Prop 8 Trial Begins in California: Resources for News Coverage

I noted last week that those defending California’s prop 8 (which removed the right of marriage from same-sex couples in that state) in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial that began today have sought to keep the trial from being televised, though California law permits televised trials. Judge Walker, the federal judge hearing the case, has ruled that it can be live-broadcast through feed at several federal courthouses, and that clips of the trial may be uploaded to YouTube several days after each session.

Today, the Supreme Court granted those defending prop 8 a temporary stay to stop the YouTube uploads. Since the defendants of prop 8 seem intent on limiting coverage of the trial—and public access to their arguments against same-sex marriage—it’s important that those of us who want as much information as possible about the court deliberations have access to up-to-date coverage of the trial.

To that end, I’d like to recommend a number of valuable resources that have come online today. Courage Campaign is doing a live blog of the trial, with constant updates. This is an extremely valuable resource in the absence of the YouTube coverage.

Pam’s House Blend will have exclusive coverage and commentary on an ongoing basis by Shannon Minter, Legal Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. And Lisa Keen’s Keen News Service is covering the deliberations carefully, with important commentary about how various news sources are dealing with this case.

As the reports from day one found on the Courage Campaign site are already indicating, those defending prop 8 are seeking to depict opposition to same-sex marriage as something mandated by the bible and by Christian belief. For people of faith who read the bible differently, this trial will be an important case to follow. It will be interesting to see if the biblical argument, which prevailed over and over in American courts prior before Loving v. Virginia struck down bans against interracial marriage that purported to be based on the bible, will carry the day in Perry v. Schwarzenegger.

More on the Legacy of Reinhold Niebuhr and American Politics

As a follow-up to my recent posting about theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and President Obama, I’d like to draw readers’ attention to a valuable resource for further information about Niebuhr and his political significance. This is a recent podcast by Jesuit theologian Drew Christiansen at the America site. Drew Christiansen also links to a number of Niebuhr’s classic works at Amazon.com, as well as to Richard Wightman Fox’s 1997 biography of Niebuhr.

For those interested in the role of religious ideas in our political life, it’s essential to understand Niebuhr’s legacy and how it’s used. I highly recommend this podcast as a valuable resource to that end.

Cooking to Save the Planet: Enchiladas, Y'all?

Enchiladas, y’all? Because Arkansas is perched on the eastern side of the impossible-to-ignore nation of Texas and shares its south border with the state of Louisiana, it’s not uncommon to encounter interesting Anglo-South fusion versions of both Tex-Mex and Cajun or Creole dishes in my little state. The one I want to share with readers today comes from a period of my mother’s life I think of as the bridge-party phase.

My mother was not by any means what used to be called a club woman. She was too independent-minded and, frankly, too cantankerous to put up with the nonsense people have to put up with when they expect to move unhindered in the circles of society. And my family didn’t have the social cachet, in our little town, to move in those circles.

Even so, she played bridge (a club woman’s sport, in our town) with alacrity, and was, I’m told, a wickedly good bridge player. She had the kind of calculating, mathematical mind to count cards and anticipate other players’ moves with unerring accuracy. And she was a superb bluffer. She routinely won tournaments with that skill set.

The bridge gatherings were about more than card-playing, though. They were about juicy gossip and plenty of it, heavily lacquered bouffant hairdos (the bridge-party phase was in the 1960s), wood-paneled dens wreathed in cigarette smoke. And food. Noshes galore, ranging from those godawful congealed salads of the sixties to casseroles full of unmentionable bits laced with cream of mushroom and cream of tomato soup.

And the bridge parties were about recipes—what to cook tonight recipes, how to please your man recipes. What Mrs. Steinberg does to pastrami, how Mrs. Matoesian stuffs grape leaves, why Mrs. Breaux makes chicken étouffée that has potatoes in it, and then serves it over rice. With bread.

I’m pretty sure that the following recipe for “enchiladas” comes from the bridge-party phase of my mother’s life. Wherever it came from, it has now become a fixture in my family, and is a winter comfort dish, one fairly easy to put together, with hearty flavors and carbs sufficient to tide one through the cold days—not “tied one over” the winter, as I was surprised to see the distinguished New York Times printing in a travel article recently.

