Posts Tagged ‘Rick Warren’

Pooh-poohing Pastor Martin Ssempa

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

Move over, Porno Pete. Homo-hating, gay porn aficionados around the globe have a new reigning diva. Martin Ssempa is his name and, apparently, scatological fixation is his game.

The poo-obsessed Ugandan pastor first graced this blog back in connection with pop-pastor Rick Warren’s duplicitous claims about his involvement with AIDS in Uganda — specifically Ssempa likes to burn condoms in the name of Jesus Christ and, according to author and journalist Michelle Goldberg, offers faith-healing to disease-stricken congregants.

The high-priest of gay-porn, it seems, will have none of anything that smacks of the gay and Ssempa wants all the world, including children, to get a close-up and personal look at what two dudes might or might not do in the sack. For Ssempa, dehumanizing gay people by reducing them to their sex organs and/or acts is not beyond the pale, because the pastor is dementedly convinced that he’s doing the Lord’s work.

Ariel Rubin, writing at The Huffington Post, reports on the genocidal porn-freak’s press conference staged to tout his march in support of Uganda’s draconian exterminate-the-gays bill:

Scat Porn and Prayer? Welcome To Sssempa World

“I will not call them gays any more, these are sodomites. And I ask you please, in the media, stop misusing the word gay, which means happy people. These are not happy people.”

It’s when the pastor starts showing the photos of men covered in feces fisting each other, that you realize this is no ordinary press conference. On January 15th, addressing a crowded room of local and foreign journalists, controversial “pro family” pastor Martin Ssempa , sitting beside a solemn-looking Muslim Sheikh in front of posters saying “Barack Obama Back Off” and “Africans Unite Against Sodomy”, begins his lengthy invective.

Ssempa called the conference to announce his plan to mobilize more than one million people to march on February 17th in Kampala to show the world just how strong support is for the proposed ‘Anti-Homosexuality Bill’. “We want to give a postcard that he [President Museveni] can send to his friend Barack Obama,” he says. However Ssempa, clearly relishing the media’s spotlight, takes the opportunity to begin a lengthy digression on his deep-seated feelings about homosexuality, pedophilia and the “broken” West’s decadent influence. Most of what he says might be laughable if his influence wasn’t so far-reaching and the message so deeply offensive. As he repeatedly boasts, 95% of Ugandans are against homosexuality, “this is democracy at work.”

A highly charismatic and flamboyant man, Ssempa seems less to speak than to gesticulate wildly, gleefully exhorting the audience of the ills implicit in homosexuality. At one point, he even dramatically decides to break for prayer, calling on the god “who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah” to communicate to the media that Uganda will not perish in the same way. “God you know this bill has to pass,” he prays with his eyes towards the heavens. “In Jesus’ name, amen.” Most of the journalists in the room, whether by force of habit or true faith, instantly mumble back, “amen.”

Never one to exhibit polite restraint, Porno Ssempa continues “enthusiastically:”

I want to say homosexuals eat each other’s poop. Homosexuals stick their hands into their rectum. Homosexuals stick all sorts of deviant sexual things into their rectum. I want to show you this is from their website. So the first picture that I want to show you, you can see this man has just eaten the other person’s poo poo and is rubbing it on his mouth, and I’m going to ask that we print for each of you a photocopy of this story so you get it fully.

Then, of course, they are grabbing each other’s gentials, that is level number one, touching each other, grabbing each other. Then number three, now they are licking eachother’s anus and are licking poop. And they call poo poo, chocolate. You see it is a change of words. I want you to see, Sheikh please forgive me but I want these people to see, they say a picture is worth one thousand words. This is a man eating the other person’s poo poo, can you see that one? Please from BBC, I want you to tell them, we know what they do.

Not content to limit sharing his porn collection with the media, Ssempa is apparently dragging his little dog and pony into Ugandan churches and claiming, “In Africa, what you do in your bedroom affects our clan, it affects our tribe, it affects our nation.”

Daniel Howden and Barbara Among, writing for The Independent, provide this update:

The pastor using pornography to fan the flames of gay hate in Uganda
The government wants to cool the debate on homosexuality. But influential clergyman Martin Ssempa has other ideas

The congregation was bigger than normal this week at the Christianity Focus Centre in Kampala. Perhaps numbers had been swelled by the prospect of an unusual kind of show-and-tell fast becoming the mainstay of the Martin Ssempa roadshow.

Uganda’s “passionate pastor”, as he calls himself, had revelations to share with the 200 or so men, women and children who turned up on Wednesday. His ambition to mark the week with a “million-man march” in support of a parliamentary Bill to further criminalise homosexuality had fallen flat over security concerns. But he had a sideshow quite capable of causing a stir in itself.

“The major argument homosexuals have is that what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms is nobody’s business,” the squat, shaven-headed preacher said. “But do you know what they do in their bedrooms?”

For the next half an hour or so, he answered his own question with a highly unusual visual aid: a series of black and white photographs from what appeared to be the 1960s fetish scene. The avid Michael Jackson fan, who has impersonated the late star on Ugandan television, flicked through the slides of men engaging in scatological fetishism, giving his horrified commentary. “This one is eating another man’s anus,” he said, while the crowd by turns gasped, sobbed and fell to the floor.

The writers note that Porno Ssempa has a history of passionately seeking as much media attention as possible:

So Ssempa’s stunts are not without their audience. But gays and lesbians should not feel unduly picked on. He also preaches against Islam, feminism, Catholics and Satanists, who, he says, hold meetings under Lake Victoria, where they are promised riches in exchange for human blood, which they collect by staging car accidents. For most people, that would be outlandish; for Martin Ssempa, it is barely out of the ordinary.

