Jeff Sharlet has a piece in the September
issue of Harper's (not yet available online):
"Straight Man's Burden," about the Ugandan
Fellowship and Ugandan MP David Bahati's
Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

It's really quite extraordinary.

A few highlights:

"For years, American fundamentalists have looked
on Uganda as a laboratory for theocracy, though most prefer such terms as 'government led by God.' "

 

The usual suspects are named: Scott Lively and
Kevin Abrams.

"The [A-H] bill followed, with remarkable precision,
the talking points not of [Scott] Lively, a fringe
character, but of mainstream evangelicals and conservative politicians."

...Pastor Rick and wife Kay.
...Senator Jim Inhofe and former Attorney General, John Ashcroft.
...Bob Hunter, "a former official with the Ford and Carter administrations."

Sharlet traces the American influence -
both "good" (via the Family) -
For ex., Honorable Bahati [now MP], who in 2004,
had "studied in the United States at the ...Family Research Council... went to America to learn
...at the Leadership Institute, a well-funded school of 'political technology' for conservative activists."
Someone told him, you need to visit the Ceders."
And then there's Tim Kreutter, an American in Uganda, who "runs a Family-funded project of youth homes and schools centered around a 'Leadership Academy' created to train a new professional
class instilled from childhood onward with the principles of Jesus."

And the "bad."

Bad American influences "use your organizations [immediately referring, perhaps, to megachurches
in the United States and, presumably, to their missionary outreaches] to spread their [bad] ways," Pastor Michael Kyazze told Sharlet.
"To recruit. There are many methods, you know."

[Sharlet]: I did. David Bahati had listed several by phone before I came to Uganda. Among the most insidious: iPods. Also laptops and cell phones. Gay recruiters are said to offer them the way pedophiles entice with lolipops. "But it is technology. So much more seductive," Bahati had explained.

[Kyazze]: {T]he Americans, the Europeans, the Dutch, are under the control of the homo.

It gets even MORE interesting when the discussion moves on to the subjects of spiritual warfare, demonic possession and modern "witchcraft."
(The latter not "a matter of chicken heads or curses... [but of]...information: the supression or selctive release of truths."
Which would seem to deflect or possibly distract away from Sarah Plain's Wasilla Assembly of God encounter with Kiambu, Kenya, pastor, Thomas Muthee -
see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwkb9_zB2Pg
and
"The Witch Hunter Anoints Sarah Palin,"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/the-witch-hunter-ano ints_b_128805.html.)

 

The article approaches the recent intensity of Chris Hedges.

A bit of a surprise to me, since in his earlier book, The Family, and articles for Harper's -
Jesus Plus Nothing (May, 2003), Soldiers of Christ (May, 2005) and Jesus Killed Mohammed
(May, 2009) - Sharlet's reportage  seemed almost diffident. More searching and tentative than reactive.

Sharlet's new book, C Street, will be published this month by Little, Brown.