Before I launch into the ingredients, a warning: if you’re expecting real Mexican, or even real Tex-Mex, food here, you’ll be sadly disappointed. Possibly even appalled, if you know anything about Mexican or Tex-Mex food. We pronounced this dish “ahnchiladas,” just as we said “prayleens” for pralines. That ought to tell you something.

Here’s how my mother made enchiladas: she started with a pot of chili, full of beef and beans (we don’t share the nation of Texas’s high-falutin’ aversion to beans in chili). When it was simmering, she put together a batch of hot-water cornbread.

Hot-water cornbread, you say? Please don’t tell me you haven’t heard of that indispensable ingredient of almost any Mexican or Tex-Mex dish one can imagine. To make it, you mix a bit of salt with some cornmeal (white—always—for us), pour in boiling water to form a sticky mass of dough, and then pat the cornbread into what we call pones—flat, round circles of dough. Which are then dropped into hot fat and fried until crisp and brown on the outside.

Hot-water cornbread is, of course, distinctly not Mexican, though it’s not unlike the masa dough used to make sopes or gorditas—and the ahnchilada dish I’m describing here is actually not far from sopes, though it’s miles away from enchiladas. The big difference between the masa of sopes and hot-water cornbread is that the masa incorporates lard. Hot-water cornbread is just cornmeal, salt, and boiling water. And never sugar: nevernevernever, if you want authentic Southern cornbread of any sort.

We Anglo Southerners and African-American Southerners eat hot-water cornbread with almost anything—with the abundant dishes of fresh vegetables that grace the summer table, with beans and greens, etc. It’s an easily made cornbread that doesn’t require heating up the oven, and for that reason, is particularly favored for summer dinners.

I say “is favored,” though I suspect that hot-water cornbread is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. In Little Rock today, I find it almost exclusively in some of the venerable local cafeterias that are practically the only restaurants serving local dishes made in local ways anymore—at least in my region.

I also suspect that hot-water cornbread is a trans-Mississippi adaptation of the johnnycakes and hoecakes of colonial Anglo America. I find it much more frequently in Southern cookbooks and on Southern tables west of the Mississippi than to the east. And I suspect there’s an historical reason for this: it has to do with the difference in cornmeal produced by stone-grinding of corn (at one time much more common in the old Southeast) as opposed to grinding corn with metal rollers, the primary method available when the old Southwest was settled. But that’s a subject for another posting.

So. You have your chili. You have your hot-water cornbread fried. What next? Take a head of lettuce and shred a good bit of it into a bowl. Take another bowl and fill it with finely chopped sweet white onion. In another bowl, put a good bit of grated cheese. Any cheese would do, in my mother’s mind. The most common one on our table was what she called rat cheese—a mild cheddar that, she told me, her father had sold in his small-town store in wedges cut from a huge wheel always to be found on a counter of the store. Fill another bowl with salsa.

You now have ahnchiladas. It’s the responsibility of each diner to build his or her enchilada according to his or her taste. If you want the full enchilada, spoon chili onto the hot-water cornbread, top that with some of the grated cheese, pour on some salsa, and top the whole thing with chopped onion and shredded lettuce. And then enjoy.

And so what makes this a recipe to help save the planet? Well, first of all, I have long since adapted it. I almost never use chili as a topping, and when I do, it’s chili made with beans alone and no meat.

Usually—and this is how Steve and I ate these enchiladas last night—I simply cook a pot of pinto beans as the first topping ingredient. I may, if I wish, sometimes season them as they cook with some chopped onion and jalapeño pepper, perhaps some garlic and chili powder and chopped cilantro. I often have a bowl of sliced limes for the seasonings and garnishes, and I also like to have on hand a bowl of cilantro.

In place of the shredded lettuce, I usually make a simple, quick cole slaw of shredded cabbage and carrots, seasoned with salt, pepper, a bit of vinegar, sugar, and olive oil. I like to use a Mexican cheese—especially queso fresco—when I have it, for the topping. And then when everything’s ready, I line the bowls up on the sideboard in the order in which most folks will eat, and invite people to make their enchiladas.

I am under no illusion that I’m serving people real enchiladas when I serve this dish. I know full well that this is an Anglo-South fusion version of a Tex-Mex dish. These are enchiladas, y’all, and nothing like an enchilada either a Texan or a Mexican might recognize.

Still, there’s something to be said for the way in which different parts of the United States have so freely adopted (and adapted) the foodways of other parts of the nation—and of other countries altogether. If nothing else, it illustrates the amazing adaptability of people intent on eating well, on cooking interesting new dishes, on using local foods to their best advantage, on learning about new flavors and ingredients to enhance their own traditional foods. At its best, that innovative, adaptive streak running through many American subcultures has helped us withstand the strong corporate pressures to flatten our diets so that we become ever more malleable to the spurious ingredients and fast-food abominations corporations want to foist off on us as real food.

And because I’d rather have real food than fake any day, I intend to keep on eating my fusion-cuisine enchiladas in lieu of ‘burgers and fries. Even when I do call them ahnchiladas.

Continuing Ugandan Coverage: Rachel Maddow Interviews Jeff Sharlet Again

A quick update to yesterday’s posting about Rachel Maddow and Bob Hunter of The Family: but before I get to it, I want to say that I hope readers don’t think I’m beating a dead horse with this Ugandan coverage. As Rachel Maddow said in the clip from last night to which I will link in a moment, the situation in Uganda is unfolding day by day, and deserves constant monitoring (she calls it a “fight” that she remains in the midst of).

And valuable coverage is now, for the first time, spotlighting the Ugandan situation in the American mainstream media. I’ve noted the recent articles by Jeffrey Gettleman in the New York Times, and the powerful editorial with which the Times followed them.

Yesterday, the Washington Post went on record with an equally powerful editorial statement calling the Ugandan kill-the-gays bill “an ugly and ignorant piece of legislation.” Like the Times, WaPo characterizes the Ugandan proposal as “barbaric” and says that Uganda will be a “pariah among nations” if it proceeds down this path.

And Rachel Maddow remains fearless in her pursuit of the truth about the involvement of the American religious right in Uganda. Last night (click down to the “Uganda Be Kidding Me” section of the article), Rachel interviewed Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.

It was Jeff Sharlet’s extensive research that broke the story of the thick ties of the American religious right to anti-gay movements in Africa. Rachel’s interview with him is a must-listen item. It sets the record straight regarding several claims made in the Bob Hunter interview to which I linked yesterday.

Note, in particular, how organized (and well-funded) the right-wing American neocolonialist attempt to use Africans in Western culture wars is. Sharlet reports that Hunter has told him that The Family has deliberately wooed African political leaders in a well-planned attempt to draw their countries into the web of right-wing American political interests. As Jim Burroway reports at Box Turtle Bulletin, Hunter brazenly admits that the U.S. government is at the beck and call of The Family (and see here).

As I listen to Rachel Maddow relentlessly pursue the truth about the involvement of the American religious right in Uganda, I have to agree with Liz Newcomb’s recent recommendation at Americablog Gay: Rachel Maddow should be made our hero of the month.

Meanwhile, for any readers who may be interested, my dialogue with Maazi at the National Catholic Reporter site continues. Note my posting yesterday and his responding to me today. I’ve just posted a response to Maazi’s statements to me today. Whether NCR will grow tired of the back-and-forth here (and I wouldn’t blame them, if they did) or will post my response remains to be seen.

What I really want to say to Maazi, in conclusion: hate is hate is hate. Anywhere it occurs in the world.

Mexican Archbishop Argues That Same-Sex Unions Do Not Contribution to Society: A Response

One of the persistent claims that those opposed to same-sex relationships advance is that these relationships are intrinsically selfish. From the standpoint of traditions like Catholicism, with its current emphasis on openness to procreation as the ultimate norm by which all sexual acts are to be judged, same-sex relationships are not merely non-procreative, but also non-generative, and, for those reasons, selfish.

Those advancing this gay = selfish rhetoric also often embellish it with outmoded pseudo-scientific charges that gay people are gay because they are caught in a self-centered stage of psychological development appropriate to early adolescence, but not adulthood. It’s interesting to note, however, that, while though those defending the Catholic magisterial position on human sexuality often claim that heterosexual couples who do not choose to have children are selfish, they seldom move to a similar conclusion about the very nature of non-procreative heterosexual couples: namely that these heterosexual people are caught in a stage of early adolescent arrested development.

The insinuation of gay selfishness has even entered the Catholic magisterium at an official level, through Cardinal Ratzinger’s 1986 Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Care of Homosexual Persons (and here). Ratzinger notes that individual gay human beings may sometimes be generous and self-giving. How could he not note that, when the evidence for such gay generativity is all around us?

But even as he does so, he chooses to view homosexual acts (and, implicitly, same-sex relationships) as self-indulgent. The pastoral letter states,

This does not mean that homosexual persons are not often generous and giving of themselves; but when they engage in homosexual activity they confirm within themselves a disordered sexual inclination which is essentially self-indulgent.

[A] disordered sexual inclination which is essentially self-indulgent: because they are not and cannot be “ordered” to procreation, homosexual acts—and, by inference, same-sex relationships—are “essentially self-indulgent.” They are self-centered and selfish.

Earlier this week, Archbishop Victor Sanchez Espinoza of Puebla, Mexico, used this rhetoric of gay self-indulgence to critique Mexico City’s new gay marriage law. Archbishop Sanchez Espinoza attacked same-sex marriage because, in his view,

the union between persons of the same sex is only of interest to the couple and does not provide this fundamental contribution to society.

[T]he union between persons of the same sex is only of interest to the couple: on the face of it, that strikes me as an amazingly counterintuitive claim. It’s counterintuitive since the quality of same-sex relationships, the ability of same-sex couples to live peacefully and generatively in society at large, is of interest to all kinds of people beyond same-sex couples themselves. It’s certainly of interest to many of our families and friends, who care deeply about seeing us defended from discrimination and permitted to live productive and happy lives.

And it’s of interest to all those who recognize that demeaning and excluding any targeted minority unravels the fabric of a healthy society. The union between persons of the same sex is even of interest to the many opponents of same-sex relationships who claim that legal recognition of these relationships will destroy society.

On the face of it, Archbishop Sanchez Espinoza is plainly wrong in his claim that the union between persons of the same sex is of interest only to the couple. As he’s also wrong when he states that same-sex unions do not provide a “fundamental contribution to society.”

His point, of course, is that only same-sex couples have a vested interest in having our committed, perduring relationships recognized legally and socially, and that there is no reason for society to provide such recognition, since these relationships contribute nothing to the society at large.

In what follows, I’d like to list a number of ways in which I think that those who promote this argument—same-sex relationships are self-indulgent, barren, and non-generative—are wildly wrong. And that gay persons are by nature selfish, caught in a self-centered stage of adolescent psychological development . . . .

Here are just a few of the ways in which I’ve observed the amazing generativity of gay lives and gay relationships all around me (perhaps you, readers, can add significantly to this list):

1. We often end up by default being the caregivers of our aging relatives.

I suspect this may often happen because an assumption is tacitly made in many families that the “unmarried” son or daughter is the best-equipped to drop his or her own life as the parents age, and provide the care a parent needs. And I have observed that many gay or lesbian children of aging parents shoulder this burden of eldercare with great generosity and joy.

As I have also noted on this blog—citing my own experience and that of my partner Steve when we assumed my mother’s guardianship in the final years of her life—when legal and social structures not only refuse to recognize and support the relationship in which a gay child caring for his or her parent lives, but are actively hostile to that relationship, everyone in the family suffers. When Steve and I incurred the hostility of the judge overseeing my mother’s guardianship—solely because we are gay and a couple—it was not only we, but my mother who also suffered. And all my family members, who looked on with sadness and anger, and did everything possible to fight the judge’s discriminatory treatment of us.

2. Many gay and lesbian people are drawn to the helping professions—to professions like teaching, social services, ministry, healthcare provision, and so forth.

John McNeill’s classic study The Church and the Homosexual noted this point as long ago as 1976. John cites Jung to note that, throughout history, the self-giving, generative trait of gay people has persistently been noted by observers—and it remains apparent in gay lives all around us today.

When church and society refuse to support and/or actively combat loving, generative, committed same-sex relationships, they do incalculable harm to society itself, because they impair the ability of those involved in these relationships to give their best to society. As John’s book notes, if all gay persons in the world went on strike for a single day, those who think we do not exist and do not make a contribution—that we are merely self-indulgent and our relationships cannot be generative—would be shocked to see much of their world shut down.

Classrooms would be empty, pulpits vacant, patients in hospitals unattended to. It is unwise—even evil—for some people of faith to persist in denying the significant contributions gay lives and loving gay relationships make to society.

3. Many—a significant portion, in fact—of same-sex couples do raise children.

The argument that same-sex lives are barren and same-sex relationships are self-indulgent overlooks abundant evidence that same-sex couples do, in fact, raise children. And this is not a new social phenomenon. It has been going on forever.

Many gay or lesbian people do not discover or fully affirm their orientation until they are adults. In quite a few cases, those who follow this path have already had children. These gay or lesbian adults often raise children they have produced in an initial stage of their lives in which they sought unsuccessfully to live according to heterosexual norms.

And, increasingly, many same-sex couples adopt children or conceive a child by surrogacy. Among the same-sex couples (and individuals) I know who are raising children, a significant proportion have chosen to love and care for children who could not find a home with “traditional” couples. Many of these children are not chosen in the adoption process because of their race. Quite a few of them haven’t been chosen because they have mental or physical challenges.

I’ve been to a number of church services over the years in parishes or churches with a large contingent of LGBT members, and have been amazed at the number of children unwanted by society at large—specifically, by heterosexual couples seeking to adopt—who are being raised by gay parents. Lovingly so. Unselfishly so.

When churches and society not only refuse to recognize the contributions of same-sex couples raising children, but even attack those couples and make it harder for them to carry on their lives decently and peacefully, they make life difficult not only for the couples themselves, but also for their children.

Cardinal Ratzinger’s (now Pope Benedict XVI) claim that the “inclination” of gay persons is “essentially self-indulgent,” and Archbishop Victor Sanchez Espinoza’s contention that same-sex unions are of interest only to same-sex couples and do not provide a fundamental contribution to society are flatly wrong. And insofar as these claims inform social and legal actions hostile to gay people and our lives and relationships, they are, in fact, evil claims, because they refuse to recognize the abundant evidence of the generativity of gay lives and relationships, and they thwart that generativity and rob society of creative energy it needs to be whole and healthy.

"Homosexuals Can Forget about Human Rights": A Cross-Cultural Dialogue about Rights of Gay Human Beings

I've noted previously on this blog an editorial that the U.S. Catholic weekly National Catholic Reporter published right before Christmas, which speaks about the legislation now being considered in Uganda which would make being gay a capital crime, in some cases.

In response to that editorial, a discussion has developed between another reader and me. In my view, this discussion is enlightening as a snapshot of a difficult cross-cultural discussion about human rights in our world today--a discussion that has been (I believe) made much more difficult by the attempts of the religious right of the U.S. to export American-style culture wars to developing nations. The ultimate outcome of that attempt by members of the American religious right to export American-style culture wars to developing nations has been, it seems to me, to engender in some nations a viewpoint that gay human beings do not have and should not have human rights.

As the discussion has unfolded, it has come to center explicitly on the question of whether human rights are universal. As my posting earlier today notes, the ethics and integrity minister of Uganda has recently stated, "Homosexuals can forget about human rights."

This seems to be the position espoused by my dialogue partner at NCR, Maazi. As the following excerpts from our dialogue indicate, in Maazi's view, "[E]very society decides what is good for it . . .," and it is clear to me that extends, in Maazi's thinking, to the right of a society to make being gay a capital crime (since homosexuals can forget about human rights).

I offer the following (edited) conversation as an example of what seems to me an important (and failed) cross-cultural discussion of a very important human rights issue of our time, in which people of faith have been playing a key role, for weal or for woe. It will be interesting to see what historians make of discussions like this in the future.

