Stop Transporting Exodus 22:18 to Africa, Evangelists; It’s Killing and Torturing Children.

Exodus 22:18 says, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

Here in the states, where we don’t take the Old Testament seriously and that verse is an embarrassment most Christians would prefer to ignore, it doesn’t have too much of an affect.

But as the influence of Christianity is waning in the West, fundamentalist Christianity is being exported to other populations.  And they, like the Old Testament “God,” apparently, do believe that there are witches. >br>
In Swaziland, as recently as 2013, there was a law banning witches from flying above a height of 150 metres.

In the Central African Republic, as of 2010, witch cases took up 40% of the court system’s case load (You know how much we try drug crimes here in the states?  For reference, that’s only 12% of our case load).

In another story written in 2014 about seven witches killed in Tanzania (East Africa) it is noted: “A local rights group, the Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC), has estimated as many as 500 “witches” are lynched every year, based on reports that counted some 3, 000 people killed between 2005 and 2011. Many of those killed were elderly women.”

Furthermore, here are some additional cliff notes on the problem from the United Nations Human Rights Office,,,

Stop Transporting Exodus 22:18 to Africa, Evangelists; It’s Killing and Torturing Children.

Russia jails six who tortured gay teens, posted videos online and drove them to suicide - Gay Star News

Six members of Occupy Pedophilia, the group that tortured gay teens, posted the videos online and drove many of them to suicide, have been jailed.

Police in the Russian region of Ural arrested nine who were luring unsuspecting young victims through personal ads.

They manipulated the young men, many of them teens, who would show up for a ‘date’. They would then be captured, taken to an apartment or a woodland, where they would be bullied, tortured and humiliated while being recorded on video.
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The group, started by Maxim Martsinkevich, led to many copycat groups across Russia. They claim they are simply trying to ‘identify and report pedophiles’. Martsinkevich is currently in jail for ‘hooliganism’.

Russia jails six who tortured gay teens, posted videos online and drove them to suicide - Gay Star News

More than half of Russians want to ‘liquidate’ or exclude gays · PinkNews

More than half of Russian citizens say they think gay people should either be isolated from society or “liquidated”.

A new poll published on Friday showed that attitudes towards gay people in Russia had hardened.

The Levada Center poll is the latest in a series, which map Russians’ views on minority groups since 1989.
As well as more than half of respondents saying they did not welcome gay people, other groups such as sex workers, homeless people and fringe religious groups have all become less welcome in the past 15 years.


More than half of Russians want to ‘liquidate’ or exclude gays · PinkNews

Vladimir Putin: If Gay People Marry, Russians Will Stop Having Children - The New Civil Rights Movement

Vladimir Putin insists the if his country made same-sex marriage legal, a demographic nightmare would ensue, causing a huge population drop because Russians would stop having babies. This ludicrous public policy was revealed in a lengthy profile of the relationship between Russian President Vladimir Putin and UK Prime Minister David Cameron, published this past weekend by the London Daily Mail.

The revelation came in 2013 during a conversation between the two heads of state. Cameron was in the middle of pushing for same-sex marriage while Putin was ramping up his anti-gay homophobia and enshrining it into law.

"The conversation takes a bizarre twist and they end up having a ‘bickerfest’ about gay rights, both wanting to have the last word," the Daily Mail reports.
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Putin's statement is similar to ugly theories of a "demographic winter" popularized several years ago by the religious right, including Maggie Gallagher. Their idea is conservatives have to make more babies than liberals in order to ensure conservative ideals are propagated by more people – as if everyone born into conservative families stays conservative.

Vladimir Putin: If Gay People Marry, Russians Will Stop Having Children - The New Civil Rights Movement

A Heartbreaking Story From One of the World's Most Transphobic Places | Jonny von Wallström

When President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda signed the Anti-Homosexuality Bill into law, he changed the lives of all LGBTI people in Uganda, one of the most dangerous countries for gay and transgender people. For my friend Cleopatra Kambugu, February 24, 2014, was one of the worst days of her life. In the same week, Cleo found her name on the front page of The Red Pepper, a Ugandan newspaper. She lost her job and was abandoned by most of her family. But she wasn't the only one.

