Voice of America examines the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009, Part Two

The show features Bob Hunter, Jeff Sharlet and a call in from David Bahati. Must see TV.

A link to the mp4 is to come…

David Bahati called in to say that he was invited to the National Prayer Breakfast; this was passed over by the host. This has been denied by the organizers of the NPB as well as sources in Uganda. Then later in the show, Bob Hunter clarified the situation again and recommended that Bahati withdraw the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

National Prayer Breakfast spokesman: Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill sponsor will not attend the NPB

Yesterday, I disclosed that Hon. David Bahati, author of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill, would not be attending the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC on February 4. I then posted an update and statement from Ambassador Richard Swett, spokesperson for the National Prayer Breakfast. I am providing both here in this post.

Here is my post from yesterday:

Author of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill, Uganda MP David Bahati, will not be attending the National Prayer Breakfast according to sources with the Fellowship Foundation. On Sunday, Uganda’s Monitor reported that Bahati planned to attend and to speak at the event. However, according to Bob Hunter and others with the Fellowship Foundation, Bahati was invited months ago [prior to introducing the Anti-Homosexuality Bill] to come to Washington DC only as a volunteer and not to attend the NPB event. According to these sources, Bahati declined the invitation prior to introducing the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. According to Mr. Hunter, the Monitor article and Bahati’s statements came as a complete surprise to the NPB officials here. However, in the event the article was accurate, the NPB officials and Congressional leaders were taking action to assure that Bahati did not come to any of the meetings.

I want to make clear that according to the Fellowship the invitation to come to Washington, DC as a volunteer was made prior to the introduction of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in October, 2009.

Then today, I received this statement from National Prayer Breakfast spokesperson, Ambassador Richard Swett. Richard Swett was Ambassador to Denmark from 1998-2001. Prior to that post, he represented the 2nd district of New Hampshire from 1991-1995 as a Democrat. 

Ambassador Richard Swett, a longtime associate of the Fellowship Foundation since his days in Congress in the early ‘90s, confirmed the accuracy of Mr. Hunter’s report to Warren Throckmorton. He went on to state, “The National Prayer Breakfast is an organization that builds bridges of understanding between all peoples, religions and beliefs and has never advocated the sentiments expressed in Mr. Bahati’s legislation.”

For more information, contact Bob Hunter at [email protected].

David Bahati will not attend the National Prayer Breakfast

Author of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill, Uganda MP David Bahati, will not be attending the National Prayer Breakfast according to sources with the Fellowship Foundation. On Sunday, Uganda’s Monitor reported that Bahati planned to attend and to speak at the event. However, according to Bob Hunter and others with the Fellowship Foundation, Bahati was invited months ago to come to Washington DC only as a volunteer and not to attend the NPB event. According to these sources, Bahati declined the invitation prior to introducing the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. According to Mr. Hunter, the Monitor article and Bahati’s statements came as a complete surprise to the NPB officials here. However, in the event the article was accurate, the NPB officials and Congressional leaders were taking action to assure that Bahati did not come to any of the meetings.

I have asked David Bahati for comment regarding these reports but he has not returned the email request.

UPDATE: Jan. 19, 2010

I just received this statement from spokesperson for the National Prayer Breakfast, Ambassador Richard Swett. Richard Swett was Ambassador to Denmark from 1998-2001. Prior to that post, he represented the 2nd district of New Hampshire from 1991-1995 as a Democrat. 

Ambassador Richard Swett, a longtime associate of the Fellowship Foundation since his days in Congress in the early ‘90s, confirmed the accuracy of Mr. Hunter’s report to Warren Throckmorton. He went on to state, “The National Prayer Breakfast is an organization that builds bridges of understanding between all peoples, religions and beliefs and has never advocated the sentiments expressed in Mr. Bahati’s legislation.”

I appreciate this statement from Ambassador Swett. I think it makes quite clear the current position of the Fellowship regarding the Bahati bill.

