There's welcome news out of the U.K. this week: the government-established Charity Commission has ruled that the adoption agency Catholic Care must abide by anti-discrimination laws and therefore may not refuse to consider same-sex couples as prospective parents:

The Charity Commission... ruled that discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation is a "serious matter" because it "departs from the principle of treating people equally", and that religious views cannot justify such bias because adoption is a public matter.

..."In certain circumstances, it is not against the law for charities to discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation. However, because the prohibition on such discrimination is a fundamental principle of human rights law, such discrimination can only be permitted in the most compelling circumstances. We have concluded that in this case the reasons Catholic Care have set out do not justify their wish to discriminate."

Predictably, Catholic Care is now planning to shut down, since as is abundantly clear by now, this church would rather see children go homeless than deliver them into the care of stable, loving families whose lifestyle the Catholic church disapproves of. Eleven other Catholic adoption agencies in England have all closed down already for the same reason, and this is the last one still in operation. If it closes its doors, that will be the end of Catholic-run adoption services in the country - and I say, good riddance.

The closure of Catholic adoption agencies can be likened to the disappearance of an industry because technology has provided a new way to do the same work more cheaply or efficiently. Yes, in the short run, this causes pain and dislocation for people who used to perform a job that's no longer required and are now out of work. But in the long run, it's better for our economy that obsolete industries vanish, because that portion of society's resources can be redirected into more valuable and productive endeavors.

Just so is the disappearance of prejudiced religious charities. In the short run, it may cause pain and hardship for the people those charities were willing to serve. But in the long run, it's better for society that they vanish, because that slack will inevitably be taken up by new groups that cater to everyone, without fear or favor, and don't arbitrarily exclude or refuse to help people who don't fit a narrow set of prejudices. (See this post for an example of how this has worked in Washington, D.C.)

This story is a classic example of why I asked how much good religious charities really do. Catholic Care's refusal to abide by pro-equality laws shows that their main priority isn't helping people in need, but enforcing religious discrimination, partitioning the world into sets of people whom they judge as worthy or unworthy of their aid. A group like this doesn't deserve the support of the public or the state, just as we wouldn't tolerate a charity that refused to serve black people. It's better that they disappear so that they can be replaced by an organization whose only goal is to do good, rather than one that sees doing good as a side effect of promoting their archaic and narrow-minded worldview.

I've written before about the ongoing schism within the Episcopal church, but those posts only concerned the goings-on in America. Now that battle has spread across the Atlantic and into the heart of Anglicanism, and it's looking more and more likely that the church will be cloven in two at its roots. As reported by the Telegraph, the Anglican General Synod has rejected a last-ditch compromise brokered by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and nominal head of the Anglican church, to prevent conservative members from breaking away.

Conservative and evangelical Anglican sects have been growing increasingly angered by the appointment of women and gay men to be bishops. They exerted their muscle last week to block the promotion of Jeffrey John, a gay man, to the post of Bishop of Southwark. But the conservatives weren't satisfied with that victory - in fact, as is usual with the religious right, it only led them to make further demands.

The conservative faction of Anglicans don't like women serving as bishops, and they especially don't like being subordinate to women bishops. What they wanted was, in effect, religious apartheid - a certain number of bishop positions reserved for men, with the assurance that conservative congregations wouldn't have to report to or deal with a female bishop if they didn't want to. Rowan Williams backed the proposal - though a liberal himself, he's apparently willing to compromise with bigots, as is also shown by his revolting remarks on sharia law. But the larger Anglican Communion wouldn't go along with the deal, and in a shock vote, Williams' proposal was defeated by a narrow margin.

What's next? The likely result of the vote is that hundreds of conservative clergy and parishes will split off from the Anglican Communion, defecting to the Roman Catholic church, which has offered to accept them and their prejudices with open arms (no surprise there). Personally, I don't see why the liberal Anglicans are going to such effort to keep them. Why would you want to share a church with a bunch of bigots?

If I were a liberal Anglican, I'd not only be welcoming the conservatives' exit, I'd be encouraging them. Yes, they'll diminish the church's numbers and prestige; yes, the money they contributed will be lost. But are those the most important things? This ridiculous effort to preserve unity at any cost, even if it means coddling the feelings of homophobes and misogynists, suggests that the Anglicans aren't ready to move into the 21st century after all. I say to them, kick the bigots out and move on with your lives! Show the world that you really value justice and equality. And while you're at it, you might want to consider reevaluating that book that gave them those ideas in the first place. Get rid of that, and you'd really have a religion worth believing in!

