Mike Huckabee's Best Buddy Wants to Kill Gay People in Uganda

You might have noticed Mike Huckabee in the news this week. He's on a book tour traveling around the country. He's making waves about running for President again in 2012. And he's chiding the media for paying too much attention to Sarah Palin, when he's got socially conservative values just as deep as she does.

Here's something Mike Huckabee also has: a best  buddy who wants to see LGBT people killed or imprisoned for life in Uganda. And as recently as August 2010, Huckabee praised the work of this friend, a man named Rev. Lou Engle, who has made campaigning for the elimination of LGBT rights a central component of his life's work.

Blogger Waymon Hudson noted that in May of this year, Rev. Lou Engle traveled to Uganda and spoke at a rally where calls for violence toward the LGBT community were fast and furious. Rev. Engle got on stage at this rally, and according to one witness, told 1,300 demonstrators that homosexuality was an evil that deserved to be criminalized.

"[Engle] called upon the government of Uganda to be firm and hold on its righteous stand against the evil. He mentioned that homosexuals have penetrated the educational system and Ugandans must be aware of the evil," the eyewitness said in Hudson's report.

If that rhetoric from Rev. Engle sounds scary, it should. Last night, Rachel Maddow actually hosted the key politician in Uganda, David Bahati, working to pass what's known as The Anti-Homosexuality Bill.  This is a law that would criminalize homosexuality with either the death penalty or life imprisonment, and would even criminally punish straight people for not telling the government about suspected LGBT people. The bill even says that governments around the world should extradite Ugandan LGBT people back to Uganda, so that they can face punishment.

Bahati's conversation with Maddow echoes much of what Rev. Engle said in his May 2010 rally.

"I want to make the record straight ... I do not hate gays, but at the same time I must protect our children who are being recruited into this practice," Bahati told Maddow last night. He then added that God's punishment for homosexuality, which Bahati considers a sin, is death. "God's law is always clear that the wages of sin is death."

It should also  be noted that Bahati and Rev. Engle have met before. In fact, this past June, Bahati went on record saying that Rev. Engle supports his legislation. "Bahati told me that Engle had explicitly expressed his support for the bill, telling them that he had to lie to the Western media because gays control it," reports Jeff Sharlet, a journalist who has covered the role of the religious right extensively in Uganda (and D.C., for that matter).

So here's what we've got. We've got a minister, Rev. Lou Engle, who goes around the States trying to take away rights for LGBT people, and who travels to Uganda to support legislation that would kill or imprison LGBT people. And we've got a politician, Mike Huckabee, who as recently as August 2010 called Rev. Engle's work "righteous" in a YouTube clip full of folksiness and electric guitars. (Video below.)

Sorry, Mike Huckabee, but folksiness and electric guitars can't hide the fact that who you call righteous is a man who would be tickled to see violence done to the LGBT community in Uganda.

Send Huckabee a message that he needs to condemn Rev. Lou Engle's anti-gay rhetoric now. This isn't about getting Huckabee to endorse homosexuality, or buy into an aspect of the gay agenda. This is about basic humanity, and telling a minister that his words to foment violence toward LGBT people are not only indecent, but anti-Christian. Surely Huckabee should get that, given his past as a Baptist minister.

So how about it Huckabee? Are you OK with a good chum of yours advocating death and violence toward LGBT people? Or are you willing to stand up and condemn it? All eyes and ears are waiting for your response.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons