
News2 days ago‘Grifters’: A MAGA Civil War Is Eating Away at Its Own Power
News2 days agoTrump Is the ‘Biggest Security Threat’ Facing America: Columnist
News3 days ago‘Where Is Antifa Headquartered?’: FBI Official Struggles Defending Top Threat Label
News3 days ago‘Shaky’ House GOP Leadership ‘Losing Control’: Report
News3 days ago‘Lame Duck’ Trump Loses Major Battle in Indiana: ‘Not Even Close to Being Close’
News3 days ago‘Shakedown’: Outrage Over Claim of Trump Plan to Defund Indiana in Map Clash
News2 days ago‘Positively Authoritarian’: White House Tweets and Deletes ‘Naughty List’ of Journalists
News2 days ago‘Political Vendetta’: DOJ Blasted for Suing Fulton County Amid Debunked Fraud Claims