With homosexuality illegal in the country, everyone was forced to conform to the norm or hide from the authority and even from their family and friends. Gay and transgender people lost their jobs and were forced to live in isolation to avoid persecution or violence, to live alone away from the people they care about. The Anti-Homosexuality Act encompasses prohibitions for all sexual orientations, gender identities, and expressions that are not considered normal. So, while Cleo is not gay, she is still subject to the harsh, inhuman stipulations of the law.
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Nevertheless, the signing of the Anti-Homosexuality Act changed things for Cleo drastically. Four days after the act was signed by the Ugandan President, she found herself on the cover of The Red Pepper. Realizing that the crackdown on them had begun. Fearing for their lives, they went underground.

During this time, I received a heartbreaking letter from Cleo, telling me about the harsh effect the law had on their lives. They had been forced to live behind closed doors for over a month. With Cleo's mother coming in the nights with food and supply. Cleo was trying to get out of the country to Sweden, USA or Norway. Anything would help.

But at this time, countries like Sweden, who is known for supporting LGBTI activists in Uganda. Turned their backs to the activists. Many were refused to attend international conferences because of the fear of them overstaying their visas and that they would use it as an excuse not to go back home.

A Heartbreaking Story From One of the World's Most Transphobic Places | Jonny von Wallström

Where Do the Lies About LGBTIs in Africa Come From? | Michael Ashworth

This is an excellent example of The Religious Right’s 10-Point Playbook For Hijacking Nations: 

Shocking legislative developments have focused Western media attention on the gay rights situation across Africa like never before. Many of the column inches dedicated to Uganda's Anti Homosexuality Act have demonstrated an awareness of the complexity of the social and political landscape for African LGBTIs. The colonial provenance of the penal code provisions which outlaw same-sex intercourse has been explored. The claims that "homosexuality is unAfrican" have been shown to be false, thanks to a wealth of anthropological evidence to the contrary. The incoherence of using a religion imposed on Africa by proselytising European missionaries to decry same-sex attraction as unAfrican has not gone unnoticed. In short: on the issue of LGBTI rights in Africa, analysis has (largely) been surprisingly nuanced.

What is generally lacking from Western media, however, is an understanding of some of the most pernicious lies about LGBTIs in Africa -- and relatively few people have asked the question, 'where do the lies come from?' 

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The migration of the trope from North America to Africa can be explained through the influence of US neoconservative organisations, such as the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD). According to a report by the think-tank Political Research Associates, the IRD is "one of the main organizations promoting homophobia in both Africa and the United States over the last decade." The report claims that while mainstream Episcopal church funding in Africa is directed towards visible projects -- and therefore requires accountability on how money is spent -- "conservative funding pays the salaries of archbishops and their staffs," concluding that "archbishops' offices have become mouthpieces of U.S. conservatives."
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While the situation for LGBTIs across Africa is far from uniformly pessimistic, any judicial victories will be diluted by the extreme social hostility fomented by these toxic beliefs and by the American religious fundamentalists who sustain them. What is needed is a brighter spotlight shone on the role that foreigners have had in stoking anti-LGBTI hatred in Africa by co-opting postcolonial politics for their own ends. The notion that money flows from abroad to fund a 'homosexual agenda' needs to be countered forcefully with the indisputable truth that foreign money is flooding from the US to fund an insidious neoconservative agenda. The lies told about LGBTIs in Africa need to be exposed as such.

Where Do the Lies About LGBTIs in Africa Come From? | Michael Ashworth

Top Jeb Bush Adviser Vin Weber Signs On to Lobby for Anti-Gay Uganda Government

Uganda hired Mercury Public Affairs, Weber’s firm, for a $50,000 per month retainer with Weber as the only registered lobbyist on the account. The contract calls for Mercury to provide general “lobbying services” as well as communication services to promote trade and investment opportunities in Uganda.

