Major US Christian Leader Won't Condemn Uganda's "Kill Gays" Law

Mega-pastor Rick Warren, Barack Obama's bosom pal who delivered the invocation at the Presidential Inauguration, has refused to "take sides" on a soon-to-be-enacted law in Uganda calling for the life imprisonment and execution of gays.  Newsweek's Lisa Miller writes:  Warren won't go so far as to condemn the legislation...  A request for a broader reaction to the proposed Ugandan anti-homosexual laws generated this response: "The fundamental dignity of every person, our right to be free, and the freedom to make moral choices are gifts endowed by God, our creator.  However, it is not my personal calling as a pastor in America to comment or interfere in the political process of other nations."  On Meet the Press he reiterated this neutral stance in a slightly different context:  "As a pastor, my job is to encourage, to support. I never take sides."  Warren did say he believed that abortion was "a holocaust."  He knows as well as anyone that in a case of great wrong, taking sides is an important thing to do. 

Michelangelo Signorile cuts to the heart of the matter:  Surely, he believes, as a self-proclaimed moral leader, that one must speak up against injustice. That is, if he sees state executions of gay men as a true injustice at all - or at least one that is worth upsetting the apple carts he so neatly set up in Uganda.   And is it a coincidence that the Obama administration - in which Warren has a fan at the very top - has not spoken out loudly enough against what's happening in Uganda and that the man who doles out the AIDS dollars (our taxpayer dollars, need I remind) on behalf of the president to Uganda, PEPFAR chief Eric Goosby, says pretty much what Warren says?  According to Newsweek.com, Goosby says his job is "not to tell a country how to put forward their legislation."  That has got to be one of the most outrageous things I've heard from an Obama official:  We're neutral on extermination.

Would Reverend Rick Warren and the Obama administration be this coy and noncommittal if a nation was on the verge of passing a law that targeted Christians for execution?  Christianty is certainly more of a lifestyle "choice" than being gay.  That the author/huckster of "The Purpose Driven Life" declines to speak out against what amounts to gay genocide won't surprise those of us in the LGBT community who have been following his past pronouncements. (This is the same preacher who once compared committed same-sex unions to pedophilia.  Do you suppose Melissa Etheridge is still defending him?) 

It's astonishing that the US government would pour millions of our tax dollars into a country whose solution to the HIV epidemic (and apparently every other societal ill) is to execute gays.  This is what America stands for?

UPDATE from The Advocate:  On the eve of World AIDS Day, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday made the strongest statement yet by an administration official that the United States will not tolerate efforts to criminalize homosexuality among countries that receive U.S. funding to combat HIV/ AIDS.  “Obviously, our efforts are hampered whenever discrimination or marginalization of certain populations results in less effective outreach and treatment. So we will work not only to ensure access for all who need it but also to combat discrimination more broadly,” she said during a press conference in which officials also announced that the XIX International AIDS Conference, set for 2012, will be held in United States — the first time the conference has been held here since 1990. “We have to stand against any efforts to marginalize and criminalize and penalize members of the LGBT community worldwide.” 

UPDATE II:  After weeks of silence, Pastor Rick Warren is finally  Shamed Into Decency.

Comments

[Amanda]

Warren's followers are like Palin's... they're gonna believe any damn thing they're told even when it contradicts what they've heard before. Obama's followers are not so gullible. And some of us are starting to see the man behind the curtain isn't what he said he was. Hope? Change? Tell us another one. Uganda won't be the 1st African country where Xstian fundies try this. Even Canada's PM has spoken out against the "kill gays" law. But Obama? Crickets.

[Trent]

I've been following this Uganda story pretty closely. Fuckin fundies. All indications are that this law will pass. One of Warren's good buddies is behind the thing. If there was such a place as Hell I'd be hoping they roast in it.