Bartholomew's Notes

Back in January, Open Congress had an article on religious exemptions to to the US healthcare bill:

Both the Senate and House bills use the old Social Security language (Sec. 1402(g)(1) of the tax code) to determine who will be eligible for a “religious conscience” objection to the insurance mandate. Specifically, the bills would provide exemptions for adherents of “recognized religious sects” that are “conscientiously opposed” to accepting benefits from any insurance — private or public — “which makes payments in the event of death, disability, old-age, or retirement or makes payments toward the cost of, or provides services for, medical care.” To qualify for the exemption, the sect would have to have been in existence continuously since Dec. 31, 1950… It’s limited essentially to the Amish and Old Order Mennonites.

…But the Senate bill adds a new religious exemption… It would allow members of “Health Care Sharing Ministries” to be exempt from the requirement to have “acceptable” health insurance… According to the bill, they are non-profit organizations that “share a common set of ethical or religious beliefs and share medical expenses among members in accordance with those beliefs and without regard to the State in which a member resides or is employed.”

The Christian Science Monitor notes that Liberty University and the Thomas More Center are planning to challenge this:

“The act’s religious exemption violates the Establishment Clause in that it grants to [the executive branch of the national government] discretion to determine which religion is ‘recognized’ and demonstrates a preference for one denomination over another,” the Liberty University suit says.

“The act’s religious exemption is a per se violation of the Establishment Clause in that it vests in [the national government] the right to determine what is a recognized religious sect entitled to exemption under the act, and thereby discriminates between and among religions by preferring a ‘recognized’ religion over one deemed not recognized,” the suit says.

…”Liberty University has a sincerely held religious belief that it should play no part in abortions, including no part in facilitating, subsidizing, easing, funding, or supporting abortions since to do so is evil and morally repugnant complicity,” the suit says.

However, it has also come to attention that Islam regards conventional insurance as a form of gambling which is therefore generally forbidden; an American Thinker pundit extrapolated from this to “the probability that Muslims will also be expempt”, in a piece headlined “Amish, Muslims to be excused from Obamacare mandate?” Other conservative websites then took up the baton, while dropping the question-mark. The inevitable climax is now an article by the shameless huckster Walid Shoebat, who warns that this is further evidence that Obama is really a Muslim and that healthcare reform is actually an Islamic conspiracy against America:

That is an interesting situation as president Obama is regarded by most Muslims who live inside and outside America as a Black Muslim. Another statistic in a recent poll conducted by the liberal media shows that 57% of Republicans also believe Obama is a Muslim, but hey, those silly extremist bigots, they know less than the actual 99% of all Muslims who also believe the same thing.

So Obama who is a leader of the USA now enacts laws for the Dhimmis – us, and gives freedom to his Muslim brothers. Healthcare was a lot of things but one thing it was not, and that was not about improving health for Americans. The Democrats have adopted Sharia law literally.

Shoebat is not a marginal figure: he enjoys the endorsement of conservatives such as Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer, and he regularly addresses church groups with his pseudo-exegesis of the Bible, which he claims predicts the rise of a Muslim anti-Christ.

Of course, the reality is that there is no exemption for Muslims in the bill, there is a diversity of Muslim opinion on the subject, and Muslims tend to participate in existing compulsory insurance schemes in the USA and elsewhere (Muslims in the west are known to drive cars, for instance).

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“After the General Election, all BNP leaflets will carry a Christian Cross”

Edmund Standing notes BNP leader Nick Griffin’s “Special Easter Message”, in which Griffin announces the party’s new emphasis on Christianity. Griffin writes that:

After the General Election, all BNP leaflets will carry a Christian Cross to demonstrate our commitment to maintaining and preserving our Christian heritage as a nation. Politically correct scoundrels like Rowen Williams will cry fowl but we have nothing to be ashamed of as we are the defenders of Britain’s Christian heritage, just like our Crusader ancestors in the Middle Ages.

…The darkest hour is just before the dawn, but be of good cheer for Christ Our Lord is risen!

Griffin explains that he has come to this realisation following a debate with George Hargreaves of the Christian Party:

A special event that happened recently has changed my outlook on our struggle and the situation facing our sacred country. That event was the peaceful, sensible, mature debate with the Christian Party leader George Hargreaves and a large number of Christian Party members. I thoroughly enjoyed the entire debate which was noticeably absent of the usual hysterical fanaticism of the liberal-left.

It made me think long and hard about a new dimension of our struggle: our Christian religion, culture and traditions. In the past too much emphasis has been placed on the ethnic aspect of our present national dilemma, whilst the longest running feature of our identity has been overlooked: the fact that our country has been held together and guided for millennia by our common, ancient religion: Christianity.

And before you misunderstand me, I do not mean the gut-wrenching politically correct quasi-Marxist nonsense spewing forth from the treacherous leaders of the modern Anglican Church. I mean the traditional, upright, decent and honest Christianity that defended Europe from Islamic conquest, the Christianity of the Crusades and the Christianity of our forefathers…

Griffin’s debate with Hargreaves was broadcast on Genesis TV (an extension of Howard and Lesley Conder’s Revelation TV, which was profiled by the Guardian in 2007), and can be found on YouTube. Both Hargreaves and Griffin took questions from Tim Vince and the audience; according to a report on Christian Today:

The two were debating the motion: “That the election of any BNP MP or leader of a Local Authority will be detrimental to Black and ethnic minority Christians in particular and the wider church in general in Britain.”

Mr Griffin revealed that his understanding of Christian heritage was one of “national pride and history”, rather than a personal and corporate dedication to Jesus Christ. When asked about his own relationship with God, he stated his relationship was not so much with Jesus, but rather with an ideal of what the Anglican church as the ‘state church’ should be.

When asked if the BNP would allow black churches to purchase building in certain areas of London, Mr Griffin made it clear that any church composed primarily of ethnic groups would be disallowed in historically white majority areas, and forced to conduct their worship in areas deemed suitable by a white political leadership.

Griffin got some claps for describing Anglican leaders as “wolves in sheeps’ clothing”, but he also praised Archbishop of York John Sentamu, and the former Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali. An endorsment of Nazir-Ali is not much of surprise (although it is sure to be unwelcome): Nazir-Ali has suggested that a return to Christian values should be promoted as a matter of national heritage (I blogged this here), and he is controversial for raising the spectre of “no-go” areas for non-Muslims in British cities, without providing any specific examples. However, Sentamu has been vociferous in his criticism of the BNP, and he has been mocked in turn as a Ugandan “spear-thrower” by Griffin’s deputy Simon Darby. Griffin also attacked “an aggressive leftist secularism”.

The BNP’s turn to Christianity has actually been going on for some time – one of the party’s high-profile activists is the Reverend Robert West (whom I have blogged a number of times), and a couple of other “Revs” have been BNP members. Griffin also gave us an “Easter message” last year – that too was a call for British Christians to revive their Crusader past in order to oppose Muslims (although that time he didn’t feel any need to mention of the Resurrection).

However, Edmund has been quick to point out the humbug of this; Griffin is actually known for being irreligious, and for declaring that

The idea of an anthropomorphic God in the sky who happens to take a particular interest in us has never struck me as remotely realistic.

Meanwhile, the BNP’s Legal Director Lee Barnes is an avowed Odinist, with an explicitly anti-Christian perspective:

Christianity is a semitic religion, it is creature of the deserts of the Middle East not the forests of the Northern Europe and its symbol the cross is an instrument of torture not of living redemption.

…The icons of death are what the West once worshipped – Moses, Christ, saints, popes etc etc

Now all these icons of death must be replaced by a living, organic religion which allows our people to reconnect once more with nature, the earth and the divine unfolding of the spiritual within the material and within Man.

Further, Griffin’s claim that turn to Christianity replaces an emphasis on “the ethnic aspect of our present national dilemma” is not quite the case: Rev West’s Christianity specifically denounces “the mixing of races”.

In last summer’s European elections, Hargreaves tried to persuade voters that he was the only candidate who could defeat the BNP, and – as I blogged here – his Christian Party recently entered the “Alliance for Democracy”, alongside the English Democrats and some other fringe-right parties. Griffin is doubtless aware that these parties offer a less toxic alternative to the BNP for nationalist-minded voters, and and he has adapted his rhetoric accordingly. This site has more on the BNP’s actual views.

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Gay City News recently reported:

High Rise, the Every Nation, which characterizes itself as a student religious group at North Carolina State University, has invited the Reverend Martin Ssempa, a champion of proposed draconian anti-gay legislation before the Uganda Parliament, to its weekly meeting on April 2.

On a Facebook page advertising the meeting, the group referred to Ssempa as a “Passionate Voice in the Global Fight against HIV/AIDS,” citing statistics that “the HIV/AIDS rate has dropped from 22 percent to a staggering 8 percent” in the East African nation.

The article is not quite accurate: the Facebook page where the event is advertised shows that it took place on 2 April 2009, rather than yesterday. At that time, Ssempa was not yet quite so notorious for his anti-gay activism, and he enjoyed links to pastors such as Rick Warren – although his views were on record, as I first blogged in 2007.

However, the report does draw attention to Every Nation, a controversial neo-Pentecostal grouping – “High Rise” is a student outreach of a particular Every Nation Church called King’s Park International Church; I blogged on this particular church in 2005. Ssempa was also a prominent speaker at the Every Nation World Conference in Manila in 2007, and in the same year King’s Park pastor Ron Lewis commended him as

a vigilant worker in combating the plague of HIV/AIDS in Uganda. Pastor Martin has been working closely with Her Highness Janet Museveni, the First Lady of the Republic of Uganda in educating Ugandans on the truth about HIV/AIDS. Their efforts have contributed to a huge drop in the disease rate, which in recent years has fallen from 30% to 6.5% in Uganda.

