Though Ted Cruz has a horrendous record on the rights of gay people to live their lives without fear in this country, he surprised many recently when he tweeted his disapproval of a new law passed in Uganda which will imprison or execute Ugandan citizens that are gay (or both).
This Uganda law is horrific & wrong. Any law criminalizing homosexuality or imposing the death penalty for ‘aggravated homosexuality’ is grotesque & an abomination. ALL civilized nations should join together in condemning this human rights abuse.
That didn't sit well with Pastor Tom Ascol in Coral Springs, FL. Ascol is a despicable human being, and to prove just that, he replies:
Tell it to God, Ted. "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them."—Leviticus 20:13
Was this law God gave to His old covenant people "horrific and wrong"?
Ascol supports DeSantis, and his endorsement gives credence to Desantis with evangelicals with swarms of them in the Republican base. This dangerous man gave the invocation for DeSantis's second inauguration. DeSantis needs to answer if he condones these statements.
Ascol is well known as a strict biblical literalist and a proponent of a strident form of complementarianism, advocating for male headship in church and home. He and others in the SBC are outspoken critics of anything remotely associated with the LGBTQ community. They have been engaged in a crusade to discredit Guidepost Solutions, the secular firm hired to investigate sexual abuse in the SBC, because last year the firm put out a single tweet affirming its LGBTQ employees.
Ascol also is a public supporter of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who now is a 2024 presidential candidate, and who often is in political competition with Cruz.
Ascol attacks health care for women with the same vitriol he has for LGBT folks. The Daily Beast continues:
The senior cleric at Grace Baptist in Cape Coral has repeatedly called for homicide charges against any woman who has an abortion for whatever reason. He has compared choosing to terminate a pregnancy to retaining a killer for hire.
“It’s like saying if I don’t murder someone, but I just contracted a murderer to murder someone, I’m not culpable,” Ascol said on a Christian radio show in 2022.
To re-emphasize, the odious Ted Cruz has a pathetic record on Gay rights but he did send a thunderbolt across the Twitter machine.
In contrast, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley voted no for a UN Resolution condemning the death penalty for people whose only crime is being what they are born to be. She is worse than Cruz; no peep from her on her opinion of the matter of death penalties such as those for Uganda and the Middle East. Haley is a current candidate in the GQP for POTUS. Aditi Bharade of Insider writes:
However, Cruz's criticism of Uganda's new law stands in contrast to his established stance on gay rights.
Cruz previously said the US Supreme Court was "clearly wrong" about its 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, which legalized same-sex marriages.
"Obergefell, like Roe v. Wade, ignored two centuries of our nation's history. Marriage was always an issue that was left to the states," he said in a podcast in July.
And in November, he voted against the Respect for Marriage Act, a move to provide federal protection for same-sex and interracial marriages. The law was eventually passed in the Senate without his support.
At the time, Cruz said passing the bill would be an "attack on religious liberties," The Texas Tribune reported.
While former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley voted no on a UN Resolution condemning the death penalty for LGBT people, there was a backlash to the ambassadors' vote, and the Trump administration backed down. Republicans remarkably believe that they are superior to us, it's a bad look, and hopefully, they will be punished by the voters in 2024.
John Paul Brammer of NBC wrote on the story:
Following an outcry from LGBTQ rights advocates, the U.S. Department of State clarified its "no" vote on a United Nations resolution condemning the death penalty for "same-sex relations" and other acts.
The resolution, titled "The Question of the Death Penalty," passed the U.N. Human Rights Council with 27 nations voting in favor, 13 voting against and seven abstentions. The multi-page resolution condemned the imposition of the death penalty when "applied arbitrarily or in a discriminatory manner" and specifically condemned "the imposition of the death penalty as a sanction for specific forms of conduct, such as apostasy, blasphemy, adultery and consensual same-sex relations."
I don’t know about you but I would have resigned rather than cast that vote.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed a less extreme revised version of the Anti-Homosexuality Law.
Earlier this week, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed into law the Anti-Homosexuality Act, which was passed by the nation’s legislators nearly unanimously.
This intensifies a longstanding crusade against the LGBTQ community in the African nation and creates one of the world’s harshest anti-LGBTQ laws.
Same-sex relations already were illegal in Uganda, but the new law calls for life imprisonment for anyone convicted of homosexuality and mandates the death penalty for anyone convicted of “aggravated homosexuality.” That includes the transmission of HIV through gay sex with children and disabled people.
Uganda’s Parliament in March passed a harsher bill that was vetoed by Museveni. That version would have criminalized people merely for identifying as LGBTQ. The alternative law now enacted still criminalizes those who participate in same-sex acts and those who enable them.
The law has been called draconian and cruel and backward. U.S. President Joe Biden called the law “a tragic violation of universal human rights.”
Uganda already was one of 30 African nations where same-sex relations are considered criminal acts
As expected, violence toward gay people has escalated since the bill was signed into law.
Now Uganda is not unique in killing gay people. The death penalty for being gay in "friendly nations" are Saudi Arabia and Qatar: and in the UAE, it is death by stoning. These three countries don't get the backlash that Uganda receives. The apparent reason is oil, black gold, and lots of it. GLADD writes:
In the 2023 expansion of the law, Uganda is set to criminalize coming out up to 20 years with offenses “aggravated homosexuality” punishable by death.
“A person who commits the offense of aggravated homosexuality and is liable, on conviction, to suffer death,” read the amendments, presented by the chairperson for legal and parliamentary affairs Robina Rwakoojo. Aggravated homosexuality is considered to be a vague term used for acts committed without consent or if the “victim” has a disability, is a child or is HIV positive, according to the HRW.
Individuals will be subject to health examinations to assess their HIV status.
The law's language is more extreme, but similar to Russia’s “Gay Propaganda Law," and US states' (i.e. Oklahoma and Florida) “Don’t Say Gay (or Trans)” Law, which uses promises to "protect children" to rationalize criminalizing education or advocation of LGBTQ history and equality. For Uganda, criminalizing LGBTQ promotion extends to support by family and friends.
While Uganda’s penal code already punishes “carnal knowledge against the order of nature,” which makes any consensual same-sex adult relationships punishable by life in prison, it’s rarely been enforced in recent history. With the imposition of this new law, this will likely change.
“One of the most extreme features of this new bill is that it criminalizes people simply for being who they are as well as further infringing on the rights to privacy, and freedoms of expression and association that are already compromised in Uganda,” said Oryem Nyeko, Uganda researcher at Human Rights Watch.
I recently posted this tweet in my diary on the unraveling of the Antarctic in the comments. So, in case you missed it, behold a thing of beauty.