Although I've learned not to expect much from the right-leaning Supreme Court, I've been pleasantly surprised by some of their recent decisions. First was Holy See v. John Doe, in which the court upheld a ruling that the Vatican isn't immune from lawsuits over its protection of pedophiles. The second was Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, in which a Christian student group sued a California law school to demand - what else? - the legal right to discriminate against gays.

The law school has a policy that all official student groups must accept all comers and may not turn anyone away on grounds of race, gender, or sexual orientation. The Christian group claimed that they should be able to exclude gays and still receive all the benefits granted to officially recognized student groups: university funding, the use of university facilities for meetings, and the right to use the university's newsletter for their communications. Fortunately, the Supreme Court disagreed:

The court held that the all-comers condition on access to a limited public forum was both reasonable and viewpoint neutral, and therefore did not violate CLS's right to free speech. Nor, in the court's view, did Hastings impermissibly impair CLS's right to expressive association: Hastings did not order CLS to admit any student, nor did the school proscribe any speech; Hastings merely placed conditions on the use of school facilities and funds.

This decision was both simple and reasonable, and is the obvious consequence of state and federal laws forbidding the government to cooperate in discrimination. Since the activity fee that funds student groups is mandatory, Hastings' policy ensures that no student is "forced to fund a group that would reject her as a member". As the court points out, other groups such as fraternities and sororities don't have official school recognition, yet they continue to thrive, and CLS is also still in existence and still holding its own events.

Departing Justice John Paul Stevens summed up the issue at hand in his concurrence, in a praiseworthy reminder that religiously inspired bigotry is no different than any other kind of bigotry:

Other groups may exclude or mistreat Jews, blacks, and women — or those who do not share their contempt for Jews, blacks, and women. A free society must tolerate such groups. It need not subsidize them, give them its official imprimatur, or grant them equal access to law school facilities.

All well and good, and I look forward to this decision being applied across the country. (Yes, I'm perfectly happy to see it apply to atheist groups as well.) But then I got a news alert directing me to this column, by Mike Adams on the ultra-right-wing site Townhall. As you'd expect, he's furious that the government won't cooperate in spreading his prejudice, and he's threatening to do something about it:

...when I get back to the secular university in August, I plan to round up the students I know who are most hostile to atheism. Then I'm going to get them to help me find atheist-haters willing to join atheist student groups across the South. I plan to use my young fundamentalist Christian warriors to undermine the mission of every group that disagrees with me on the existence of God.

That means an invading group can turn a smaller, weaker group into second class citizens on campus. That's what I intend to do to those groups who do not believe in God.

I do not seek robust debate. I seek power over the godless heathen dissident.

Now obviously, this is just a petulant tantrum. I don't expect Adams to actually attempt this idiotic plan, but even if he tried, it would be easy to thwart him. The court's decision pointed out that student groups could still, for example, expel members who didn't pay dues, or restrict officer positions to those who had been members for a year or more. If his "young Christian warriors" wanted to disrupt an atheist club, they'd have to sit and wait for a year, paying to promote atheism the whole time, before they'd get their chance. I doubt many Christians would be willing to do that. Or an atheist law students' club could just forgo official recognition, exactly as the court emphasized that they could, and restrict their membership to professing nonbelievers.

What concerns me more is that Mike Adams isn't just some random wingnut. According to his biography, he's a criminology professor at UNC-Wilmington.

It's one thing for professors to express political opinions. Liberal or conservative, they have the same free-speech rights as anyone else. It's something else altogether for Adams, a college professor, to proclaim that he seeks "power" over students on his own campus who disagree with him, that he "can't stand" them, that he wants to "undermine" and "destroy" their associations, and that his goal is to reduce them to "second-class citizens". It's chilling and inappropriate in the extreme for any person to make such statements about people over whom he has legitimate authority. If I were an atheist student, after reading this, I wouldn't be confident of fair treatment in Adams' class. (Just imagine the response from the right wing if an atheist professor wrote a column saying that he can't stand Christian students, wants to treat them as second-class citizens, and plans to disrupt and destroy their church meetings.)

