Yostivanich

For three days, accord­ing to par­tic­i­pants and audio record­ings, thou­sands of Ugan­dans, includ­ing police offi­cers, teach­ers and national politi­cians, lis­tened raptly to the Amer­i­cans, who were pre­sented as experts on homo­sex­u­al­ity. The vis­i­tors dis­cussed how to make gay peo­ple straight, how gay men often sodom­ized teenage boys and how “the gay move­ment is an evil insti­tu­tion” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based soci­ety and replace it with a cul­ture of sex­ual promiscuity.”

Now the three Amer­i­cans are find­ing them­selves on the defen­sive, say­ing they had no inten­tion of help­ing stoke the kind of anger that could lead to what came next: a bill to impose a death sen­tence for homo­sex­ual behavior.

via After Amer­i­cans Visit, Uganda Weighs Death for Gays — NYTimes.com.

Awe­some to know reli­gion (in this case Chris­tian­ity) is such a force for peace, civil­ity and human rights. The best quote is the stan­dard, I’m friends with Group X or know peo­ple in Group X how can I be dis­crim­i­na­tory towards Group X:

“That’s hor­ri­ble, absolutely hor­ri­ble,” he said. “Some of the nicest peo­ple I have ever met are gay people.”