(HIV/AIDS in Uganda is a subject I blogged on here)

Every Nation (formerly Morningstar International) emerged from the wreckage of the 1980s student movement “Maranatha”, which collapsed amid claims of authoritarian behaviour. I blogged on the controversy around the grouping in 2005.

Incidentally, Lewis’ predecessor as King’s Park pastor was a certain Wayne Mitchell, whose son Jason “Molotov” Mitchell – whom I previously blogged here – is one of Ssempa’s most vocal supporter in the USA, using videos at WorldNetDaily to praise Uganda’s proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill: if gay Ugandans don’t like the bill, they are welcome to leave the country; Western liberals should not criticise the culture of a foreign country. Molotov has also left a message of support on Ssempa’s Facebook page, and in one video he tells us that he has spoken with Ssempa by telephone. Molotov has been actively involved with Lewis’s Campus Harvest organisation, as can be seen here.

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Back in 2004 (as I blogged here) BBC Radio 4’s Face the Facts ran a piece on Archbishop Gilbert Deya and his “miracle babies”. Deya, a Kenyan Pentecostal minister based in the UK, claimed that women in his congregation with fertility problems – and, indeed, post-menopausal women – could be made pregnant with miraculous babies which would come to term in a matter of weeks. Pregnancies would be diagnosed by Deya himslf, and the expectant mother then sent to a special backstreet clinic in Kenya to give birth. By coincidence, this clinic also took in unwanted babies.

The programme elicited some sceptial response, but Deya’s own 57-year-old wife then showed up at a hospital in Nairobi with a new-born baby and a placenta – doctors said they had found no medical evidence that she was was the mother, but Deya explained this was because they had been threatened by the authorities. The “miracle babies” also had DNA which did not match that of the parents.

While this may seem simply preposterous, the consequences have been tragic. The Guardian reported on one case in September 2005:

An infertile couple who claim to have given birth to a “miracle” baby are to go to court in an attempt to win back custody of the child from social services.

The couple, who cannot be named, are going to the high court to oppose the baby being put up for adoption. The authority, Haringey council in north London, will resist the application.

…The legal battle over the fate of Baby C has already cost more than £1m. He has had six care placements in less than two years, and two adoption attempts have fallen through because attempts to clarify his status have taken so long.

…The 38-year-old woman told the high court that Baby C was the second of three “miracle” babies born to her after prayers, and she was pregnant with him for just 27 days. She said the first of her babies died soon after birth in Kenya and the third was taken by Kenyan authorities.

The upshot of the scandal was that Deya’s wife was arrested and jailed for child trafficking, while the Archbishop was the subject of an extradition request from Kenya. In 2008, I noted a report which said that he had lost his appeal to stay in the UK. However, the BBC now tells us that he is still here:

A self-styled archbishop who claimed he could give infertile couples ‘miracle babies’ is still living and working in the UK despite his extradition to Kenya being ordered three years ago.

The Home Office has said it is still considering representations from Gilbert Deya’s solicitors that sending him to Kenya would breach his human rights.

…A call to his offices in London resulted in him telling us the BBC was “evil” for what had been broadcast about him previously. He told us never to call him again.

He’s not always media shy, happy to appear on his own TV channel, Deya Broadcasting Network, which screens his church services and phone-ins via satellite TV across Africa and Europe.

Deya’s website is here, where he puts his side of the story:

Although the ministry has recently faced a lot of opposition especially from the media, some people have slandered our name by calling us child-traffickers but this has not stopped this great move of spreading the Gospel. ” They have taken away my children and put them into care, my wife has been jailed but still the favour of the Lord is upon us,” Archbishop said. He further explained the injustice and cruel action taken against his wife by the Kenyan authorities. “We cannot understand how somebody can steal a child from an unknown parent, it is sheer propaganda and persecution.” So far, the British Scotland Yard and the Charity Commission have done their investigation but they could not find any criminal evidence to convict the Deya family and therefore closed their investigation.

One person who has been keeping an eye on Deya is comedy writer Robert Popper, who has drawn attention to a number of Deya’s videos, such as this:

In 2004 Deya’s videos listed for sale on his website included Jesus Healed a Woman with Three Breasts; Ambassador Carrying a Snake in his Belly Delivered in Jesus’ Name; (Witchcraft) 14 Year Missing Baby Born in the Womb (The Mother is 51 Years Old); and The Walls of Jericho Came Tumbling Down and Killed the Witches.

(Hat tip: Cult News Network)

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Here’s one I missed from a couple of weeks ago – the new Prime Minister of Ukraine has had a religious blessing on his office; from this description, it seems to have served the purpose of an exorcism:

Before entering his new office, Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov invited an Orthodox priest, Father Pavlo from Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, to bless it, Azarov said at a briefing in Dnipropetrovsk on Friday.