I plan to write to UNC-Wilmington to bring this column to their attention and to ask if they sanction these kinds of statements from their professors about their own students. Here's contact info for the dean of Adams' school. Anyone else want to join me in writing a polite letter?

The Supreme Court heard arguments recently in a case out of California, in which a Christian student group at a public law school sued because they were denied recognition and funding by the school. The reason for this denial is that the school requires student groups to be open to all members, and the Christian Legal Society wants to ban - you'll never see it coming - people who are guilty of "unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle". That means gays and gays alone, of course, since being gay is the only sin that Christians care about now. The Bible also prohibits divorce quite clearly [Matthew 19:6], but I've heard no allegation that this group seeks to exclude people who are "unrepentantly guilty" of having gotten divorced.

Some of the arguments before the Supreme Court verged on the comic, such as this exchange:

"Are you suggesting that if a group wanted to exclude all black people, all women, all handicapped persons, whatever other form of discrimination a group wants to practice, that a school has to accept that group and recognize it, give it funds and otherwise lend it space?" asked Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

No, McConnell said. "The stipulation is that they may not exclude based on status or beliefs. We have only challenged the beliefs, not status. Race, any other status basis, Hastings is able to enforce."

"What if the belief is that African Americans are inferior?" Justice John Paul Stevens said.

"Again, I think they can discriminate on the basis of belief, but not on the basis of status," McConnell said.

So apparently, a student group would not be able to outright bar black people, but would be able to bar black people who refuse to sign a sworn statement declaring their belief in the racial inferiority of black people. Totally different! Thanks for clearing that up.

The Christian group's lawsuit claimed that their constitutional rights of free association and free speech are being denied, which is an obvious falsehood. No one's freedom of association is being denied; the Christian group, or any other group, can select its membership based on any criteria they like. The issue is whether the school, which as a public institution is an arm of the government, must subsidize that discrimination by giving official recognition and funding to such a group. This question should have been settled long ago, but while the CLS isn't seeking to overturn civil-rights laws, it obviously wants to carve out an exception permitting them to practice anti-gay bigotry with state support as long as it's founded on religious belief (as if racism of past eras was not also justified with religion).

Sadly, this revolting argument isn't an American aberration. On the other side of the pond, Christian fundamentalists in the U.K. (yes, they do exist!) are making exactly the same argument:

A top judge was warned that court rulings against Christian workers risk causing "civil unrest" as he heard the case of a relationship counsellor who was sacked after refusing to give sex advice to homosexual couples. Gary McFarlane's barrister said that laws banning discrimination had taken precedence over religious freedoms.

...Christian leaders are particularly concerned by a ruling by Lord Neuberger, the Master of the Rolls on behalf of the Court of Appeal. Lillian Ladele, a registrar who refused to conduct civil partnerships because they were against her beliefs, was deemed to have broken the law and could no longer work as a registrar.

They claim that the ruling meant that the right to express the Christian faith must take second place to the rights of homosexuals.

That last sentence could be more accurately written as follows: "They claim that the ruling meant that the right of Christians to be bigots must take second place to the rights of homosexuals to be free of bigotry."

After all this time, Christian fundamentalists are still committing the same fallacy I pointed out in one of my very first posts: the erroneous belief that their free exercise rights have been violated if they haven't been accommodated in any way they demand. They've very successfully managed to remain ignorant of the fact that having freedom of religion means, if you have religious objections to performing the duties of a job, then you're free to not take that job. There are plenty of positions where you're not required to serve the public, if these people find the idea of rendering service to a gay person so utterly unthinkable.

But no. They seek the right not just to express their opinions as private citizens, but to carry those opinions over into the performance of their official duties and decide who they will or will not serve based on whom their religious beliefs tell them to hate. What next? Christian doctors who won't treat gay people because they believe God is punishing them with plagues? Christian firefighters who refuse to extinguish a burning house if a gay couple lives there? Christian policemen who refuse to arrest a person who assaults or murders a gay man? Where does it stop?

What these loathsome fundamentalists really want is to make up their own laws based on their personal religious beliefs. And once we allow them to do that in even one area - once we accept that religious beliefs ever trump the equal protection of the law - there's no consistent place where this principle should end. The only rational thing to do is to draw the line right at the beginning, and declare that bigotry and hate are never valid reasons for treating people unequally - the same argument that's already accepted in the case of race and gender. There's every reason to believe that the day is rapidly approaching when the Christians who seek to safeguard their own right to discriminate will be considered just as reprehensible as the bigots of past eras who fought equal rights for women and black people.