NPR interviews Bob Hunter; repeats the Fellowship Foundation’s (aka The Family) opposition to Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill

Today, NPR’s Fresh Air featured an interview with former Ford and Carter administration official, Bob Hunter. An interview with Mr. Hunter was recently featured on this blog via a guest post by Jeff Sharlet.

The transcript is here and is interesting reading to say the least. Here is a little bit:

GROSS: Uganda now has anti-gay legislation before parliament that is really draconian. It would call for the death penalty for anyone who is gay who had HIV-AIDS, the death penalty for adults who have gay sex with minors, jail for anyone who fails to report a gay person within 24 hours if there’s been gay activity, life sentences for people in same-sex marriages, and this bill also calls for extraditing gay Ugandans living abroad so that they can be brought back to Uganda and be prosecuted.

What’s your opinion of that bill, being so close to the country of Uganda?

Mr. HUNTER: Well, my opinion is it’s a terrible bill and shouldn’t be adopted, and I believe no one that I know, in America particularly, and my close friends in Uganda, I know of no one who supports it in the Fellowship.

GROSS: Since you have so many connections in Uganda and since you know President Museveni and helped bring him to the National Prayer Breakfast in 1997, which is organized by the Fellowship – the Family – did you – have you spoken out to your connections in Uganda?

Mr. HUNTER: Oh yes. Definitely. In fact, when I first called them, and well, first was an email contact, they said, look, the guy who introduced the bill came to one of our prayer breakfasts and afterwards, in a private meeting he told us about the bill and we told him it was a bad idea. So even before the bill was introduced, members of the Fellowship had said you should reach out to other people before you do this. It’s, you know, be cautious. This is not a good idea. They did it in a very polite Ugandan way but the fact is they spoke out even before it was introduced.

Mr. Hunter then mentions Jeff Sharlet’s guest post and seems very keen to emphasize the Fellowship’s position on Uganda.

GROSS: Now, so these are statements that have been made in the United States. What about statements to Ugandans like calling up connections or calling up people who they have prayed with?

Mr. HUNTER: My understanding is there has been some connections. I know I have done it personally and talked to people who would be close to people in the decision-making process about our concerns, which is very unusual. You know, we never involve ourselves in these political things. That’s not our role. But this one became so, you know, hot that we decided – I decided that I should speak out, and then I found out they were already speaking out in Uganda.

I would say that, one other thing…

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. HUNTER: …and that is that Mr. Sharlet now recognizes that we had nothing to do with the anti-homosexual bill and has so said so in post by Warren Throckmorton.

You can listen to the entire interview here.

The Fellowship (aka The Family) Opposes Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill: Guest post by Jeff Sharlet

[Author Jeff Sharlet’s appearance on National Public Radio elevated the story of the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill to an important level of public awareness. One controversial element of Jeff’s reporting was his connection of the Ugandan legislators who introduced the bill to the Fellowship Foundation (aka The Family). I followed up that broadcast corresponding with Fellowship Foundation grantee, Cornerstone Development in Kampala and learned that Cornerstone had no input into the bill. In this guest post, Jeff Sharlet updates the NPR reporting, completes the picture and reveals for the first time that the Fellowship opposes the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Thanks to Jeff for posting this news here and thanks to Bob Hunter for his candor.]  

The Fellowship Opposes Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill

by Jeff Sharlet

Add one more very important name to the growing international list of those opposed to Uganda’s proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill: Bob Hunter, the man who helped build Uganda’s relationship with the Family, aka the Fellowship, the international movement of “followers of Christ” – some reject the term “Christian” that also includes several U.S. politicians with ties to Uganda: among them, Senator James Inhofe, Senator Sam Brownback, and Representative Joe Pitts.

