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Uganda has passed one of the most extreme anti-LGBTQ laws in the world, and U.S. evangelical groups had their hands all over it.
The East African nation has long pursued criminalizing homosexuality, and a draft version calls for the death penalty for "serial offenders" and other cases involving gay sex, and American religious organizations have invested millions of dollars to deepen homophobic views commonly held in the region, reported the Washington Post.
"In 2020, London-based OpenDemocracy found that more than 20 American religious organizations advocating against LGBTQ rights, safe abortion, access to contraceptives and comprehensive sex education had spent at least $54 million furthering their agendas in Africa since 2007," wrote foreign affairs columnist Ishaan Tharoor. "Close to half that figure was spent in conservative, predominantly Christian Uganda alone, where religious advocates advocate for gay 'conversion therapy' and tout supposed success stories of 'ex-gay' people."
Evangelical pastor Scott Lively and other Americans delivered a series of lectures in Uganda almost 15 years ago that inflamed homophobia in the country, according to local LGBTQ rights activists, and his address to parliament promoted the idea that homosexuality was a Western-imported “disease” that could be spread to the country’s children.
IN OTHER NEWS: Rick Wilson: GOP primary is over and DeSantis is being 'nuked into a radioactive puddle by MAGA'
“This recasting of homosexuality as akin to pedophilia, alongside the widespread use of similar language, is meant to legitimize the response and crackdown by governments and institutions,” said Caleb Okereke, a Nigerian journalist.
Those same tactics are spreading back in the U.S., where Republican lawmakers have been targeting LGBTQ rights under the guise of protecting children from sex abuse, and Uganda serves as a warning.
“Ugandans have been radicalized into hatred for LGBTQ persons,” said Frank Mugisha, director of the LGBTQ rights group Sexual Minorities Uganda.
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Trump's threats against Alvin Bragg will blow up in his face when he goes to trial: John Dean
March 24, 2023
During an appearance on CNN on Friday morning, former White House attorney John Dean claimed Donald Trump will likely be put on the spot and regret the attacks he launched against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on his Truth Social account once he faces a judge.
On Thursday the former president raged all day long at the Manhattan DA who is expected to indict the former president soon, possibly next week. that culminated with a late threat of "death and destruction."
As Dean told host John Berman, any judge Trump will now face will be well aware of the former president's over-the-top violent rhetoric and may tie the twice-impeached president's hands with a gag order.
After mentioning the "death and destruction" post, host Berman asked, "What kind of situation do you think that creates?"
READ MORE: Rick Wilson: GOP primary is over and DeSantis is being 'nuked into a radioactive puddle by MAGA'
"I think it creates a very troubling situation for Mr. Trump when he goes in, if he is arraigned, and the judge is going to be made very aware of these statements," Dean claimed. "Recall that Roger Stone, the acolyte of Mr. Trump, was indicted and started putting the judge in crosshairs at one point on his line, on his online postings."
"This could be the same sort of thing where a judge has total power to just say 'listen, no more of that. You do that, you're in contempt of court,'" he elaborated. "They could shut down with a gag order Trump and stop this nonsense and these attacks and might well do so because they're already another case, a civil case, the E. Jean Carroll case that is about to go to trial and that judge decided he will keep the jury anonymous in that case because of the MAGA attacks."
Watch the video below or at this link.
CNN 03 24 2023 10 10 06 youtu.be
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Opera rarely feels like a topical medium but modern classic "Nixon in China" is growing in popularity and offering a pointed reminder of how much geopolitics has shifted in the past 50 years.
It recounts the historic moment in 1972 when US president Richard Nixon travelled to Beijing and established diplomatic ties with Chinese leader Mao Zedong.
The irreverent opera received mixed reviews when first performed in 1987 but has since become a beloved part of the canon in the United States.
It is increasingly a hit abroad, playing in at least five European opera houses this year.
It carries a new poignancy at a time of growing East-West tensions.
An illustrious Paris production opens on Saturday in the week that Chinese President Xi Jinping held a state visit to Moscow.
"We take it seriously right now because China and the US are in the news every day, and in a way that kind of highlights the fragility of world peace," said Renee Fleming, the superstar soprano who plays Nixon's wife in the Paris production.
She is disheartened by current affairs, having always been "tremendously welcomed" in China and Russia.
"This is a time where I'm thinking please hold it together. Let's everybody calm down and resume the fantastic relationship -- not without challenges... but it's still worth keeping the peace," she told AFP.
No more 'yellowface'
One big change these days -- insisted upon by composer John Adams -- is that companies use Asian singers for the Chinese roles.
Scottish Opera was accused of "yellowface" in 2021 for staging the play with white actors, as was previously typical.
"It's right that now, when things are so sensitive, we work hard to find Asian singers," Adams, 76, told AFP.
"But ultimately I want to believe that it doesn't matter."
The play was controversial for different reasons when it first opened.
"Opera was always considered to be about Greek myths or Norse gods or melodrama like Puccini," Adams recalled.
"But I thought this subject matter was something that opera could treat very well, because... it's about the collision of the two main philosophies of how life should be lived."
The Paris production uses elaborate and symbolic staging, such as the choir split into opposing table tennis teams, referencing the "ping-pong diplomacy" that helped thaw relations at the time.
It does not shy away from criticism of Mao's regime, with an underground prison revealed beneath the library where the politicians are meeting and a mini-documentary, screened halfway through, about the horrific repression of Chinese musicians during the Cultural Revolution.
But Xiaomeng Zhang, who plays the Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, told AFP the opera was above all "a stark reminder... that making peace, not war, despite ideological and political differences, is not only a strategical choice but also a moral choice".
© 2023 AFP
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