“Some of the nicest people I have ever met are gay people.”

I don't feel the need to rehash the prior posting about my Sadness for Screamers. But in today's New York Times I was struck with how evangelical "christians" can be so blind to the cause and effect of the homophobia they've helped to fuel in African nations such as Uganda.

"Oh, no," they say, "we don't condone killing people." After all, as Don Schmierer so tritely put it:

“That’s horrible, absolutely horrible,” he said. “Some of the nicest people I have ever met are gay people.”

And yet, Mr. Schmierer of Exodus International, went to Uganda in March and did a "parenting" talk to tell Ugandan parents how NOT to accept the same-sex orientation of their children, advocating a position that LGBT people can change. In Uganda, that "change" is enforced with beatings, threats, and rape. Mr. Schmierer says now that he feels he was "duped". But what he, and others, have done is simply sow the seeds of hatred, tending them with tenacious and vicious care, so that they have bloomed into the bigotry we are seeing now.

For shame!