Weber joined the Bush campaign effort in February as an outside adviser. According to the Washington Post, Weber has worked behind the scenes to develop ties between Bush and major donors and conservative leaders. He told the Post in June that he intends to “coordinate policy” for the campaign.
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The anti-LGBT laws proposed in Uganda have found support from some religious right figures in the American conservative movement. According to journalist Jeff Sharlet, Ugandan politician David Bahati, the sponsor of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act, is a member of a conservative Christian organization known as The Family, whose members include Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Ok., Jim DeMint, and Tom Coburn.

Religious right figures Bryan Fischer and Lou Engle have also provided praised the effort. (Notably, Hillary Clinton is one of a very small group of Democrats to attend private Capitol Hill prayer services organized by The Family.)

Top Jeb Bush Adviser Vin Weber Signs On to Lobby for Anti-Gay Uganda Government

ADDENDUM::In a previous posting concerning Katy Faust

As I was getting ready to publish the preceding article concerning Faust, I pondered a bit, I've heard this story before.  Although I couldn't find the correct video that my mind was wandering back to, I was reminded of Faust's  "open letter" to Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.  It was concerning the, then upcoming, arguments in the Obergefell v Hodges case before SCOTUS.

Although I have many concerns with Faust's position, there are two points I find rather disturbing.  Although I may not be as scathing as David Cary Hart over at The Slowly Boiled Frog,

I hate to pile on but the anti-gay rhetoric of National Organization for Marriage (and Witherspoon Institute) spouted by someone who was raised by gay parents is still the anti-gay rhetoric of National Organization for Marriage. It is also preposterous. Simply stated a child being raised by a gay couple is better off if that couple is married.

Faust sounds as if she should be protesting divorce rather than gay marriage.  It seems like she is more upset that her birth mom and dad secured a divorce. 

What these complainers have in common is that these are children of divorce (we don't seem to be hearing from adopted kids). It is the divorce (and the attendant religious opprobrium) that makes people like Ms. Faust angry and irrational. I suspect that, according to Faust's “logic,” it is the acceptability of (forbidden) homosexual unions that created the divorce in the first place. The reality is probably quite different. If she lacked a relationship with her father it wasn't because she was being raised by two lesbian. Rather it was because her father chose to be absent from her life.

It is also a point that Jeremy Hooper alludes to in his criticism as well, 

Her parents divorce was painful on her. That's not a surprise. It often is on children. Katy herself cites the divorce as the key issue here.  "[T]he most traumatic event in my thirty-eight years of life," she says,,,.  Of course Katy's story is a personal one that she is projecting onto every family. And as I already said, she is taking the pain of divorce, which she admits is the root issue for her, and projecting that onto civil marriage policy for gays and lesbians (who may or may not even become parents). Because that's what commentators like Katy often do.

Which brings us to my second point, as a child of adoptive - hetero parent (evangelicals to boot) - I think it's bizarre that she thinks that it is biology that makes parents great.  By her definition, divorce and adoption are not only bad choices, but kind of an abomination. It seems that she thinks that if people just try really hard, they can become the "perfect" parents that she desires.  As Hooper points out,

But here's what really gets me. In truth, Katy's attack lines could just as easily apply to opposite-sex couples who parent the very same way as their same-sex counterparts. For instance, she writes:

When two adults who cannot procreate want to raise children together, where do those babies come from? Each child is conceived by a mother and a father to whom that child has a natural right. When a child is placed in a same-sex-headed household, she will miss out on at least one critical parental relationship and a vital dual-gender influence. The nature of the adults’ union guarantees this. Whether by adoption, divorce, or third-party reproduction, the adults in this scenario satisfy their heart’s desires, while the child bears the most significant cost: missing out on one or more of her biological parents.

Making policy that intentionally deprives children of their fundamental rights is something that we should not endorse, incentivize, or promote.
FULL: Dear Justice Kennedy: An Open Letter from the Child of a Loving Gay Parent [Public Discourse]

"Two adults who cannot procreate" is not a stand-in for "same-sex couple." Many opposite-sex couples cannot have biological children on their own, and many of them ultimately choose adoption. Adoptive parents, be they gay or straight, are not biologically connected to their children. There is no logically consistent way that Katy Faust can use a line about adopted kids "missing out on one or more of her biological parents" and confine that line only to the kids of same-sex parents. There are millions of kids of straight parents who fall into that very same category!

