"Kill The Gays” bill } Evangelist In The USA Faces Lawsuit
- Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) filed a US federal lawsuit March 14 against Abiding Truth Ministries president Scott Lively alleging he has played a key role in persecuting the African country's queer community, including evidence he was involved in preparing the way for the infamous "kill the gays" bill that is now back in Uganda's Parliament, Gay Star News reports. 
BY NATASHA BARSOTTI
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), based in New York, filed the suit on behalf of SMUG.
"US evangelical leaders like Scott Lively have actively and intensively worked to eradicate any trace of LGBT advocacy and identity," SMUG executive director Frank Mugisha alleges in Gay Star News. "Particularly damaging has been his claim that children are at risk because of our existence.
"His influence has been incredibly harmful and destructive for LGBT Ugandans fighting for their rights. We have to stop people like Scott Lively from helping to codify and give legal cover to hatred."
In a Huffington Post interview in January, Mugisha himself said he feared for his life and preferred to have company when he goes out, after being targeted with threatening emails, phone calls and other intimidatory tactics.
According to Gay Star News, in 2009 - the year the "kill the gays" bill was tabled by Ugandan MP David Bahati - Lively and other American evangelical leaders were part of a conference held to "expose the 'gay movement' as an 'evil institution' and a danger to children."
"He likened the effects of his actions to a 'nuclear bomb' in Uganda and stated that he hopes it is replicated elsewhere," Gay Star Newsreports.
Gay Jamaican activist Maurice Tomlinson recently spoke to Xtra about the pervasiveness of US-evangelical-style churches on the island, linking them to the rabid homophobia queer Jamaicans have faced for decades.
Uganda's "kill the gays" bill is not expected to come up for debate in parliament for many months yet as it makes its way through a series of procedural hoops.
Meanwhile, it appears some modicum of sense prevails in US Republican ranks.
Seems Tennessee's GOP governor Bill Haslam is not keen to support what is being dubbed the "Don't Say Gay" bill that would have muzzled teachers' ability to discuss gay issues, banning "any teaching about homosexuality apart from 'natural human reproduction' before eighth grade, but loosening restrictions on discussions about heterosexuality, according to The Tennessean. 
Haslam intervened saying the measure, Bill 229, is not particularly helpful, not needed right now (but maybe in the future?), and an unnecessary distraction that could lead to more problems than it solves.
With that, the backers of the bill, which made it through the Senate last year, pulled back - sort of. Bill 229's original sponsor, Republican Bill Dunn now says it's come to light that there really isn't any sex education in K-8 classes.
Perhaps he and the bill's main sponsor Republican Joey Hensley were too busy to check, what with falling over themselves trying to keep already ubiquitous words "gay" and "homosexual" from the ears of kids, who - Twitter flash - have just probably heard them already; know someone who is; are trying to, or will soon, begin to navigate their attractions and sexuality, or have used the hackneyed put down, "that's so gay" umpteen times.
Unless like Dunn and Hensley, it seems, they've been on a steady diet of Leave It To Beaver and Father Knows Best.
The two and their supporters should have the folks at the St Petersburg Duma on speed dial, seeing as they succeeded in passing a measure that prevents "propaganda of homosexuality to minors."
At this juncture, Bill 229 is just delayed, not dead by any means - not until it is withdrawn outright.
School counsellors say the bill, if passed, could proscribe their ability to answer students' questions about sexual orientation and hamper efforts to put anti-homophobia policy in place. xtra.ca
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