“It was really difficult to breathe there. After the blessing I entered the office and felt better,” he said.

Azarov, it is perhaps worth noting, is supposedly a man of science, with a PhD in geology.

Details of “Father Pavlo” are scarce, but he is perhaps the same person as Archbishop Pavlo, who is the superior of Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra (a famous monastery in Ukraine). The Archbishop is a politicised figure; a highly critical article by Yuriy Chornomorets from 2004 gives some details of Pavlo’s activism on behalf of the Party of Regions, which is now in power:

During the 1998 parliamentary elections, the UOC provided support to the Party of the Renaissance of the Regions of Ukraine (now the Party of the Regions of Viktor Yanukovych). One of the closest assistants of the leader of the UOC, Bishop Pavlo (Lebed) even joined the top five of the list of candidates and appeared in TV advertisement from which one remembers assurances that he was “blessed” for participation in elections.

Further, in 2008 it was reported that

Archbishop Pavlo (Lebid) of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Moscow Patriarchate, has become a deputy of the Kyiv City Council… The hierarch announced his decision to run as a Party of Regions’ candidate on 16 April.

One can see how a bit of religious theatre suggesting that previous prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko had left demons behind in her office might be politically advantageous.

The previous government in Ukraine was keen to emphasise Ukrainian Orthodox distance from Moscow – thus President Yushchenko supported the Kievan Patriarchate, which is regarded by Moscow and by pro-Russian Orthodox Ukrainians as “schismatic”, and made links with Bartholomew, the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople. Tymoshenko, meanwhile, received an award last October from the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophilus (I’ve blogged on him here), and invited him to Ukraine.

Archbishop Pavlo’s support for the Party of Regions has not been 100 per cent consistent; in 2008 he originally planned to stand for election as a Communist candidate:

Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko… explained that, in the current expansion of non-traditional religious denominations, Archbishop Pavlo’s task during his work in the city council will be to return to Kyiv the status of a New Jerusalem.

This may seem odd, but Symonenko has enjoyed support from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchiate) for some time; in 2003 he was given an award for services to Orthodoxy, to the dismay of the rival Kievan Partriarchate:

“It is a pity that we Ukrainians allow such events to take place in the very heart of Ukrainian spirituality, the Kyivan Monastery of the Caves,” said Bishop Paisii [of Odessa and Balta]. “I believe all who were involved in awarding the Communist Party leader are disgraced.”

The Communist Party is now part of the ruling coalition.

Incidentally, it is not only pro-Moscow Orthodox Christians who are backing the new regime of President Yanukovych and Prime Minister Azarov; Charisma reports that:

Prominent Ukraine pastor Sunday Adelaja, whose God’s Embassy church participated in the Orange Revolution, said Yanukovych received significant support from Christians. Adelaja said late last year God showed him in a dream that Yanukovych would be the next president.

“While some of the churches supported [Prime Minister] Yulia Tymoshenko, we had a good number of churches who believed in the revelation and voted for Yanukovych,” Adelaja said.

He said [Vladimir] Shushkevich, [an MP] who is a member of Adelaja’s church, arranged for him to meet with Yanukovych before the election and the two discussed a law Yanukovych’s Party of Regions had proposed that would restrict the work of the evangelical church.

“They immediately responded, and in a matter of days the law was withdrawn from the parliament,” Adelaja said.

I blogged on Sunday Adelaja here and here. Tymoshenko is reported to have occasionally attended his church in Kiev.

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A couple of left-wing websites have noted the English Defence League’s new target: union power and Communism. A couple of days ago the EDL’s site told us that

The EDL know that unions have a part to play to protect workers’ rights, to ensure that employees are treated fairly in the workplace. However it would seem that these unions have become more powerful, more influential and more militant in the political sphere, this is where vested interests infringe upon a democratic political platform, so much so that democracy seems to be ebbing away right before our eyes and its replacement………COMMUNISM!!!!

Great Britain doesn’t do Communism, it never has, yet Communists are afforded more influence and more power as the Labour party look to fund its upcoming election campaign.

Lenin’s Tomb and Barrykade suggest that this is the organisation’s “true colours”, and this is shows that the EDL has an agenda beyond simply opposing “Islamic extremism” – attention is drawn to the fact that the EDL has a millionaire businessman sugar-daddy.

There are, though, a couple of other factors:  It’s clear that the EDL would rather people support parties such as UKIP or the English Democrats over mainstream parties, and Labour’s association with the Unite union is a topical knocking-point. Perhaps we are also seeing the importing of rhetoric from the USA, where the crudest 1950s-style anti-Communist posturing has enjoyed a renewed lease of life over the past year or so. I recently noted Pamela Geller’s reference to Obama as the “mad Commie clown”, and this kind of thing is now commonplace among the “teabaggers” – Geller has written posts commending the EDL to American conservatives, and the EDL in turn has directed traffic to her site.