I'm sorry Katy, but I find that an odious thought.  You are basically endorsing the ridicule I faced growing up as an adopted child.  That I was somehow defective and that my parents, in doing their Christian duty, took pity on me.  Granted my folks and I had our issues, some even carried over into adulthood, but in the end my parents love me.  They may not understand me, but I am quite secure in our relationship.

Even now, as I recover from a stoke at 51 years of age, I call my dad weekly to let him know how I am doing. (Sadly my mom passed last November at 94).  As odd as it feels asking my dad about what to expect with my recovery, I value his input (and not just on health matters as I seek his advice concerning financials, investing and other mundane stuff of life). 

Though not connected "biologically" there is something even stronger that binds us together - love.  As Hart notes quite harshly, "I suspect that, according to Faust's “logic,” it is the acceptability of (forbidden) homosexual unions that created the divorce in the first place.  The reality is probably quite different. If she lacked a relationship with her father it wasn't because she was being raised by two lesbian. Rather it was because her father chose to be absent from her life." Or she encouraged that behavior by distancing herself from him - speaking from experience.

Having the personal, private belief that same-sex relationships are not Biblical may not be hateful per se (wrong IMO); it is her belief.  BUT, traipsing around the world spitting rhetoric that is not even your own (National Organization for Marriage and Witherspoon Institute) is vile; it is hurtful. Being loud about it, so that the whole world can hear you, is being hateful. 

Like those before her - Anne Paulk and Linda Wall - Faust needs to examine her own life before condemning others.

I am truly sorry that Katy Faust longs for a different childhood than the one that was in her cards. I am genuinely happy that she says she is happy with her husband and children. But what Katy is doing right now is an act of bad faith on behalf of actual human children who will grow up finding rhetoric like hers and wondering why they are being told to feel bad and/or broken because of their loving family structure. Rather than limit their political assaults to just adults and fellow commentators who signed up for this fight, these adult activists are now indirectly (or even directly) targeting our children as they come up in this world. It is an amoral thought crime against parents like me and children like mine.

SheWired - Antigay Daughter of Lesbian Couple Katy Faust Now Fights Marriage Equality in Australia

In an interview with ABC Lateline in Australia she describes her mother (who divorced her father and started living with her partner when Faust was in 5th grade) as “the greatest mother anyone could ask for” and her mother’s partner as a “dear friend.” She continues, “They are wonderful grandparents to my kids.”

The anti-equality activist tells Lateline that her drive comes from her belief that “children have a right to be in relationship with their mother and father whenever possible, and as a society, we shouldn't normalize a family structure that requires children to lose one or both parents to be in that household.”

Faust further explains that her beliefs about same-sex marriage began to take hold in high school when she converted to Christianity.* She has since dedicated a lot of time and resources, it would seem, to making sure people like her parents can’t get married and yet she insists that this isn’t a hateful act.

SheWired - Antigay Daughter of Lesbian Couple Katy Faust Now Fights Marriage Equality in Australia

NOM Chairman Defends Uganda Anti-Gay Law, Suggests Gay 'Recruitment' The Real Human Rights Abuse | Right Wing Watch

Maggie Gallagher, Brian Brown and "now" John Eastman. NOM's hatred of all things LGBTQI is shining brightly as usual.  What started out as a religious organization seeking to influence voters and legislatures to limit the civil rights of others based upon the teachings of the Catholic Church, has now "grown" to an international juggernaut of sadistic evil spouting hate wherever they land.

Eastman quoted Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s insistence that the new law was “provoked by western groups who come to our schools and try to recruit children into homosexuality." Noting that US aid restrictions prevent assistance from going to governments that commit human rights violations, including the failure to take “appropriate and adequate measures” to “protect children from exploitation,” Eastman implied that the real “exploitation” was coming from gay rights advocates recruiting children.

He also suggested that US opposition to laws criminalizing homosexuality hinders efforts to fight HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. (In fact, experts say that the criminalization of homosexuality hurts the effort to fight the epidemic.)