You've probably heard of Constance McMillen, a lesbian student at a Mississippi high school who wanted to bring her girlfriend as her date to her senior prom this year. The school officials, not even attempting to disguise their bigotry, refused to grant permission - and then canceled the entire prom rather than face a discrimination lawsuit which they'd be certain to lose. (In fact McMillen and her family did bring a suit, and the judge did rule that she had been discriminated against, but he held that it wasn't in his power to force the school to hold a prom.)

In a brilliant move, the American Humanist Association responded by offering to hold a private, LGBT-friendly prom for Constance's school in which everyone would be welcome, regardless of sexual orientation. This was made possible by a $20,000 grant from Todd Stiefel, an atheist philanthropist who serves on the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America.

As I said, this was a brilliant move. Not only does it reaffirm that atheists and secular humanists support the civil rights of LGBT people, it shows the students at Constance's high school that, after their bigoted school board was prepared to deny them a prom, it was a group of nonbelievers who made it possible after all. It was clearly an excellent idea, winners all around - and everyone agreed, it seems, except the Mississippi ACLU.

To avoid further controversy, the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi has rejected a $20,000 gift intended to underwrite an alternate prom replacing one canceled by a local school district after a lesbian student demanded that she be allowed to attend with her girlfriend.

..."Although we support and understand organizations like yours, the majority of Mississippians tremble in terror at the word 'atheist,'" Jennifer Carr, the fund-raiser for the A.C.L.U of Mississippi, wrote in an e-mail message to Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the humanist group.

...Ms. Carr wrote to Mr. Speckhardt: "Our staff has been talking a lot about your donation offer and have found ourselves in a bit of a conflict. We have fears that your organization sponsoring the prom could stir up even more controversy."

Obligatory snark: The ACLU - not afraid to defend the free speech rights of Nazis, but too scared to take money from a bunch of atheists!

But I'm being unfair, because this isn't where the story ends. First, the ACLU didn't actually have the authority to decline the AHA's gift, because a different group, the Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition, is organizing the private prom. Second, it appears that this message didn't represent the sentiments of the ACLU as a whole, because they swiftly apologized and announced that they had no objection to the gift. This is a much better decision, and I command the ACLU and accept their apology with no hard feelings. I assume the AHA will do likewise.

Even so, this response says something about how atheists are still looked down upon. Even the ACLU - a group whose purpose is to defend the civil liberties of every American, a group that's more than willing to defend gays and lesbians even though that minority causes no small amount of trembling among Mississippi voters - even their first response was to turn down money from atheists, lest they be tainted by their association with us.

Of course, in a state as conservative-dominated as Mississippi, this may be less of a surprise than it would be elsewhere. Still, it shows how much progress we have left to make in terms of winning public acceptance. And the best way to achieve this is to make a splash, to bring light into the darkest of places - which means that Mississippi is one of the best places to start!

Every so often, I get a letter I just have to share - whether because it's so eloquent and insightful that I want more people to read it, or because the author deserves to be roundly mocked by as many people as possible. Here's an example of the latter.

I got this e-mail the other day. It starts out as seemingly thoughtful praise from someone who's obviously taken the time to read my website; then it abruptly takes a different turn:

Dear Ebon Musings:

Your front page essay is beautifully evocative; thank you. (You might want to change the word "miniscule" to "minuscule," however.)

Your passage "From the sky at night, our planet is covered by a spiderweb of glowing lights, testament to our ability to invent and innovate...." was particularly thought-provoking. There are places on the planet, semi-continental in scale, where the human population is quite high, yet the face of the land is almost bereft of light. Satellite imagery makes this quite clear. It is very dark there. The inescapable conclusion is that human evolution has not proceeded equally on every continent.

Of course, it's very "politically incorrect" to notice this fact, as James Watson discovered. But I suppose I can discuss it with you, since you, as the author of the Ninth New Commandment, would find the very concept of "political correctness" to be repugnant.

With all good wishes,

Kevin Alfred Strom.

OK, here's all you need to know about Kevin Alfred Strom: He's a neo-Nazi, an anti-Semite, and the former head of a now-defunct white supremacist group called National Vanguard. He's also served time in prison after pleading guilty to possession of child pornography. (If you read his website, which I won't link to, you'll find a long screed in which he vehemently asserts his innocence and blames the charges on a vast conspiracy of enemies who've persecuted him for no good reason.)

