Thursday, April 24, 2014

Purpose-Driven Deaths

It was called ABC and it made perfect sense. Well, the B and the C, certainly—to me, the A is a bit of a stretch.
 
A is for abstinence
B is for be faithful
C is for condoms
See? Anybody who has progressed through the very first books of their lives can get this. And it seemed to be working, down there in Uganda; here’s what one writer had to say:
By 2003, Uganda’s AIDS rate plummeted 10 percent. The government’s free distribution of the “C” in ABC—condoms—proved central to the program’s success, according to Avert, an international AIDS charity.
So—a nice little success story! But before cracking open that bottle of champagne, consider this quote, from the same source:
On New Year’s Eve, 1999, Janet Museveni, who had become born-again, convened a massive stadium revival in Kampala to dedicate her country to the “lordship” of Jesus Christ. As midnight approached, the First Lady summoned a local pastor to the stage to anoint the nation. “We renounce idolatry, witchcraft, and Satanism in our land!” he proclaimed.
What had happened? Well, at least some of it had to do with Rick Warren, who teamed up with a Ugandan preacher, Martin Ssempa, whom Kay Warren, speaking through tears, called “my brother.” And Ssempa, among other things, was the driving force behind a Ugandan paper publishing the photos of…well, here it is:
Warren, you see, had been to Uganda in 2008 to declare that homosexuality is not a natural way of life and so not a human right. This, of course, was the message that our old villain Scott Lively had been pouring into their ears. In addition, it was the message, according to Rachel Maddow, that The Family, a mostly secretive group of fundamentalists who have been infiltrating our government for years now, had given David Bahati, the sponsor of the most recent law.
It wasn’t, therefore, enough to go after homosexuals. What else had to be done? Obviously, the message that condoms would prevent AIDS had to go, since that was a direct contradiction to the message that the fundamentalists wanted to get across. Here comes our born-again first lady again:
Two years later, Janet Museveni flew to Washington at the height of a heated congressional debate over PEPFAR. She carried in her hand a prepared message to distribute to Republicans. Abstinence was the golden bullet in her country’s fight against AIDS, she assured conservative lawmakers, denying the empirically proven success of her husband’s condom distribution program. Like magic, the Republican-dominated Congress authorized over $200 million for Uganda, but only for the exclusive promotion of abstinence education. Ssempa soon became the “special representative of the First Lady’s Task Force on AIDS in Uganda,” receiving $40,000 from the PEPFAR pot.
How involved was Warren with Uganda? Well, involved enough that Ssempa, when Warren finally was forced to denounce the Uganda anti-gay law, published an open letter to Warren. Here’s what he had to say:
When you came to Uganda on Thursday, 27 March 2008, and expressed support to the Church of Uganda’s boycott of the pro-homosexual Church of England, you stated; “The Church of England is wrong, and I support the Church of Uganda”.  You are further remembered to say, “homosexuality is not a natural way of life and thus (it’s) not a human right. We shall not tolerate this aspect at all”
Warren, according to The New York Times, is starting a new program within his church to reach out to people suffering mental illnesses, an issue important to him since his son committed suicide a year ago. I hope it works but…
…why am I so unconvinced?

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