Bob has been active with the Fellowship, as he prefers to call the network of organizations he says can be fairly described as a movement,* since coming to Christ in the late 1970s. But Bob’s faith wasn’t simply a salve; it led him into a relationship with a missionary hospital in Uganda and then with Ugandan political leaders. Bob worked as a private citizen, but he brought to his pursuits the experience and insights of a distinguished career, as a federal insurance administrator for Ford and Carter and a longtime consumer advocate. In Uganda, he established relationships with members of all factions, and, eventually, a friendship with President Yoweri Museveni. Later, he would go on to help Museveni establish the Ugandan National Prayer Breakfast.

Today, his work in Uganda focuses less on high-level politicians and more on those whom he calls “the nail” – that is, not the people in the official portraits, but the people who do the real day to day work of keeping a country running. It’s not glamorous work, but it’s important – maybe never more so than now. Because it’s those relationships that matter most when legislation such as the Anti-Homosexuality Bill is at stake. And Bob has been quietly working through those relationships to stop the bill. His influence may matter more than all the petitions signed by gay rights activists around the globe. And Bob has been brave about using that influence, speaking to his friends in Uganda, and gently pressuring the Fellowship’s associates on Capitol Hill to take a stand against the bill. Bob even agreed to sit down with me.

That took some courage, since I’m the author of a book about the Fellowship called The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, a critical analysis of the Fellowship in which I described Bob’s initial outreach to Uganda as linked to U.S. government interests in the region. Several weeks ago, I was a guest on NPR’s “Fresh Air” in which I made the same point. I based my characterization on a widely circulated account from Fellowship leader Doug Coe of Bob’s work, two documents in the Fellowship’s archive, “A Trip to East Africa—Fall 1986,” and “Re: Organizing the Invisible,” and a review of tens of thousands of documents in the Fellowship archives that present a portrait of the organization up to that point. I attempted to contact Bob, but failed. I wish I had contacted him: Bob was very forthcoming with details that present a more complicated, and, frankly, hopeful picture. Bob wrote a response to the broadcast that he shared with “Fresh Air” and with some associates in Uganda. He raised a number of important concerns and offered more detail on his involvement. But rather than duke it out, Bob invited me to his Arlington, Virginia home and spent the better part of an afternoon discussing my interpretation of events and his experience of them. We agreed that the first step was a statement making clear Bob’s opposition to the bill. Moreover, Bob adds “I know of no one involved in Uganda with the Fellowship here in America, including the most conservative among them, that supports such things as killing homosexuals or draconian reporting requirements, much less has gone over to Uganda to push such positions.”

That’s very, very good news. The Fellowship prefers to avoid the limelight; Bob has forsaken that to make clear his position and that of his American associates: The Fellowship, AKA the Family, opposes the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

Bob also asked me to clarify – and correct – some misperceptions. I’m glad to do so. First, Bob was troubled by my identification of him on “Fresh Air” as a former Ford official, which he felt implied right-wing affiliations. I didn’t think so – Ford hasn’t exactly gone down in history as a right-winger, and I mentioned it only to establish that Bob was not just some ordinary businessmen, as Fellowship leader Doug Coe’s account of his work** suggests (inaccurately, as Bob gladly concedes). It would have been better to say a former government official, or a former Ford and Carter official. Even that might have been selling Bob short – his career as a consumer advocate is long and impressive. While the Fellowship has historically been majority conservative, it has – as I note in my book – always included liberals. Bob is in that tradition. Over the course of the afternoon he shared with me his experience working with the Fellowship in Burundi, Rwanda, and South Africa. While I may take issue with the Fellowship’s behind-the-scenes approach, there’s no denying that in each of these cases Bob and his associates were working toward extremely admirable ends, and that in the case of Burundi Bob’s efforts helped make the difference that brought a truce to that country’s warring factions. Bob did what he did with the best of intentions, and, in several instances, achieved the best of outcomes. Continue reading “The Fellowship (aka The Family) Opposes Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill: Guest post by Jeff Sharlet”