So much for Mr. Strom's résumé. The only question I've got is: What makes this Nazi cretin think I want to be his friend? Seriously, is there anything on my website that might have had even the slightest possibility of giving him the mistaken idea that I have any sympathy whatsoever for his ideas? Or is it just that racists are so desperate to find support for their views that they can delude themselves into seeing it even where it doesn't exist?

In a way, it almost makes me feel sorry for him. (Note: I said "almost".) I'd imagine that most racists are deeply miserable and desperately lonely people - and Strom's child-porn conviction has probably alienated him even from other racists. Reaching out to some random stranger on the internet, in the hope that he'll be sympathetic to you, is the kind of thing a person might do under those circumstances. But I must admit that, given the circumstances, I enjoy dashing those hopes. I view all racists as beneath contempt, and I have special scorn for the ones, like this one, that lie and distort evolution in the vain hope of finding scientific validation for their bigotry. Nothing pleases me more than the knowledge that Mr. Strom and his kind are a dying breed.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned briefly that the Catholic church had threatened to pull out of Washington, D.C., ending the social services they provide for thousands of people, if the city council passed a law recognizing same-sex marriage. Well, the council did pass the bill, same-sex marriage is now legal in D.C. (congratulations!), and the church looks set to keep its promise, starting with the termination of their foster-care program. They've also decided to end spousal benefits for all employees, including terminating the benefits of existing employees, rather than give those benefits to same-sex partners.

Happily, as AU reports, this story has a positive ending: Since Catholic Charities has shut down their foster-care and adoption program, the service they used to provide will now be offered by other groups, including the National Center for Children and Families, that will get the public funding the Catholic group used to receive. Well done, Washington, and shame on this despicable, bigoted church that would apparently rather see children go parentless than have to provide health insurance to gay people.

On a similar note, there's this story of a 5-year-old who was expelled from a private Catholic preschool because his parents are lesbians:

In a statement sent to 9NEWS, the Archdiocese said, "Homosexual couples living together as a couple are in disaccord with Catholic teaching."

..."No person shall be admitted as a student in any Catholic school unless that person and his/her parent(s) subscribe to the school's philosophy and agree to abide by the educational policies and regulations of the school and Archdiocese," the statement said.

Editorial note: Does this school plan to expel all students whose parents are divorced? Maybe they should also send around a questionnaire asking parents if they use birth control so they can expel the children of the ones who answer yes. Of course, since something like 90% of American adults, Catholics included, use contraception, this might lead to a fairly steep dropoff in those all-important tuition checks. It seems politically safer to only target members of relatively small minorities for persecution, rather than actually try to apply their own rules consistently.

On the positive side, it seems clear that the staff who run the school were appalled by the open bigotry and hatred of their church superiors - another clear sign that American Catholics are more progressive than their benighted hierarchy:

School staff members, who asked to remain anonymous, say they are disgusted by the Archdiocese's decision.

...Staff members said they were not allowed to discuss the decision after it was made. Some of them said they were disheartened to work at a school that preaches peace and love, but also makes this decision.

A memo to these staff members: As this and the previous story make clear, Roman Catholicism does not preach love - at least not in the unconditional, universal sense we generally think of when using that word. It preaches conditional, selective love - love only for people who are willing to submit to its insane dictates and obey the orders of the pompous frauds in charge - and that's a different animal altogether.

The church's shameless bigotry against gays and lesbians is all the more outrageous considering its own continuing crimes and hypocrisy. I wrote in my last post on the Catholic church that, given the sex abuse scandals in America, Ireland and Germany, it was a statistical inevitability that more stories of child rapists among the clergy would appear in other countries as well. Now similar allegations have been made in the Netherlands. More amusingly, there's this scandal in the Vatican itself:

The Vatican was today rocked by a sex scandal reaching into Pope Benedict's household after a chorister was sacked for allegedly procuring male prostitutes for a papal gentleman-in-waiting.

Angelo Balducci, a Gentleman of His Holiness, was caught by police on a wiretap allegedly negotiating with Thomas Chinedu Ehiem, a 29-year-old Vatican chorister, over the specific physical details of men he wanted brought to him.

And lastly, less amusingly, there's this story. The Catholic church in Ireland has racked up a $14 million bill for victim compensation after letting sexual predators in the clergy run rampant for thirty years, and the Bishop of Ferns, Denis Brennan, is asking his parishioners to pass the collection plate to cover the costs. As the Independent puts it:

In other words the Roman Catholic Church in Ferns is asking the victims of its own bitter failings to pay the price for the crime -- it is a request which beggars belief.

At this point, the church's callousness and hypocrisy has been demonstrated ad nauseam, so this no longer shocks me. The only thing that still surprises me is that a den of vipers like this one still thinks it has the authority to instruct the rest of us how we should treat our fellow human beings. Personally, I think the Pope and his hirelings ought to turn over all the remaining predators to the police, sell off the treasures of the Vatican to pay their court costs, and spend a few decades in sackcloth and ashes before they should even think of venturing an opinion on moral topics again.

Postscript: Although it's not a sex scandal, there was one more story that came out just after I wrote this that I couldn't omit: the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has banned voluntary end-of-life measures in the more than 600 Catholic hospitals and nursing homes around the country. In other words, Catholic institutions will no longer honor patients' living wills stating that they don't wish to be kept alive by feeding tubes if they're irreversibly comatose or terminally ill.

Although the law protects patients from being subjected to any medical treatment against their will, it's easy to see how this decision could be used by Catholic hospital administrators to coerce grief-stricken families and patients who may not be capable of expressing their desires. Even in the best case, it will almost certainly lead to more pointless suffering as patients who don't want to be kept artificially alive try to find another hospital to transfer to that will respect their wishes. We need to publicize the evil and tyrannical pretensions of the bishops, and I suggest this slogan: "If you want to have a feeding tube forcibly crammed down your throat or run through a hole cut into your stomach so you can be kept alive to suffer, then make sure you go to a Catholic hospital!"

In the U.S., the cause of gay and lesbian rights has made major advances in the last few decades. Anti-discrimination laws are in wide effect, including a recently passed federal hate-crime law; marriage equality is already an established reality in several states; and despite setbacks, the now overwhelming tolerance and acceptance of gays and lesbians among younger generations heralds further progress in the future.

But in spite of these hopeful signs, the hatemongers and bigots of the religious right aren't giving up. As their cause slowly, but inexorably dries up at home, they're spreading their poisonous seed to foreign countries where it takes root in more welcoming soil.

Such is the state of affairs in the country of Uganda, where American evangelicals have long enjoyed a disproportionate degree of influence over the government. Homosexuality was already illegal in Uganda and has been for a long time, but Ugandan religious conservatives have learned from their American counterparts that even an oppressed and politically powerless group can easily be depicted as a menacing enemy in propaganda campaigns intended to stir up fear and hate among their followers. Just such a campaign has led to a proposed "Anti-Homosexuality Bill", which threatens to open the floodgates for the state-sanctioned mass murder of gay and lesbian people.

As previously discussed on Daylight Atheism, this bill would imprison homosexuals for life, and in some cases, would establish a crime of "aggravated homosexuality", which is punishable by death. But what I haven't discussed as much is the shockingly large role that American evangelicals played, both in the propaganda campaign that led up to it, as well as in the actual drafting of the bill itself. An article from the New York Times from earlier this month has the details, including the names of several key figures:

Scott Lively, a missionary who has written several books against homosexuality, including "7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child"; Caleb Lee Brundidge, a self-described former gay man who leads "healing seminars"; and Don Schmierer, a board member of Exodus International, whose mission is "mobilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality"...

As the article explains, these missionaries visited Uganda in March 2009, giving a series of talks about how "the gay movement is an evil institution" which seeks to prey on boys, eliminate marriage and replace it with "a culture of sexual promiscuity". And just a month later, a Ugandan politician introduced the bill, which threatens to punish gays and lesbians with death.

Naturally, these American evangelicals claim they never wanted this outcome and profess shock that anyone could have misconstrued them in this way. But before Western media picked up on it, they were far less reticent:

But the Ugandan organizers of the conference admit helping draft the bill, and Mr. Lively has acknowledged meeting with Ugandan lawmakers to discuss it. He even wrote on his blog in March that someone had likened their campaign to "a nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda."

Whether Lively and the others knew specifically about the death penalty provision is uncertain - but to claim that they were entirely ignorant of what the government was planning is a claim that strains credulity.