What is farcical concerning Eastman's statement, consider the following comments from Joe.My.God:

But what struck me the most is how he waxes outrages about how US aid might be cut off to select African nations because of their tendency to commit genocide against gay people. He becomes emotional as he emphasizes how important these aid programs are. But this man cares not a whit about these aid programs. He never once in his entire public career ever uttered a word about them. And his party generally opposes foreign aid and constantly seeks to cut it.
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A bunch of conservative Christians from US are bemoaning cultural imperialism in Africa? There's a direct connection between US missionaries working within Uganda and the writing and passing of this draconian legislation. The laws that they support are artifacts of cultural imperialism.

Or do they imagine we've all forgotten that? Or do they believe Scott Lively's work time in Uganda doesn't qualify as imperialism? Out-fucking-rageous.

Both of which ring true specially in regards to the British colonial origins of anti-gay laws and Scott Lively.

NOM Chairman Defends Uganda Anti-Gay Law, Suggests Gay 'Recruitment' The Real Human Rights Abuse | Right Wing Watch

The British colonial origins of anti-gay laws - The Washington Post

Although the attached article is a bit dated (Oct 2014), it offers an interesting perspective and an added layer to the "Exportation of Hate" chronicle: "a common narrative is that acceptance and tolerance of homosexuality is a foreign, or alien, Western imposition on indigenous cultures."  As Han and O'Mahoney point out,

The idea that the so-called tolerance towards homosexuality somehow sprang from a western source doesn’t hold.  As our research shows, this narrative is not only wrong-headed but the opposite of the historical facts.  Instead, for many countries, including some of those mentioned above, criminalization laws were based on British imperial legal instruments, like the Indian Penal Code Section 377A, introduced and imposed on these countries by Britain when they were colonized.

This "it's foreign" plot-line does not necessarily hold true "we found that former British colonies are much more likely to have laws that criminalize homosexual conduct than former colonies of other European powers, or than other states in general."  And at quick glance one could say that individuals such as Scott Lively, Brian Brown, and Mike Bickle are taking advantage of that understanding of history.

It seems that when the British Empire was introducing legal systems around the world, one of the laws they included was the law against sodomy, which was not decriminalized in England and Wales until 1967. By this time, most of the “Winds of Change” wave of decolonization had left former colonies independent of changes in British legislation.  By contrast, after the French Revolution, the French Empire decriminalized sodomy between consenting adults, and spread this Enlightenment legacy among its colonies.  So, as the figure below illustrates, former French colonies were much quicker to decriminalize.
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Highlighting the colonial origin of anti-gay legislation is an important way to counter the narrative that tolerance of homosexuality is a neo-colonial imposition.  The Economist simultaneously downplays the importance of the colonial legacy and claims that Western criticism of the new anti-gay laws allows post-colonial governments to paint themselves as forging an independent path.  This confused message misses the potential power of undercutting the false narrative that tolerance of homosexuality is equivalent to colonialism.  Another strategy is to publicize the numerous examples of accepted homosexual practices and relations in various pre-colonial African cultures.

The British colonial origins of anti-gay laws - The Washington Post

'I Kill Them!': HBO's VICE Goes To Uganda To See What American Anti-Gay Christians Have Created - The New Civil Rights Movement

“We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.”

― Christopher Hitchens

In my previous post concerning Rev. Anthony Musaala's presentation at All Saints Parish LGBT Task Force, Gadoua, in her piece, makes mention of Vice's “A Prayer for Uganda".  The documentary aired last month on HBO highlighting the anti-gay atmosphere present in Uganda.



David Badash at The New Civil Rights Movement summarizes the theme along with the role of US based evangelicals:

In the VICE episode, [Member of Parliament David] Bahati refuses to name any one of his American partners, but [U.S. Senator James] Inhofe is clearly one. Also among Bahati’s supporters and partners are Scott Lively, Pastor Rick Warren, Sharon Slater, and the World Congress of Families. And Bahati makes clear he and his country support the culture these American Christian extremists have brought to Uganda — one that teaches, falsely, that gay people are all pedophiles, homosexuality is a choice, it is evil, and children must be protected from it at all costs. 

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What the clip above does not show, but the VICE episode does, is that American Christians have brought this culture to Uganda. While the nation has never been gay friendly, the country's war on homosexuality is a direct response to the teachings of American Christians.