Maazi: You [NCR editorialists] shamelessly repeat lies circulated by homosexual obsessed western media which insist on extending US Cultural Wars to Uganda by linking the proposed law with conservative American pastors . . . . But never you think that we (Africans) are stupid enough to accept that ongoing attempts to end injustice against non-whites in Europe and America is equivalent to the vicious campaign by extremely rich Euro-American groups to re-model Africa as an exotic destination for gay tourists to go and promote sexual depravity. Ugandan people has right to react against NGOs that are actively seeking to recruit vulnerable youngsters to their "Gay Movement" via promotional leaflets with email addresses and phone numbers in public places urging them to get in touch "for awareness campaigns" . . . . Contrary to Western media propaganda, Gays who keep their heads down and do their stuff privately will be left alone, but those Gays who insist on having sex with Ugandan minors or distributing promotional leaflets (as they probably do in San Francisco) will have the full force of the proposed Ugandan law on them. No amount of intimidation from The West will prevent the preservation of our cultural values.

Bill: Maazi, the amount of dangerous misinformation in your response--and, yes, honestly the level of misguided hate you bear towards some of God's creatures--concerns me tremendously.

Rev. Rick Warren has made MANY trips to Africa. He has gone back and forth to that continent for some years now. And this doesn't even touch on the well-documented (and easily proven) repeated visits of many other U.S. right-wing evangelicals to Uganda and other African countries, and the inflammatory anti-gay statements some of these religious representatives have made on their repeated visits to Uganda and other African nations. It doesn't touch, either, on their meeting with Ugandan political leaders responsible for introducing the legislation now under consideration.

I encourage you to visit the Box Turtle Bulletin website, which has done a thorough, careful job of documenting these points for some time now . . . . When I hear your comments about rich Western gays who want to turn Africa into a gay playground and recruit African children, I cannot help thinking of the lies that were spread for centuries in many Christian nations about the Jewish people--lies with absolutely no foundation in fact, which ended up causing the murder of millions of people simply because they happened to be Jewish.

Lies have consequences. Misrepresenting people made in God's image in malicious ways that place those people in danger is surely not pleasing to God . . . . Please think about what you are doing, what you are promoting, the doors to violence you are opening, when you spread such malicious lies . . . .

Maazi: Why don't you use some of your gay propagandist skills to press for its decriminalization as many of us (Africans) feel that polygamy is a human right. Why should a consensual relationship between a man and two women be a criminal offence? Using your propagandist skills, why not press for decriminalization of incest in The Federal Repubulic of Germany?

My point, Mr Lindsey is that every society decides what is good for it . . . . We Africans do not feel that homosexuality is good for the survival of our communal society which is very different from your highly individualistic, "mind-your-own business" society. So we are passing laws to preserve our society and guard against Western-style family fragmentation.

Finally, it is a great insult for you to claim that you know my continent more than I do. Christianity opposed many of our old cultural ways, but it did not succeed in getting rid of many of them. That is why even in predominantly Christian African nations, polygamy is legal and is practised by many baptized christians in spite of strong objections from influencial local Church leaders. If homosexuality was part and parcel of our culture for centuries, we will not foolishly claim that it was a Western-import. But we know that it is indeed a Western-import since "Gayism" started to emerge as internet became increasing affordable and as the number of Western (Trojan Horse) NGOs arriving "to help the poor Africans" increased in geometric progression . . . . Another thing: I politely refuse your suggestion that I should examine internet articles published by Euro-American Gay Propagandist Websites.

Bill: Maazi, thank you for your reply. As my previous posting says, I lament that, for such a significant discussion--in which the lives of human beings hang in the balance--it is a shame that those of us who feel passionate about the issues involved cannot discuss these issues face to face.

I won't answer your comments about polygamy and incest, which are, of course, red herrings and do not deal with the substance of my comment. And I am sorry you choose to view me as a gay propagandist rather than a fellow Catholic seeking light about an important moral issue.

You say, "My point, Mr Lindsey is that every society decides what is good for it." And I disagree, profoundly. I may live in the West and not fully understand your culture, and you may live in Africa and view my culture as morally bankrupt.

Nonetheless, certain moral values transcend cultural boundary lines. A majority of nations of the world endorsed a declaration of human rights in the late 1940s. Those rights transcend cultural boundaries.

Putting innocent people to death simply because of who they are is a barbaric action, whether it occurs in the U.S. (where I would and do oppose such a step as strongly as I do in your country) or in Uganda . . . . We live in a human community that must be bound together by certain standards of human decency if it expects to be humane, Maazi. Human rights are universal. Your statement that "every society decides what is good for it" is horrendous. It could be used to support the murder of millions of people simply because they happen to be Jewish. Or gypsies. Or mentally or physically handicapped.

