Oh Yeah?

Readers of this blog will know about Doug Coe—the secretive force behind the National Prayer Breakfast.

Oh, and much more.

He makes no bones about it, though he doesn’t say much—really anything—publicly. He, and his group The Family (also called The Fellowship) minister exclusively to the rich and (especially) politically powerful. They form “cells” around congressmen and women, Coe can enter virtually any office and be received with hugs. Face time with the president? No problem! (At least with W.—don’t know about Obama….)

And he has a curious tendency to invoke Hitler as a supreme leader—a man with consummate rhetorical skills (can’t be denied….), a man with a gift for organization (true), and especially a man who starts with a handful of men and almost changes the world permanently (can’t dispute that). 

Now then, let’s move to Uganda.

Say what, you exclaim!

Bear with me.

There is in Uganda a transgendered man who is fighting—against horrific odds—against virulent homophobia. How virulent, you ask? Consider this:

Or this quote from Pepe Julian Onziema, the man adduced above:

I am here, still, in 2013, but I dread things as simple as shopping at a kiosk for groceries, because the owner has told me he doesn't sell to "such people." If I insist, he said, he will "teach me how to be normal." A full night's sleep is thwarted by the fear of a stranger who has followed me home or the neighbors who have formed a mob. My personal struggle is a small reflection of the entire LGBTI community's everyday apprehension.

That’s from an article in CNN entitled “Living Proudly in the Face of Uganda’s Anti-Gay Bill.” Here’s Onziema on the topic:

Since 2009, my community has faced the potential passage of an anti-homosexuality bill that threatens Ugandans in same-sex relationships with life imprisonment (there are conflicting reports on whether the original death penalty provision remain). This year, many Anglican Church officials and other leaders have declared the legislation's speedy passage as their New Year's resolutions, with the bill scheduled for discussion when Uganda's parliament reconvenes in February. As a transgender man, I am not safe.

I knew about this, of course, and signed an online petition against it. So did a lot of people. But the click of a mouse is a minor thing, a few minute muscles flexing, a little electronic blip going out into the world. The Ugandans may pass the bill. Onziema may end up as dead as his partner David Kato, with whom he founded SMUG—Sexual Minorities Uganda. This is the second anniversary of Kato’s…

…murder.

This would scare the bejesus out of me. How do you get that courage, that strength, to live with the constant fear of everything? A Cuban friend told me once a very simple definition of a free society. You’re in bed at two o’clock in the morning; you hear footsteps on the pavement outside your house. You yawn and go back to sleep.

That’s a free society.

Your body tenses, you sweat, you know you should run but are paralyzed.

Police state.

Well, the guy is still fighting, and still has hope. And one glimmer of hope is thrown lightly into a paragraph:

And I hope to win a U.S. lawsuit against American evangelist Scott Lively for the anti-gay terror he exported to my country.

Well, that rang a bell. We’re back to Doug Coe and The Fellowship, whose influence goes far and wide, into the little countries that no one knows about or cares about, or even knows where they are. But some of those places have minerals or other resources, and maybe even a little domestic strife, in which case a nice little weapons deal can be brokered with the (for now) leader who is, by the way, your brother in Christ. Oh, and want to sit at the president’s table for the National Prayer Breakfast? No problem!

And in fact, I knew that a group of Coe’s “fellows” had ventured down to Uganda, to talk about that ole devil, the gay menace!

Click, and I’m on Wikipedia reading up on Scott Lively. And it seems he is lively in several senses (you could see that on the horizon, couldn’t you?). I joke, but it’s not funny. Lively and company arrive in Kampala in 2009, and here’s his account.

"Thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians," reportedly attended the conference.[4] Lively and his colleagues "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.'"[4] Lively wrote days later that "someone had likened their campaign to 'a nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda.'"[4]

Nothing like thumping the Bible to stir up a little hate! And the guy is an author too (as well, by the way, as an abuser of women—he assaulted a woman in 1991, she sued, he got stuck for 31,000 bucks)!

You can guess the topic. But the title?

The Pink Swastika.

Here’s Wikipedia again:

Along with Kevin E. Abrams, he co-authored the book The Pink Swastika, which states in the preface that "homosexuals [are] the true inventors of Nazism and the guiding force behind many Nazi atrocities."[5] Several historians have questioned the book's claims and selective use of research.[6][7][8][9][10]

“Several” historians? Is there ANY historian—who doesn’t happen to be a religious nut case—who could possibly NOT question the book’s claims?

I take a pill that reliably wakes me up in the middle of the night with a craving for food. (OK—carbohydrates…) That gives me time to look into the crannies of the Internet, the places I ordinarily wouldn’t go. So I found myself spending time last night with Ruth Maier, often deemed the Norwegian Anne Frank.

An Austrian from a cultured family (father had a doctorate in philosophy and spoke nine languages), Ruth escapes to Norway, her sister—more luckily—makes it to Britain.

The footsteps on the pavement outside, one night, became her worst fear. She was deported to Auschwitz and gassed immediately.

And yes, she left behind a diary—one critic compares her writing to Hannah Arendt and Susan Sontag (wow!) And she had, it seems, a passionate affair with her soul mate—a woman called Gunvor Hofmo. They were, if my 2AM reading serves me, lovers.

Well, the Norwegian government apologized, almost exactly a year ago. Here’s more copy / paste from you-know-what….

The Holocaust came to Norway on Thursday 26 November 1942. Ruth Maier was one of the many who were arrested that day. On 26 November, just as the sky was beginning to lighten, the sound of heavy boots could be heard on the stairs of the boarding house “Englehjemmet” in Oslo. A few minutes later, the slight Jewish girl was seen by her friends being led out the door of Dalsbergstien 3. Ruth Maier was last seen being forced into a black truck by two big Norwegian policemen. Five days later the 22-year-old was dead. Murdered in the gas chamber at Auschwitz. Fortunately it is part of being human that we learn from our mistakes. And it is never too late. More than 50 years after the war ended, the Storting decided to make a settlement, collectively and individually, for the economic liquidation of Jewish assets. By so doing the state accepted moral responsibility for the crimes committed against Norwegian Jews during the Second World War. What about the crimes against Ruth Maier and the other Jews? The murders were unquestionably carried out by the Nazis. But it was Norwegians who carried out the arrests. It was Norwegians who drove the trucks. And it happened in Norway.

—Jens Stoltenberg, prime minister, 27 January 2012

There were 532 Jews deported that day.

An apology is an empty thing unless it gets backed up by something. Actually, an apology is a debt, an obligation to change, for which you will pay and struggle until the change is complete.

Half a million homosexuals were exterminated in the Holocaust. An American writes a slanderous book, piling blame on the victims. The Anglican Church of Uganda wants to rewrite and relive history.

To my knowledge, I haven’t played a part in any atrocity.

But anybody who doesn’t speak up is complicit.

I’ll borrow some words from the woman who gave me as much moral compass as I have.

“SCOTT LIVELY, GO STRAIGHT TO YOUR ROOM AND DON’T COME OUT UNTIL YOU’RE GOOD AND SORRY!”