Let’s hope the US State Department and Homeland Security are adding this shameless purveyor of pornography for consumption by minors to their no-fly list.

Ex-gays, Rick Warren slammed on Uganda

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

Kathleen Parker, writing at the Washington Post, has piece called Who will stand against Uganda’s brutal anti-gay law? Parker notes that amid the onslaught of rotten domestic news, the proposed Ugandan exterminate-they-gays bill might not get the attention it merits:

Corrupt politicians count on the brevity of the American attention span, but certain items demand a tap of the pause button. How exactly does the idea of executing gays evolve in a majority-Christian nation? Interesting question.

Gays in Uganda already face imprisonment for up to 14 years. Under a bill proposed last October by David Bahati, the government could execute HIV-positive men and jail people who don’t report homosexual activities.

Parker addresses the purpose-driven, pop pastor Rick Warren’s cheery little holiday message to Ugandan pastors that described the bill before parliament as “unjust,” “extreme” and “un-Christian,” and points to Warren’s motivation and reluctance to pressure further:

Warren’s message wasn’t prompted by outrage at the treatment of gays, however, but by accusations that he had helped create the bill. Warren’s Saddleback Church has hosted a Ugandan pastor who supports the legislation, but the purpose-driven pastor insists he has had no role shaping the proposed law. Though Warren deserves to be taken at his word, other comments he made in his defense are problematic.

In a statement to Newsweek, Warren said: “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.”

(emphasis: mine)

Writes Parker: “If we decide that genocide is too political for interference, then what good is moral leadership?”

Enter the collusive backers of so-called ex-gay therapy:

Other evangelical Christians operating in Uganda are less easily excused from responsibility in the country’s increasingly hostile attitudes toward gays. Often cited as having stirred the pot are pastors Scott Lively, Caleb Lee Brundidge and Don Schmierer, who last March worked with Ugandan faith leaders and politicians to help stop the “homosexualization” of the country.

No, nobody “made” Bahati write the bill. But these three pastors, known for their conviction that gays can be “cured,” have been spreading their particular brand of gospel in Uganda, and it seems to have found traction. The three have distanced themselves from the proposed law and say they never encouraged punishment for gays.

In particular, hate-monger and associate of two SPLC-certified hate groups, Scott Lively is called out for his false witness bearing and for playing a part in turning the African nation into, what Parker describes as, “a laboratory for zealots who have found a receptive audience for their personal cause.”

Comedian Jaime Kilstein on the anti-gays

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

Jaime Kilstein Updated Gay Rights Material (video: Jaime Kilstein at YouTube)

[ Warning: Colorful fucking language! ]

From Jamie Kilstein:

Jamie Kilstein headlining The Lakeshore Theater in Chicago yelling about bigots and gay rights. wearecitizenradio.com for tour dates, interviews with Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Janeane Garofalo, facebook twitter links and more.

(tip: Ed Brayton, Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

Transforming Uganda

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Transforming Uganda (video: Bruce Wilson at Vimeo)

Religious right watcher Bruce Wilson says of the video above:

My new 20 minute documentary, Transforming Uganda, exposes the immense political influence in Uganda of the International Transformation Network and ideological influence of George Otis, Jr.’s Transformations videos. Featuring conference video footage, Transforming Uganda presents a radically new perspective; a little-known but global evangelical effort, which claims gays are possessed by demons and that faith healing can cure HIV and AIDS, is working to “transform” the nation of Uganda along theocratic lines. Individuals in that effort, shown in the video, are directly tied to Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill that would mandate execution for HIV positive Ugandan citizens. According to gay rights activist Jim Burroway, the bill appears to still be in play.

(links: from the original)

Obviously, the claim of curing AIDS through prayer is utter nonsense, as is burning condoms in Jesus’ name as a means of HIV prevention. But, in light of Wilson’s video, it’s easier to understand how these shadowy religionists can make their preposterous and allegedly biblical claims, get away with selective application of scripture, and argue for the execution of anyone they say is possessed by a demon — including gays and women and children they identify as witches.

That these christianists are good buddies with American conservatives and power-crazed, money-grubbing, anti-gays like pop-pastor Rick Warren should surprise no one. And it should surprise no one that, according to Bruce Wilson, they’re bringing the hate-filled theology being the Ugandan exterminate-the-gays bill back to the US.

Rachel roasts Rick Warren

Friday, December 11th, 2009

Rick Warren forced out of silence on Uganda (video: The Rachel Maddow Show)

Just in time for the holidays, last night, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow pretty much roasted Rick Warren’s purpose-driven nuts by an open fire.

To which all I can add is: Liar, liar pants on fire.

More on the prevaricating pop-pastor:

  • Bruce Wilson (Talk to Action): Rick Warren denies he’s “conspiring” to “rid the world of homosexuals”
  • Ed Brayton (Dispatches from the Culture Wars): Rick Warren: Too Little, Too Late
  • Sarah Posner (Religion Dispatches): Rick Warren Urges Ugandan Pastors to Speak Out Against Proposed Anti-Gay Law
  • Sarah Posner (Religion Dispatches): Addressing Homophobic Rhetoric, and Not Just the Anti-Gay Initiatives in Africa
  • Pam Spaulding (Daily KOS): Uganda, The Family, Rick Warren- and homophobia as an booming export