NYT Editorializes On Uganda

Following up their overdue but welcome entry into Uganda's "kill gays" bill outrage, the New York Times yesterday called out the involved American evangelicals in an editorial called Hate Begets Hate.

The government’s venom is chilling: “Homosexuals can forget about human rights,” James Nsaba Buturo, who holds the cynically titled position of minister of ethics and integrity, said recently. What makes this even worse is that three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” gays and lesbians have been widely discredited in the United States, helped feed this hatred. Scott Lively, Caleb Lee Brundidge and Don Schmierer gave a series of talks in Uganda last March to thousands of police officers, teachers and politicians in which, according to participants and audio recordings, they claimed that gays and lesbians are a threat to Bible-based family values. Now the three Americans are saying they had no intention of provoking the anger that, just one month later, led to the introduction of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009. You can’t preach hate and not accept responsibility for the way that hate is manifested.

The Times closes by calling on the U.S. government to make it clear to Uganda that should the bill be passed, we will suspend their foreign aid and make sure they are "shunned globally."