It is about the money

My evening started out rather slow. I came out of the bathroom and discovered I couldn't turn on the sound system. Yup, the power was out. I called the electric company (why it is good to have a landline) to report the outage. I heard voices outside, so went out to talk to neighbors. Power was out down the street. Some of the neighbors said they heard a boom and they thought it was a transformer that blew.

I grabbed a magazine and sat on the porch. Fortunately, the weather was cool and the mosquitos were not swarming. The power came on after about 90 minutes (a full two hours before the power company said it might). I had gotten out the candles, but they weren't lit very long when the power came back – while I was again in the bathroom.



When I visited my sister last week, her partner handed me two magazines I might appreciate. In the first one, Curve, I didn't see anyting of interest. I read much of the second one, The Gay and Lesbian Review, but I won't subscribe(thanks for sharing the magazines with me!). One article did hold my interest – an interview with Roger Ross Williams, who created the documentary film God Loves Uganda. The film explores the American Evangelicals and their campaign to convince Uganda to pass the draconian anti-gay laws, which happened earlier this year. One exchange in the interview explains a great deal of what happened in Uganda.

[Interviewer] Jim Farley: There was a very telling scene in the movie when David Bahati, the MP who sponsored the gay bill, was boasting on a Ugandan talk show about how donations from Western religious organizations tripled once the Ugandan government said no to homosexuality. So is it just about the money?
Roger Ross Williams: It is about the money. Uganda is a very poor and very corrupt country. These pastors become rich from the money they get from American churches who want to broadcast back to America that Uganda is a success story. I mean, they just passed a law outlawing miniskirts on women! They have a Minister of Ethics who basically enforces these sorts of moral laws. And they raise a ton of money from these churches. So they want to please them. And you have a bunch of American conservatives who are totally frustrated with what's going on in the U.S., which is lost in sin, while Uganda is the Promised Land.

The whole interview is a good read.