Category: bigotry

Constance McMillen Clarion Ledger photo by Matthew Sharpe

Itawamba Agricultural High School in Fulton, Mississippi cancelled the school prom Wednesday after officials learned that an 18-year-old senior, Constance McMillen, planned to attend the dance with her girlfriend and to wear a tuxedo to the annual event, which had been scheduled for April 2.

In a message to students announcing the cancellation, the school board suggested that a private group should host an independent prom instead, Jacksonville Clarion Ledger reports.

“We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this causes anyone,” the message concluded.

McMillen told the Clarion Ledger that the board’s action is retaliation.

“That's really messed up,” she said, “because the message they are sending is that if they have to let gay people go to prom that they are not going to have one.”

When school administrators told her last month that she wouldn’t be allowed into the prom with her girlfriend, McMillen contacted American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi which sent a letter to the district asking them to drop objections to same-sex dates. The school board responded with its letter cancelling the prom.

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Ugandan pastor and anti-gay activist Martin Ssempa via Box Turtle Bulletin

LGBT activists in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa on Thursday called for the arrest of a notoriously anti-gay pastor who showed gay porn at his church on the outskirts of Kampala, Uganda’s capital city, South Africa’s Independent reports.

Martin Ssempa, one of the main backers of a bill before parliament that would impose the death penalty for some offenders, aired an explicit slideshow to more than 300 people during a Wednesday church service, the Guardian reports.

Explaining his decision to display the images, the evangelical preacher said it was necessary to educate people “about what homosexuals do”.

South African-based gay rights group Behind the Mask described Ssempa’s slide show as “twisted homophobic propaganda”.

Julian Pepe, a leader of gay and lesbian rights group Sexual Minorities Uganda, said Ssempa “should be arrested because he is promoting pornography.”

“The fact that he showed this film to people below 18 years means he has committed a crime,” Pepe said, according to the Independent.

SMU’s chairman, Frank Mugisha, questioned Ssempa’s religious values. “He is showing these images in a church. What does he stand for?”

In neighboring Kenya, where anti-gay sentiment is also strong, Peter Njane of gay support group Ishtar said that by showing pornography Ssempa was trying to imply that being gay is “just about sex”, the Guardian reports.

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Anti-gay demonstration in Jinja, Uganda via Reuters video

A large crowd of people responded to calls from clerics and rallied Monday in the small town of Jinja in southwestern Uganda to protest against LGBT people, Xtra reports. Waving homemade signs with slogans including “Remember Sodom” and “It is time to stop homosexuality” the crowd marched through the town.

Jinja is about 40 miles from Uganda’s capital, Kampala, Reuters reports.

Trevor Snapp, an American freelance photojournalist who witnessed the march and the rally that followed, told Xtra, “If someone had been called out for being gay, they would have been ripped to shreds. Just the mere mention of homosexuality made people freak out, fall down and start shivering. It was really intense; kind of like a frenzy.”

Many protesters carried signs vilifying President Barack Obama for speaking out against Uganda’s proposed “Anti-Homosexuality Bill” which could, if passed, be used to sentence LGBT people to life in prison or to death in some cases. One sign showed a drawing of Obama with fangs in his mouth and horns coming out of his head, along with the words “No pact with the devil.”

Estimates of the crowd size vary widely. Xtra reports that only about 350 people turned out for what organizers had promoted as a “million-man” march, but Afrik.com estimates the number of protesters at about 4000. In a video report, Reuters estimates the crowd to have been “thousands” of protesters and calls it “the biggest demonstrations against homosexuals since the bill was introduced”.

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A likeness of Iris Robinson was featured on a float during Belfast Pride in 2008. photo via PinkNews

Comments made in 2008 by Northern Ireland member of parliament Iris Robinson managed to push her to the front of an unfortunately still-long list of anti-gay activists and politicians to win the “Bigot of the Year” award given out each year by British LGBT advocacy group Stonewall.

The flamboyantly anti-gay MP is Iris Robinson. In The Guardian, Fionola Meredith writes that Robinson “has always lived as though she is performing herself in the melodramatic movie of her life.”

That melodrama has now taken on elements of a seedy soap opera with revelations this week that Robinson attempted suicide last year after having an affair with a much younger man. A plot twist involving financial arrangements with the young man has been darkly suggested.

In Robinson’s self-created melodrama, LGBT people often played the role of villain. “I’d like to see them redeemed by Christ,” Robinson once told an interviewer, referring to LGBT people. 

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Rachel Maddow’s superb coverage of Uganda’s kill-gays bill has introduced the country to that draconian law that would, if passed, make homosexuality—broadly defined—punishable by life imprisonment or, in some cases, by hanging. She has also expertly delved into the connections between the bill’s sponsors in Uganda and  “Christian” anti-gay activists in the US.

But the best place to find in-depth coverage of the proposed law is a US blog.

Uganda’s “Anti-Homosexuality Bill” has been covered in great depth and stunning insight since before it was introduced by one of this country’s best blogs, Box Turtle Bulletin and its editor, Jim Burroway and three writers, including Thomas Kincaid. Their posts have traced the genesis of the bill from that first conference held in Kampala last March that attracted Ugandan politicians who interacted with three anti-gay US activists, up through the latest apologetics about the bill issued this week by a member of a Christian activist group on the Rachel Maddow Show.

They have shown in both detail and broad strokes how US anti-gay activists helped to shape the bill—some of the same so-called “Christian” activists who now say they do not support the bill.

After the break: See Box Turtle Bulletin video from the March anti-gay conference in Kampala

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About 250 of people rallied at Vallejo City Hall Tuesday evening to condemn recent comments made by Mayor Osby Davis, who was quoted in a New York Times column as saying gays and lesbians won’t be welcome in heaven, and saying he thinks his city should be regarded as a “city of God”.

The mayor's remarks, first published Nov. 20, have ignited a firestorm of controversy in the Solano County city, KTVU reports. It’s a firestorm that makes obvious long-simmering tensions between the city’s powerful right-wing churches and its booming LGBT population.

The protesters outside city hall waved rainbow flags, held signs demanding the separation of church and state, and some called for Davis' resignation.

But Vallejo Times Herald reports that a contrary roar interrupted the demonstration. It came from inside city hall where more than 100 people clapped, cheered, and “praised God” and Davis. Davis supporter had flocked to city hall for a scheduled city council meeting, which, instead, took on the character of a revival meeting.

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