More widely, Communist groups have shown up at Unite Against Fascism anti-EDL events waving around hammer-and-sickle iconography, and the Trotskyist SWP looms large within the UAF. Naturally, just as the UAF denounces the EDL of having semi-hidden far-right links (a subject I have also written on), so the EDL will point to the UAF’s far-left links, as a matter of tit-for-tat. There are also, of course, actual links between far-left groups and Islamists.

Meanwhile, EDL members are also planning a rally on a “Not Compatible with Britain” theme, attacking the BNP along with neo-Nazis and Communists. Anarchists don’t get off lightly, either…

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Back in 2005 I wrote a blog post about the new pope’s now-infamous 2001 letter containing instructions for dealing with accusations of child sex abuse against clergy. It seems topical to repost it.

From the Observer:

Pope Benedict XVI faced claims last night he had ‘obstructed justice’ after it emerged he issued an order ensuring the church’s investigations into child sex abuse claims be carried out in secret.

The order was made in a confidential letter, obtained by The Observer, which was sent to every Catholic bishop in May 2001.

Erm…that would be the “confidential letter” that has been available on-line since at least the end of 2003 here. But back to the Observer:

It asserted the church’s right to hold its inquiries behind closed doors and keep the evidence confidential for up to 10 years after the victims reached adulthood. The letter was signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected as John Paul II’s successor last week.

…It orders that ‘preliminary investigations’ into any claims of abuse should be sent to Ratzinger’s office, which has the option of referring them back to private tribunals in which the ‘functions of judge, promoter of justice, notary and legal representative can validly be performed for these cases only by priests’.

The letter was passed to the Observer by lawyer Daniel Shea, who previously revealed a 1962 Vatican instruction on the subject to the newspaper.

For those of us unversed in canon legalise, the 2001 letter is a dense and difficult read. The relevant passages seem to be:

The more grave delicts [“wilful wrongs”] both in the celebration of the sacraments and against morals reserved to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith are…

A list follows, ending with:

…A delict against morals, namely: the delict committed by a cleric against the Sixth Commandment of the Decalogue [the commandment against adultery, here meant I suppose to encompass sexual sin more generally] with a minor below the age of 18 years.

Only these delicts, which are indicated above with their definition, are reserved to the apostolic tribunal of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

As often as an ordinary [i.e. a church official] or hierarch [e.g. bishop] has at least probable knowledge of a reserved delict, after he has carried out the preliminary investigation he is to indicate it to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which unless it calls the case to itself because of special circumstances of things, after transmitting appropriate norms, orders the ordinary or hierarch to proceed ahead through his own tribunal.

Of course, nothing here excludes the “ordinary or hierarch” from co-operating with local police forces in his “preliminary investigation”. No doubt the letter’s defenders will say that the procedure it lays out is merely for the purposes of church discipline: it is not meant to be a substitute for a secular criminal investigation and prosecution [UPDATE: Archbishop Joseph Fiorenza of Houston makes this defence today]. But nothing commends the investigators to work with law enforcement agencies either, and the facts of the church scandals speak for themselves. The Observer also carries an unhappy old quote from Ratzinger’s co-author, Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone:

In my opinion, the demand that a bishop be obligated to contact the police in order to denounce a priest who has admitted the offence of paedophilia is unfounded.

Bertone argued that putting such an obligation on bishops would undermine the “professional secrecy” of the priesthood, and would prevent priests from “confiding” in their bishops. Why these concerns trump the need for justice to be done and to be seen to be done is not explained; but I’ll bear them in mind the next time I hear (literal!) pontifications on the evils of relativism. The 2001 letter also has this passage (numbers in brackets refer to footnotes):

It must be noted that the criminal action on delicts reserved to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is extinguished by a prescription of 10 years.(11) The prescription runs according to the universal and common law;(12) however, in the delict perpetrated with a minor by a cleric, the prescription begins to run from the day when the minor has completed the 18th year of age.

According to the Observer:

Daniel Shea, the lawyer for the two alleged victims who discovered the letter, said: ‘It speaks for itself. You have to ask: why do you not start the clock ticking until the kid turns 18? It’s an obstruction of justice.’

Father John Beal, professor of canon law at the Catholic University of America, gave an oral deposition under oath on 8 April last year in which he admitted to Shea that the letter extended the church’s jurisdiction and control over sexual assault crimes.