Remember Lively is facing trial for "crimes against humanity" for his role in Uganda; he is also notorious for exporting his hate to Russia.  As HRC noted last September,

Scott Lively is the head of Abiding Truths Ministry in Springfield, Massachusetts and is known around the world for his notorious work successfully advocating for anti-LGBT laws in Uganda that could send LGBT people to prison for life. In fact, Lively has traveled the world over presenting himself as an expert on LGBT issues, urging lawmakers to crack down on LGBT rights and the right of free expression.

In 2007, Lively wrote in “Letter to the Russian People,” “Homosexuality is a personality disorder that involves various often dangerous sexual addictions and aggressive anti-social impulses.”

'I Kill Them!': HBO's VICE Goes To Uganda To See What American Anti-Gay Christians Have Created - The New Civil Rights Movement

Ugandan Priest Rev. Anthony Musaala: LGBT People Are Fleeing The Country To Escape Violence

This is what Scott Lively and his crew of hate mongers are responsible for:

A growing number of LGBT Ugandans are fleeing to neighboring Kenya to escape violence and persecution, a Ugandan Catholic priest says.

People are beaten, raped, evicted and dismissed from their jobs because of their sexual identity or orientation, the Rev. Anthony Musaala said during a talk at All Saints Catholic Church as part of a monthlong visit to the United States and Canada.

Even associating with or advocating for LGBT people may spur discrimination, he said.

Musaala, who spoke at the invitation of the All Saints Parish LGBT Task Force, estimates 500 gay and lesbian Ugandans are seeking asylum in Kenya. He recently met with U.N. officials, seeking increased financial support and human services for resettling “sexual refugees.”

He supports a worldwide refugee program for people affected by anti-gay policies and violence.
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Musaala now works with Ark Communes, which creates safe housing communities for LGBT people in Kenya, and he used his talk as an occasion to ask for donations for the organization.

Ugandan political and religious leaders say Westerners brought homosexuality to the country. But Musaala criticizes American evangelicals who “parachuted into Uganda and started spreading their message of hate.”

Should it be any surprise that THE Church took action against his work,

In March 2013, Musaala wrote a paper challenging priestly celibacy and criticizing African priests who abuse minors or father children and abandon them. His archbishop, Cyprian Lwanga, said the paper “damages the good morals of the Catholic believers and faults the church’s teaching.” He suspended Musaala indefinitely from priestly duties, which means the priest cannot celebrate the sacraments.

Ugandan Priest Rev. Anthony Musaala: LGBT People Are Fleeing The Country To Escape Violence

US Christians ‘bankrolling’ no campaign in Ireland’s gay marriage referendum | World news | The Guardian

  Just like NOM and Brian Brown has absolutely nothing to do with what is occurring in Russia?

With just five days to go before Ireland’s historic referendum on the legalisation of gay marriage, a bitter row has broken out between supporters and opponents over the funding of their respective campaigns. Supporters of a yes vote have accused opponents of a lack of transparency over finances and of accepting funding from rightwing Christian groups in the US.

Ireland’s referendum is the only one in the world where a national electorate is being asked to legalise gay marriage. If it is passed on Friday, gay couples will have the right under the state’s constitution to marry – at present only civil partnerships are recognised in law. Marriage equality would provide full rights of inheritance but, despite it being a contentious issue in the campaign, would not alter the law on adoption, which was recently changed to allow gay couples to adopt.

A yes vote would also mark yet another defeat for the Catholic church and the political power it used to wield in Ireland.

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One of the no side’s strongest supporters in the US is the lavishly funded National Organisation for Marriage (NOM). In a letter to supporters around the world, it has urged evangelical Christians to visit keepmarriage.org, which is campaigning for a no vote.
 
“Just like in campaigns for marriage here in America,” the letter says, “slanted public opinion polls become fodder to influence and depress supporters of marriage. This is happening in Ireland. If [the no campaign] can manage to pull off a victory, it will be a tremendous boost to the cause of marriage worldwide. Please do what you can to bring awareness to their efforts.”

However, a spokesperson for NOM in the US denied this weekend that it had channelled funds to any of the three main opposition groups to gay marriage during the campaign. NOM is aware that foreign donations to lobby groups during referendums in Ireland are banned, the spokesperson said.

US Christians ‘bankrolling’ no campaign in Ireland’s gay marriage referendum | World news | The Guardian

Mike Bickle’s 5 Million Bibles For Russian Theocracy | TWO Care

In a May 2014 Twocare.org special report, I delved into the history of a little known early 1990s U.S. evangelical campaign in which American evangelicals and fundamentalists carried out the religious indoctrination of millions of public school students in Russia, in former Soviet Union territory, and in former Eastern European Soviet ally nations. These American evangelicals were, of course, vehemently opposed to LGBT rights, and one of the leading organizations behind the effort, Campus Crusade For Christ, would later be exposed by Truth Wins Out for its effort to disseminate anti-gay propaganda across an entire continent, in Africa.

But when I wrote that Twocare.org report I was unaware that there were direct ties between leaders of the emerging, dominionist “apostolic and prophetic” movement (now commonly referred to as the New Apostolic Reformation) and the campaign to evangelize Russia which ramped up with the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Now, thanks to video posted by Rick Joyner’s Morningstar Ministries, we have some information on those ties.

While Twocare.org has previously investigated at length the funding behind such US-based anti-LGBT efforts as the World Congress of Families, this report delves into the movement background of evangelists such as Bob Weiner, Mike Bickle (pictured), Rick Joyner, and their New Apostolic Reformation movement fellows working to export the NAR’s dominionist style of Christian supremacy to Russia and the world.

Mike Bickle’s 5 Million Bibles For Russian Theocracy | TWO Care

Natural Deception: Conned By the World Congress of Families | Political Research Associates

This is another one of those articles that needs to be "un-packed."  There is a boatload of information with many big name players both in the US and abroad.  Porter summarizes the importance of what he writes very nicely; if  you only remember one thing concerning this article let it be this

From Russia to Nigeria to Australia, a seemingly innocuous definition of the “natural family” is quietly being used as the basis of new laws to justify the criminalization of abortion and LGBTQ people. Pushing this definition is the World Congress of Families, a network of conservative religious leaders from a variety of faiths—and their high-level government friends.

WCF is a project of the Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society, based in Rockford, Illinois, about a two-hour drive from Chicago. It was founded in 1997 by conservative scholar Allan Carlson, who currently serves as president of both organizations. Carlson has authored nearly a dozen books, including The Natural Family Where It Belongs: New Agrarian Essays, published in 2014 and dedicated to Pitirim Sorokin. (Sorokin is one of many WCF links to Russia: the Russian-born conservative sociologist inspired much of Carlson’s understanding of the family 9).

The Howard Center was birthed from the Rockford Institute, a conservative think tank devoted to “analyzing the damage done to America’s social institutions by the cultural upheaval of the 1960’s.”10 Carlson joined the Institute’s staff in 1981, serving as its president from 1986-1997. For many years, according to the Howard Center’s own website, the organization exclusively conducted research, disconnected from activism. But in 1995, that began to change.

That year, Carlson was invited to Moscow by Anatoly Antonov and Victor Medkov, sociologists at Lomonosov Moscow State University.11 His hosts were concerned about the demographic shifts they were witnessing in Russia’s post-Soviet era—popularly referred to as the “demographic winter.”12 As the country struggled to weather political turmoil and economic hardship, the national birthrate was plummeting, alcoholism was on the rise, and—correspondingly—so was the national death rate.

While significant demographic shifts are underway in Russia and many other Western nations, ample research13 has repudiated nativists’ arguments that these changes will result in “global catastrophe” (as WCF communications director Don Feder has warned).14 What drives right-wing concerns over Russia’s demographics are xenophobia and Islamophobia; as Russia’s overall population has plummeted, its indigenous Muslim population has grown—now comprising 21-23 million, or about 15% of Russia’s total population.15 Russia has also become an increasingly popular destination for immigrants and refugees. As of 2013, according to the U.N. Population Division, Russia was second only to the United States in its immigrant population—the two nations have 46 million and 11 million immigrants, respectively.16

What Antonov and Medkov meant by a “demographic winter” was that the qualities and characteristics of what it means to be Russian were in danger of being redefined as something other than White and Orthodox.17 Anxious to reassert whiteness and Russian Orthodox religious practice as fundamental qualities of Russianness, Antonov, Medkov, and Carlson’s team at the Howard Center determined that they needed to “use [their] talents and resources to create new coalitions to promote the natural family worldwide.”18

They convened the first World Congress of Families in Prague in March 1997. More than 700 delegates from 200 organizations across 43 nations gathered to forge a new interfaith alliance of conservative religious orthodoxies, including Russian Orthodox, LDS (Mormon), conservative Catholic, and conservative evangelical participants, as well as a few Orthodox Jews and Muslims.19

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With this collection of principles, designed to appeal to the broadest possible “traditional values” audience, WCF positioned itself as an umbrella organization for groups and individuals around the world (whether Christian or not) committed to codifying highly restrictive criteria for who counts as “family,” and who does not. The policy statement identifies underpopulation as “the demographic problem facing the 21st Century,” promotes “the large family as a special social gift,” and regards “religious orthodoxy as the source of humane values and cultural progress.”

Well-known and well-funded American organizations such as Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, Alliance Defense Fund (now called Alliance Defending Freedom), Americans United for Life, and the National Organization for Marriage signed on as dues-paying partners, expanding WCF’s reach. (For all its influence, WCF remains small, with only five full-time employees and a modest budget—the Howard Center’s 2012 IRS filings reported total revenue of just $523,870.)

Natural Deception: Conned By the World Congress of Families | Political Research Associates

‘Only God’ Can Stop Gay Marriage - The Daily Beast

Two points I harp about, the rash of alleged "religious liberty" incidents and the exporting of hate,,,

"They have a tough road ahead, and more and more they're being honest about that. That's becoming their new cry, now they're the David against Goliath," said Jeremy Hooper, a political consultant who has monitored the activities of anti-LGBT groups for a decade. “They're owning the fact that they're at a loss now.”

Those who have watched anti-gay groups closely suggest that there will be two major strategic shifts in their strategy.

First, as opposition to gay marriage collapses, American anti-LGBT activists will slow their battle against it. Instead, they’ll fight for the rights of those who hold anti-gay views—with resources shifting to so-called “religious freedom” groups.

"It's becoming increasingly evident that where the opponents of same-sex marriage can make a serious case is that it is a violation of religious liberty to sanction same-sex marriage," said Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a long-time adovate for marriage equality. “[Their strategy is] to circle the wagons and say, look, if we're not going to win the debate on the public legitimacy of same-sex marriage, we can win the religious liberty one so that we don't have to be a part of this."

And second, with falling support domestically, many anti-LGBT groups will take their message abroad to places where the momentum is with them.

“It looks like the hardest core of anti-gay marriage advocates are turning their attention overseas, by lobbying for anti-gay marriage and anti-gay rights in places like Uganda and Russia,” Rauch said.

‘Only God’ Can Stop Gay Marriage - The Daily Beast

‘Only God’ Can Stop Gay Marriage - The Daily Beast

Those who have watched anti-gay groups closely suggest that there will be two major strategic shifts in their strategy.

First, as opposition to gay marriage collapses, American anti-LGBT activists will slow their battle against it. Instead, they’ll fight for the rights of those who hold anti-gay views—with resources shifting to so-called “religious freedom” groups.

"It's becoming increasingly evident that where the opponents of same-sex marriage can make a serious case is that it is a violation of religious liberty to sanction same-sex marriage," said Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a long-time adovate [sic] for marriage equality. “[Their strategy is] to circle the wagons and say, look, if we're not going to win the debate on the public legitimacy of same-sex marriage, we can win the religious liberty one so that we don't have to be a part of this."

And second, with falling support domestically, many anti-LGBT groups will take their message abroad to places where the momentum is with them.

“It looks like the hardest core of anti-gay marriage advocates are turning their attention overseas, by lobbying for anti-gay marriage and anti-gay rights in places like Uganda and Russia,” Rauch said.

‘Only God’ Can Stop Gay Marriage - The Daily Beast