Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, photo: AFP

Despite pressure from some groups to skip the event, President Obama attended the National Prayer Breakfast Thursday morning. But he used his speech at the event to strongly condemn the kill-gays bill in Uganda, which was introduced into that country’s parliament by a member a shadowy political-religious group that sponsors the prayer breakfast.

“We may disagree about gay marriage,” the president said, “but surely we can agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are, whether it is right here in the United States or as Hillary mentioned more extremely in odious laws that are being proposed most recently in Uganda.”

In her speech, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she and the administration as a whole are concerned with the plight of LGBT people throughout the world, NPR reports:

We are standing up for gays and lesbians who deserve to be treated as full human beings [Clinton said]. And we are also making it clear to countries and leaders that these are priorities of the United States. Every time I travel, I raise the plight of girls and women, and make it clear that we expect to see changes. And I recently called President Museveni, whom I have known through the prayer breakfast, and expressed the strongest concerns about a law being considered in the parliament of Uganda.

Obama condemns Uganda’s ‘kill-gays’ bill as ‘odious’ [contd.]

The proposed law was introduced by David Bahati, who is closely associated with The Family in Uganda. If adopted the law would impose draconian penalties—including the death penalty in some instances, and life imprisonment for most—for those convicted of being gay. The bill also targets those who do not report a gay person within 24 hours of finding out about the person. That aspect of the law places parents, teachers, landlords, health care workers, media, and religious leaders who counsel or work with HIV/AIDS infected persons at risk of imprisonment.

The annual National Prayer Breakfast is sponsored the secretive evangelical Christian organization that calls itself The Fellowship Foundation, and is also known as The Family. Its members include high ranking US government officials, corporate executives, heads of religious organizations, and ambassadors, as well as leaders other world governments, including Museveni in Uganda, Christian Post reports.

Ahead of the event, a group of House members yesterday introduced legislation condemning the Ugandan bill, AFP reports.

The symbolic measure asserts that “all people possess an intrinsic human dignity, regardless of sexual orientation, and share fundamental human rights,” and warned the Ugandan bill, if enacted, “would set a troubling precedent.”

Harry Knox, the director of the religion and faith program of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) said he asked the president to address the issue of Uganda at the breakfast, Dallas Voice reports.

Last week the activist group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) wrote to Obama and other politicians asking them to skip the prayer breakfast this year, even though it’s been attended by every president since 1953.

In its letter, CREW says the The Family “operates under a veil of secrecy concealing the source of its funding, its financial holdings, and its political goals”, the Guardian reports.

CREW's director, Melanie Sloan, said that by attending what she characterized as a “fundraising event” for The Family, Obama would be “giving [the group] legitimacy even though it has incredibly intolerant views”.

Sloan acknowledged that the prayer breakfast had been held for half a century without controversy but said that its association with Bahati and the secrecy of the group has opened the organization to scrutiny.

A group of progressive religious leaders and LGBT activists also staged a series of events, called American Prayer Hour, this morning to coincide with the prayer breakfast.

“The American Prayer Hour events will affirm inclusive values and call on all nations, including Uganda, to decriminalize the lives of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people,” its organizers said in a press release.

HRC’s Knox told Dallas Voice this morning that groups gathered in over 20 cities to pray for the lives of LGBT Ugandans and their families who are threatened with state-sanctioned murder.

Penn State University’s Jenny Trinitapoli, assistant professor of sociology, demography, and religious studies, told Voice of America that Obama’s attendance at the prayer breakfast and his remarks there about Uganda were not surprising. She noted that Obama a history of meeting with those who disagree with him—something he’s done even more of in the past week.

She said she was surprised he used the diplomatically strong word “odious” to describe the Ugandan legislation, but said it was appropriate for him to address the issue at the breakfast.

“The borders of religion transcend national borders.  And given the close connections between Christians in the United States and all over the world, not only in Africa, it seems like a very appropriate strategy to address, in particular, this very controversial issue,” she says.  “To not have said anything about it would have been a missed opportunity to each of them to demonstrate their moral leadership.”