Ratzinger was also responsible for shelving a sex abuse investigation into Marcial Maciel Degollado, who founded Legionaries of Christ in Mexico. That church investigation (the allegations are too old to interest the Mexican police) was recently reopened. The NY Times reports:

It remains unclear why Cardinal Ratzinger changed his mind and reopened the investigation. He has never commented on the matter. Among those who have raised the complaints and others who are closely following the case, one theory suggests that he knew he would be a candidate for pope and did not want the matter hanging over his head when the conclave was held. Another suggests that Cardinal Ratzinger did not want Pope John Paul II’s reputation to be tarnished by allegations that the pope had done nothing to pursue charges against a friend. It is also possible that Cardinal Ratzinger received new information.

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Warren Throckmorton has details of a statement by Charles Tuhaise in his capacity as President of the National Association of Social Workers of Uganda (NASWU), defending the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Tuhaise rails against Alfred Kinsey for his influence on American society, using the usual talking-points (I blogged on some of these here); warns that homosexuality spreads disease; accuses gays of paedophilia; and explains the significance of demons:

Demonic activity can be violent or latent as in the case of Mary Magdalene, a woman whose work as a prostitute had demonic link, until she met Jesus. For this reason, Social Work should include the study of the spiritual dimension of life and how it may be applied to promote well-being and social functioning.

Tuhaise’s views were noted in February by Chris Kincaid of Accuracy in Media:

“Many Ugandans are shocked at the reaction to this bill and the extent to which homosexual activists can intimidate everyone to silence,” Tuhaise said. “This is a bill written to control a problem that has largely gotten out of hand in western society and is now spreading tentacles worldwide. Perhaps Uganda has helped to highlight the danger that the homosexual movement poses to the world.”

Tuhaise is chairman of the board of Agape Community Transformation (ACT), a Christian organization dedicated to improving the spiritual, physical, economic and societal conditions of their communities. He is familiar with the bill because he works at the Parliamentary Research Service at the Parliament of Uganda, where the bill is being considered for passage.

…”I am a Ugandan and I’m writing to thank you for your bravery,” Tuhaise said in his message to AIM. “The articles you’ve written in support of the right of Ugandans to exercise self-determination on the issue of homosexuality have thrown fresh light on the American scene [and show] that not every American is scared of the loud-mouthed homosexual lobby.”

Tuhaise also has links with mainline churches; Agape Community Transformation has a website here, which describes ACT as

an organization of people centered in the Muko region of southwest Uganda and in Midland, Michigan USA dedicated to improving the spiritual, physical, economic and societal conditions of their communities.

On both sides of the Atlantic, we are community with multiple faiths and multiple backgrounds, working together.

…One of the early events of the recent visit to Midland was a presentation to the Presbytery of Lake Huron. Mr. Charles Tuhaise, Father Bruno Byomuhangi and Sue Waechter gave a brief summary of ACT and its efforts in Uganda to transform local communities. The result was an unanimous endorsement of ACT as a mission of the Lake Huron Presbytery. Additionally, ACT was held up as a model for all missions efforts in the Presbytery to consider when shaping their own plans. Of particular merit, according to the Presbytery members present, were the ecumenical nature of ACT both in Uganda and in Michigan as well as its grass-roots origin.

Of course, just because Tuhaise works for ACT in one capacity, it does not mean that ACT would therefore endorse his authoritarian anti-gay views – views which clearly go belong simply acquiescing to the consensus in a climate of hysteria. However, it’s clear that Tuhaise used his association with ACT in his correpondence with Kincaid.

Throckmorton notes that

The NASWU is affiliated with the International Federation of Social Workers. Mr Tuhaise told me that the IASW is aware of the document which has generated support and criticism.

Here’s a reminder of what the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill means:

I looked at some of the religious figures promoting the Bill here.

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Joseph Farah described as “terrorist expert”

BenSix draws to my attention an article in the Sun resurrecting the “terrorists with breast implants” story. According to the paper:

FEMALE suicide bombers are being fitted with exploding breast implants which are almost impossible to detect, British spies have reportedly discovered.

…Terrorist expert Joseph Farah claims: “Women suicide bombers recruited by al-Qaeda are known to have had the explosives inserted in their breasts under techniques similar to breast enhancing surgery.”

…Hours after [the underpants bomber] had failed, Britain’s intelligence services began to pick up “chatter” emanating from Pakistan and Yemen that alerted MI5 to the creation of the lethal implants.

I dealt with this back at the start of February. In early January, a Forbes columnist speculated on the possibility of bomb breast implants, noting that Ayman al-Zawahiri “was a prominent gynecologist before dedicating his life to death and destruction”. A reader’s letter to the Ottumwa Courier made the same suggestion the next day. A few weeks later, the idea was picked up by the Daily Mail, which added the detail about the “chatter” and that “male bombers would have the explosive secreted near their appendix or in their buttocks” (The hapless Patrick Mercer also provided an obligatory quote). WorldNetDaily then picked up the baton, adding supposed evidence from MI5 that the technique had actually been put into use. As I noted in February, how exactly a  conspiracy-mongering conservative internet news-site operating out of the west coast of the USA acquired this extra information – including a direct quote from the head of MI5 that is found nowhere else on-line, and material from a report prepared for him – is somewhat mysterious.

