A Nuclear Bomb Against the Gay Movement

If you needed the ultimate metaphor to describe Uganda's "Anti-Homosexuality Bill," a nuclear bomb is certainly a good fit. Because if the bill, currently pending debate in Uganda's legislature, becomes law, it will essentially decimate a good chunk of Uganda's LGBT population, people purported to be LGBT, and straight allies who don't tell the government about their LGBT friends and relatives.

Yet, one American evangelical is proud to call this legislation a nuclear bomb, and even goes so far as to say that he hopes Uganda is only the beginning.

Appearing last night on Nightline, evangelical leader Scott Lively -- one of the American evangelicals long thought to have helped provide the impetus for Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill -- said that he's glad Uganda introduced this bill. He doesn't want it to include death penalty provisions for LGBT people, but outside of that, he thinks the bill is the perfect medicine to curb and criminalize homosexuality. And he wants it to spread across the globe.

"I hope the nuclear bomb spreads across the whole world against the gay movement, against this attempt to overthrow family-based society and replace it with sexual anarchy," Lively says.

And then the kicker. We've all heard this one before, but take this with the biggest grain of salt you can possibly imagine.

"That doesn't mean I hate homosexuals," Lively concluded.

Right. He doesn't hate homosexuals. He just doesn't want to see them or their straight supporters anywhere outside of a prison cell. Can you feel the love?

The special last night on Nightline, which you can watch below, is five parts mesmerizing and twenty parts chilling. Also featured in the special is Pastor Martin Ssempa, the best buddy of Pastor Rick Warren and his wife Kay, and the man who is going church by church in Uganda showing graphic images of gay porn in order to whip up rampant homophobia. You can see the reaction he stokes in the crowd by watching the clip below.

Anyone not see a potential genocide brewing in the absolute hatred and violence he's whipping up in these people?

For Ssempa, homosexuality equals one thing: sodomy. There's no love, there's no family, there's no sharing life together with someone. It's just sex, and not just any kind of sex, but explicit, raunchy, filthy sex. Oh, and of course, as Adam Rogers wrote here a few weeks ago, it's about getting global headlines for Martin Ssempa. Turns out that becoming one of the world's biggest homophobes certainly has a spotlight attached to it, one that Ssempa seems to enjoy. Here's hoping the Ugandan public isn't swayed by his cult of celebrity.

It's hard not to think about the humility of groups like Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG). As they wrote on their blog the other week, enacting violent laws in the name of faith is hardly keeping to the tenets of Christianity, or the teachings of Jesus, the religious figure that folks like Pastor Martin Ssempa supposedly follow. SMUG recounts the biblical parable of casting the first stone against a woman accused of adultery.

"Jesus did not speak but instead wrote in the dirt on the ground before He spoke. We don’t know what He wrote, but we do know what He said: 'If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her,'" SMUG writes.

Most of us know how that story plays out: no one threw a stone. Perhaps Martin Ssempa would benefit from re-reading that section over again before his next "Stir Up a Genocide" performance in church.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons