a review of religion and media
A giant congratulations to The Revealer‘s founding editor, Jeff Sharlet, recipient of the Molly National Journalism Prize, named for Molly Ivins and sponsored by The Texas Observer. The award is for Jeff’s Harper’s article on how US evangelicals contributed to the “Kill the Gays” bill in Uganda.
He beat out Maureen Dowd of The New York Times and Joshua Kors of The Nation. Continue Reading →
A week after David Kato, a rights activist, was killed in Uganda, President Obama attends the National Prayer Breakfast. More on Kato at the New Yorker. Continue Reading →
At the last minute Friday night, Brenda Namigadde, an activist from Uganda, was granted a reprieve by the UK from deportation. She had already boarded a plane bound for Uganda.
Targeted by the Ugandan paper Rolling Stone as a lesbian, along with one hundred other gay and lesbian activists — one of which, David Kato, was brutally killed last week — Namigadde is in danger should she return to her home country.
For more on Namigadde and the Rolling Stone (not affiliated with the U.S. magazine) article and on Uganda’s “kill the gays” bill and the influence American religious organizations have had on anti-homosexual violence there read here, here, here and here. Continue Reading →
Truth Wins Out takes the time to note contact information for senators and representatives as well as Ugandan officials affiliated with The Family and the “Kill the Gays” bill in Uganda. A vote, according to TWO’s Wayne Bresen is slated for some time after January 18th.
For more, read Warren Throckmorton here. Continue Reading →
Uganda’s parliament will soon vote on the so-called “Kill the Gays” bill which originally called for the death penalty for homosexual acts but has been stepped back to require life imprisonment. Michael Wilkerson writes today at Religion Dispatches about The Call’s event this weekend in Kampala that was organized to rally support for the bill. In attendance as guest of honor was Lou Engle, the American leader of The Call, who has professed ignorance of the bill’s details. Under recent gay-rights pressure, Engle has softened his position but apparently not enough to condemn the bill or to refrain from appearing at the event with its author, David Bahati, a member of The Family, the secretive American fundamentalist organization that has been extensively profiled by The Revealer founding editor Jeff Sharlet. Jeff was also at the event on Sunday. We look forward to his report. Continue Reading →