In the face of Western threats to withdraw millions of foreign aid, the Ugandan government has backed down slightly - offering to change the death penalty provision to life imprisonment, as if that was an improvement - but whether the bill will pass, and what its final form will be, are still very much open questions. A hint of the attitude that still prevails comes from the Ugandan minister of ethics and integrity, who recently said, "Homosexuals can forget about human rights."

If this bill passes, the evangelicals who played a role in its creation will have bloody hands. All their pious pleas of naivete and innocence cannot change what their actions have wrought. They chose to travel to an extremely anti-gay country and try to whip the populace up into a frenzy of hatred and fear. And they profess shock at the outcome, but they shouldn't be surprised: all that's happened is that the Ugandan government has taken them at their word and proposed a policy that's the logical conclusion of their starting premises.

How else did they expect the government to react to claims, like these ones made by Lively, that the gay movement is raping and preying on children, that they're recruiting and bribing young boys to engage in sexual relationships with older men, that they're importing pornography "to weaken the moral fiber of the people", that they want to abolish marriage and replace it with a culture that embraces "sexual anarchy"? They've systematically portrayed gays and lesbians as evil deviants defying the law and engaging in a malevolent conspiracy to destroy Ugandan society. Did they really think the Ugandan government would do nothing more than build some Christian therapy centers?

To be absolutely fair, I don't doubt that Lively and the others are sincere when they claim they weren't seeking the execution of homosexuals. It's just that their brand of shrill, hysterical rhetoric is what they're accustomed to using; in America, it often gets them their way. But in America, this intemperate language is counterbalanced by a strong feminist movement and an effective system of constitutional rights. In Uganda, neither of those things exist; and again, the Ugandan government didn't treat their speeches as rally-the-troops political posturing, as American politicians and media usually do. Instead, they treated them as literal truth and acted accordingly. This potential theocratic horror is the result.

But this outcome was completely predictable, which is why the American evangelicals will have bloody hands if this bill does pass. If they haven't acted with malice aforethought, they've shown reckless indifference at the very least. Like the right-wing pundits whose deranged rhetoric pushes some of their more unstable followers over the edge, they will bear moral responsibility for whatever may result. (A little more credit, but only a very little, goes to Rick Warren, who after weeks of silence and an onslaught of bad press was finally shamed into offering a grudging condemnation of the bill.)

So, the next time the gay-bashing evangelicals claim to know what's best - the next time they claim to have moral authority over the rest of us - remember this moment. Remember their bloody hands. Remember their guilt and their responsibility. They'd clearly love for this whole sordid story to be forgotten. That's an opportunity we should be certain to deny them.

Back in January, I alluded briefly to the events in Uganda, where Christian abstinence-only programs have reversed the success of comprehensive sex ed and led to a rise in HIV infection rates. At the time, I mentioned Martin Ssempa, a pastor in the country's booming Pentecostal Christian movement, and his involvement in a campaign to criminalize homosexuality.

But this news has taken an even more ominous turn. Homosexuality was already illegal in Uganda, but a bill currently being discussed in that country's Parliament - and staunchly advocated by Ssempa and other Ugandan religious leaders - is even more draconian than the country's current repressive laws.

Under the bill, a person who was convicted of gay sex would receive life imprisonment. But if that person was found to be HIV-positive, this would result in a charge of "aggravated homosexuality", which carries the death penalty. Equally horribly, a person who was merely aware of homosexual activity but failed to report it to the police within 24 hours would themselves face a prison term - an extraordinarily evil measure that seems designed to deny gays and lesbians the right of shelter even among their own family and friends. Advocating for any increased rights for gays and lesbians, which would presumably include advocating a rollback of this bill, would also result in imprisonment.

This story is directly relevant to American readers because Uganda, in many ways, is the darling and the success story of the American religious right. As Kathryn Joyce explains in a Religion Dispatches interview with Rev. Kapya Kaoma, American evangelicals have been exporting their brand of conservative, homophobic culture-war politics to Africa for some time, and have had direct access to government officials in many African countries. (See also this commentary by Michelle Goldberg.)