The Sun article rehashes the WND piece, promoting WND‘s preposterous and distasteful editor Joseph Farah (e.g. here and here)  into a “terrorist expert”. From there, the story moved back across the Atlantic to Fox News, and now media around the world are buzzing:

???????????-?????????? ?????? ????? ??????? ???????????? ?????? ? ??????? ??????????? ? ? ????????, ???????????? ?????????? ???????????????? ?????? MI5…

Terroristiverkosto al-Qaidan pelätään rekrytoineen itsemurhapommittajiksi naisia, jotka ovat valmiita piilottamaan räjähdysaineita rintoihinsa…

El Kaide terör örgütünün canl? bombalar? yeni bir patlay?c? yerle?tirme bölgesi ke?fetti: Meme silikonu!…

Chirurgii plastici ce folosesc implanturi mamare cu explozibil pentru atentatori ar putea reprezenta noua tactic? terorist? pe care m?surile de securitate ?i noile scanere nu ar putea-o descoperi…

?? ??????? ?? ?? ??? ??? ????? ?? ???? ???? ??? ?? ????? 25? ????…

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Joseph Farah????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????…

A posting by Neal Ungerleider at True/Slant offers a probably futile appeal for calm:

PETN is a poor substance for exploding breast implant bombs. Pentaerythritol tetranitrate is known for two things: its relatively thick density/appearance/feel in solid form and for its extremely high brisance. The first means that any that any suicide bomber with breast implants large enough to detonate a hole in a plane would be walking in an odd manner that would likely invite scrutiny. The second means that a dedicated detonation device would be required to blow up the breast bombs…

The “explosives in the buttocks of some male suicide bombers” did not work at all. This author has written about al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s love of rectal suicide bombs before. It turns out that planting explosive charges in the body effectively turns the body of the bomber into a shield protecting the intended target from harm…

But how can this compete with the Sun‘s amazing photographic evidence, captioned “threat… explosives inserted into breast implants”:

In January 2009 the Sun gave the public a completely fake terror story about a plot to target British Jews: the evidence was postings on a Muslim website which turned out to have been made by a non-Muslim who then passed the story on to a news agency. The tale was debunked and withdrawn (and the source arrested), but the Sun attempted to defend its article in a letter to the Press Complaints Commission which shows exactly how the tabloid-editor brain works – see here.

UPDATE: Farah has now written a new post, complaining about the use of material published by him and telling us that the supposed scoop actually came from Gordon Thomas:

What they did was plagiarize the words of one of G2 Bulletin’s contributors, Gordon Thomas, and put them in Farah’s mouth.

“Why would they do that?” Farah asked. “Well, I guess they believed it permitted them to not credit either WND or G2, the original sources of the material. Perhaps they thought I would be so grateful for the promotion to ‘terrorism expert’ that I wouldn’t quibble with the misrepresentation.”

And the point is not to quibble with the media misrepresentation, says Farah. The point is to call the public’s attention to a resource that is being purposely obscured from them by the rest of the media – even though they obviously read it, rewrite it and exploit its content to the max.

He adds that Thomas is

a London-based correspondent with deep contacts in British intelligence.

One conservative who is less than impressed with Thomas is Daniel Pipes. Let us turn to a review by Pipes of one of Thomas’ books, Gideon’s Spies:

Thomas holds Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad, responsible for the deaths of Princess Diana (whose driver it supposedly pressured to the breaking point); the publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell (whom it supposedly murdered); 241 U.S. Marines in Lebanon in 1983 (about whose planned fate at the hands of Hezbollah it supposedly had advance knowledge); and William Buckley, a CIA agent (whom it supposedly let die so the PLO would take the blame). Thomas’s “secret history” also reveals that the Mossad helped the (failed) putsch of Soviet hardliners against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, and purposely destroyed the CIA’s network in South Africa.

…what is reliable in this book is old-hat, while what is new is utterly unreliable, a mishmash of blather and fantasy.

Reviewers on Amazon have helpfully highlighted a whole series of howlers that can allegedly be found in one of his other books.

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The website for the film Islam Rising: Geert Wilders’ Warning to the West carries a passive-aggressive cancellation notice:

Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller have cancelled the LA Premier featuring Geert Wilders and PRB Films’ new documentary film “ISLAM RISING”. As stated on the Atlas Shrugs website, the purpose of this cancellation is because Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller are opposed to Christian Action Network’s biblical view on homosexuality.

We want it to be understood that neither Christian Action Network nor PBS Films cancelled this event. You can direct all comments regarding this cancellation to Pamela Geller at www.ATLASSHRUGS.COM.

Though we have some disagreements with Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer over biblical issues, we also want it to be clear that we have the greatest respect for them personally and professionally for all their work in the counter-Jihad movement.