Or gay or lesbian. And a society that behaves that way is barbaric.

Rachel Maddow Interviews Bob Hunter of The Family: Who's the Neo-Colonialist?

As Jim Burroway reported yesterday, on Tuesday, Rachel Maddow interviewed (here and here) Bob Hunter, a member of the secretive and powerful American religio-political organization The Family. Maddow spoke with Hunter about The Family’s ties to the Ugandan kill-the-gays legislation.

I encourage readers to listen to the two clips of the interview to which I’ve linked above. As Maddow notes, it was at an event associated with a national prayer breakfast sponsored by The Family in Uganda that the kill-the-gays legislation was reportedly first proposed. The legislator who introduced the legislation in Uganda’s parliament, David Bahati, is reportedly a member of The Family, as is Uganda’s minister of ethics and integrity, James Nsaba Buturo, who was quoted recently saying, “Homosexuals can forget about human rights.”

Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni is also reportedly a member of The Family. When pressed about the ties of these Ugandan leaders to the The Family, Bob Hunter tells Rachel Maddow that they are “related to The Family,” and, “I agree that these guys are involved [i.e., with The Family].”

In other words, The Family’s fingerprints are all over the kill-the-gays legislation in Uganda, though, now that there is international controversy about the impending legislation, with public discussion of the role of the right-wing American religio-political group The Family in shaping Ugandan politics, The Family naturally wishes to distance itself from the legislation and deny any culpability for what the Ugandan parliament is considering.

To my mind, the most fascinating segment of the interview is a statement by Mr. Hunter about how The Family purportedly tried to stop the kill-the-gays bill with secret behind-the-scenes negotiations. Hunter implies that the international publicity that has developed around the legislation has thwarted The Family’s behind-the-scenes efforts to get Ugandan leaders to squelch the kill-the-gays legislation.

But in doing so, he admits—and it seems to me, without realizing he has done so—the extensive, blatant involvement of The Family and other right-wing Western religio-political groups in African politics, as a powerful neo-colonial force. He admits, in other words, what he and his allies have sought to convince Africans of re: Western progressives: namely, that the religious right has been using Africa and the people of Africa in a cynical political game to further the culture wars of the West.

Here’s what Hunter says:

We didn’t want to go too public at first. You’ve, you know, forced us public, you and others, and that’s okay. But there, one of the problems with going public too soon is, in Uganda and all of Africa, one of the cries goes up of neo-colonialism and it has a lot of resonance, unfortunately. And so we were trying to kill it quietly. But we don’t mind it being public now.

Fascinating logic at work here, isn’t it? A highly secretive, well-funded, influential politico-religious group works hard to determine political developments in a developing nation. Then when those developments take a malevolent turn, this secretive and influential politico-religious wants to deny any connection to the developments it has set into motion.

And it wants to turn around and blame those trying desperately to bring publicity to the very dangerous situation, and to accuse them of making the situation more dangerous by shining the light of media attention on it! With the claim that shining that light on the dangerous situation is a form of neo-colonialism that makes the situation worse, since it elicits backlash against those who resent being re-colonized . . . .

When the blatant, obvious colonialism being exposed by the publicity that seeks to draw world attention to an exceptionally dangerous situation is on the part of those who have been working for years to influence attitudes and political developments in Africa, and who do not want to have their neo-colonialism revealed for what it is . . . .

Come to think of it, the argument that Bob Hunter is advancing here is very much like the argument that National Catholic Reporter writer John Allen (who, to my knowledge, has never addressed the role of The Family and the American religious right in Uganda) advances in his recent articles on Catholic silence about the Ugandan situation. Allen argues that if Western progressives call Uganda to accountability for its anti-gay legislation, there will be a push-back effect vs. Western neo-colonialism.

Which raises the question again for me (and here): where does Allen’s narrative about the African church, which is consistently silent about the role of the American religious right and neoconservatives in Africa, but consistently oppositional to Western progressive groups in Africa, originate? What are its ties to American politico-religious groups like The Family?