Rick Warren in particular is held in high esteem there, and Martin Ssempa, the man who's pushing for the mass execution of homosexuals, is a friend and protege of Warren's. He's made multiple appearances at Warren's Saddleback Church in the past. And most shockingly, while Warren claims to have severed ties with Ssempa, he initially refused to denounce this proposed law! As Lisa Miller of Newsweek notes:

But Warren won't go so far as to condemn the legislation itself. A request for a broader reaction to the proposed Ugandan antihomosexual laws generated this response: "The fundamental dignity of every person, our right to be free, and the freedom to make moral choices are gifts endowed by God, our creator. However, it is not my personal calling as a pastor in America to comment or interfere in the political process of other nations."

When Warren was pressed on this point, his second response was to post a petulant reply to Twitter, claiming that because no one ever says anything about Christians being martyred for their faith, he shouldn't have to care about legislation that would kill gays and lesbians. The fact that one of the backers of this legislation was his protege is something that he doesn't seem to feel any guilt or moral responsibility at all for.

After several weeks of solid negative coverage, Warren finally issued a condemnation of the bill. Yet, as Archy points out, most of his stated reasons boil down to a claim that it would make the church's mission more difficult, and he tries to dodge some inconvenient connections between himself and influential figures of the Ugandan government (see also). In the end, Warren did the right thing - but only just barely, and again, it's extremely telling how much heat he had to take before he could be shamed into speaking out.

The theocratic terror state proposed in Uganda is the logical endpoint of the religious right's anti-gay agenda and its inflammatory, homophobic rhetoric. Having nurtured and fostered this movement for so long, it's much too late for them to wash their hands clean of it now. If they had any conscience, they would recognize the horrible evil they've created and would repent and devote themselves to opposing this bill before it comes to pass. But instead, their response has been noncommittal, tepid, even mildly supportive. That speaks worlds about what their true intentions are, what they hope to do in Uganda, and what they would do in America and the rest of the world if they have the chance.

Although the New York Daily News has no problem endorsing astrology on its news pages, the idea of giving sympathetic coverage to atheism is apparently too much for them to swallow. In a recent issue, they published this obnoxiously bigoted column from Gabriel Gillen, a Dominican friar, which manages to cram just about every anti-atheist slur in the book into a brief space.

We start with the old standby: pick a controversial atheist, accuse him of hypocrisy or some other charge, and assume that he somehow speaks for or represents all atheists:

...the well-known atheist Peter Singer. When his own mother lay helpless with Alzheimer's disease, he broke all of his own rules, thus throwing away his credibility as a utilitarian philosopher onto the tracks: He came to her rescue.

Let me explain: he went against his own moral code, which in this case would have required him not to help his mother because it is more logical to help others with a better probability of surviving. There is logic to Singer's reasoning, but it just seems too... heartless. Thankfully, Singer's heroic actions speak louder than his radically rationalistic vision.

And of course, what column attacking atheists would be complete without trying to taint us by association with the Nazis and Communists:

The atheistic ideologies of Nazism and Communism did not produce earthly paradises, but only tragic regimes of terror that trampled human dignity and freedom.

Just for the record, these would be the the Nazis who handed out translations of the Bible and wore "God With Us" on their uniforms, and the Communists who made alliances with Christian clergy and persecuted atheists for not falling in step with their political goals.

It's good to see the vast majority of the comments on the Daily News' site shredding Gillen. I took it upon myself to write a comment in response as well:

I'm stunned at the lapse of editorial judgment that evidently must have occurred to permit this brazen bigotry to be published in the Daily News. This column is a parade of offensive and revolting stereotypes that no newspaper would even have considered printing if the target was anyone other than atheists, and most of its accusations are outright falsehoods.

Recent surveys have found that up to 15% of the American population are atheists, and that in New York and other northeastern cities, that percentage is even higher. Whether you know it or not, you meet atheists on the street every day. We are policemen, firefighters, military veterans, doctors, teachers. We give to charitable causes, love our friends and neighbors, and care about the welfare of humanity every bit as much as religious people. How dare this despicable apologist imply otherwise? And how dare he accuse us of lacking moral values, when he represents a church that sheltered sex predators and moved them around so they could continue to prey on children; a church that still opposes equal rights for gays and lesbians; a church whose irrational and superstitious opposition to contraception is contributing to the deaths of millions of people around the world from AIDS and other preventable STDs?

Before you criticize atheists, Mr. Gillen, you should set your own house in order. Don't presume to lecture us as long as you still represent the cruel and irrational values of the medieval era.