We apologize to Geert Wilders and all those who have pre-registered for this event. All credit cards that have been charged WILL be refunded.

The notice fails to make clear, though, that Wilders himself also pulled out of the event following negative reports about CAN in the Dutch media; Rob Boston gives some background on the Americans United blog:

Yesterday [23 March] I received an interesting call from a reporter in the Netherlands. He was seeking information on an American Religious Right outfit called the Christian Action Network (CAN).

…it came as quite a surprise to see the pro-gay Wilders linking up with CAN, a group that has frequently used vicious anti-gay rhetoric to raise money. In one rather lurid CAN letter from 1998, Martin Mawyer, the group’s president, attacked comedian Ellen DeGeneres, who is gay.

DeGeneres played a lesbian who came out in a ‘90s sitcom called “Ellen.” Mawyer was not pleased. He said DeGeneres had “DUMPED HER FILTHY LESBIAN LIFESTYLE IN THE CENTER OF YOUR LIVING ROOM” and went on to call her a “SODOMITE.” [Caps in the original]

…Confronted with the DeGeneres letter from 1998 by De Pers, Mawyer tried a creative dodge: He simply lied about it, labeling the letter an internet hoax. Unfortunately for Mawyer, I was able to pull a paper copy of the letter from AU’s files. Believe me, it’s no hoax. (You can read it here.)

I also sent De Pers three other stridently anti-gay fund-raising letters from Mawyer. The newspaper contacted Mawyer to ask about them – were they too perhaps “internet hoaxes?” – but at this point he stopped talking.

Wilders initally tried to shrug off Mawyers’ anti-gay views, stating that

‘I totally disagree with them about this [gay marriage],’ Wilders was quoted as saying by the Pers. ‘But they can make a film about me.’

That was noted on 22 March; the next day it was reported that he was backing out, and Geller and Spencer announced the cancellation – although, like Mawyer, they make no reference to Wilders’ own decision not to attend.

Geller’s response to the notice on the Islam Rising website is typically vitriolic and aggrieved:

Contrary to the false and misleading posting on the CAN Islam Rising film site, let me be clear. Our cancellation had nothing to do with the “Christian Action Network’s biblical view on homosexuality,” but with the abusive, ugly rhetoric found in various pieces of CAN literature. Atlas readers are well aware that I welcome differing opinions and perspectives, but the unifying theme here is individual rights, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and human rights.

Just because you consider something immoral doesn’t mean you should go around heaping abuse on those who have a different view of those whom you consider immoral.

Robert Spencer, meanwhile, adds that:

The cancellation had nothing to do with the “biblical view of homosexuality,” but with the ugly, vitriolic rhetoric that Mawyer has employed in the past… Taking a stand against something one considers immoral is one thing; indulging in hysterical, self-righteous, abusive rhetoric is quite another.

…Do we think Martin Mawyer, or anyone, should be dogged by something he wrote in 1997? Of course not. He has claimed that this letter is a forgery. Very well. If he provides evidence of that, I will be happy to see it and post it. He has claimed in statements to the Dutch press that he repudiates what he said in this letter. Very well. But his disingenuous posting on the Islam Rising site does not inspire confidence. If he repudiates what he wrote in 1997, why mischaracterize it on his site as our alleged rejection of the “biblical view of homosexuality”?

This is humbug: Spencer has known all about Mawyer’s anti-gay bigotry for months. Last autumn, Spencer joined Mawyer on a trip to the UK – Mawyer used the visit to interview the leaders of the English Defence League, and there was a farcical dinner party that was cancelled at the last moment when it became apparent that Mawyer’s assistant had invited the EDL leaders to come along without asking if that was acceptable to the other guests, who included Douglas Murray (Murray and the other guests, it should be made clear, are also opposed to homophobia and would not have known much about CAN). I blogged on this fiasco, and on Mawyer’s lurid anti-gay views, and my posts were picked up by Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs. On 6 September, Johnson linked to my post on Mawyer, and on 9 September he made full reference to Mawyer’s “FILTHY LESBIAN LIFESTYLE” letter, and mocked Spencer for hanging out with the “extremists of the Christian Action Network”.

We know that Spencer read these posts, because he responded on his blog, denouncing Johnson as a “libelblogger” and defending his association with CAN:

As for the CAN, I am working with them because of their excellent work on the documentary Homegrown Jihad. I do not feel myself bound to endorse every one of their other positions, or consider that I have done so, by working with them. In reality, I don’t make public statements on issues that are not jihad-related.

As I blogged here, Spencer also made passing references to me in comments he left at Harry’s Place, so it’s clear he knew exactly what Mawyer stood for and did not consider his “hysterical, self-righteous, abusive rhetoric” to be a matter of which he should take notice. Mawyer’s coarsely-expressed bigotry only became an issue once it became clear that than association with him would be damaging to Wilders.

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