Amie Newman at RH Reality Check points us to NPR's recent interview with David Bahati, the Ugandan parliamentarian and author of Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Read Amie's full commentary here. You can also listen to the NPR interview here.

The whole thing is really shocking, and we're outraged that Bahati's comments in the interview haven't been widely covered, scrutinized, and condemned yet by our public officials and the mainstream media. Amie underlines the scariest and most telling part of the NPR story:

Sharlet [NPR's interviewer] accompanied Bahati to a restaurant and later to his home, where Bahati told Sharlet that he wanted "to kill every last gay person."

"It was a very chilling moment, because I'm sitting there with this man who's talking about his plans for genocide, and has demonstrated over the period of my relationship with him that he's not some back bender — he's a real rising star in the movement," Sharlet says. "This was something that I hadn't understood before I went to Uganda, that this was a guy with real potential and real sway and increasingly a following in Uganda."

Want to help us stop David Bahati? Sign our StandForUganda petition.

We just sent out the alert below. Can you take a few seconds and help us spread the word on Facebook? Thanks!

Dear Advocate:

Over the past few weeks, you have sent 3,065 letters asking your elected officials to reject abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. The impact of these letters is already being felt in state capitols and in the halls of Congress.

Sometimes it's good to take a step back and remind ourselves just what abstinence-only-until-marriage programs are "teaching" to America's young people:

(Click the image for a larger version) Abstinence-only-until-marriage programs violate young people's rights by denying them access to information that could, in some cases, literally save their lives — but the problems don't stop there. They teach our children that condoms don't work. They reinforce gender stereotypes and excuse sexual assault. They tell gay and lesbian youth to "wait until marriage" in a country that won't let them get married.

If you haven't yet asked your Governor to reject abstinence-only-until-marriage funding, now is the time to take a stand. Click here to take action!

As always, I am deeply grateful for your help as we work together to ensure that every young person has access to the information and services they need to make responsible choices about their sexual health.

Sincerely,

James Wagoner
President
Advocates for Youth

One of my favorite essayists, Richard Just of The New Republic, has a new article out on President Obama and gay marriage. Here's an excerpt (don't miss the 1996-to-2010 timeline linked to below):

My colleague James Downie has assembled a fascinating timeline of Obama’s statements on gay marriage over the past 14 years, stretching from 1996 to earlier this month, when the White House responded to a judge’s ruling on Prop 8 by reiterating that it opposes same-sex marriage. What the timeline shows is a pattern that can only be described as illogical and cynical. Obama argues that he is against gay marriage while also opposing efforts like Prop 8 that would ban it. He justifies this by saying that state constitutions should not be used to reduce rights. (His exact words: "I am not in favor of gay marriage, but when you’re playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that that is not what America is about.")

Obama appears to be saying that it is fine to prohibit gay people from getting married, as long as the vehicle for doing so is not a constitution. Presumably, then, he supports the numerous states that have banned same-sex marriage through other means, without resorting to a constitutional amendment? If so, he might be the only person in the country to occupy this narrow, and frankly absurd, slice of intellectual terrain. Obama has also said he favors civil unions rather than gay marriage because the question of where and how to apply the label "marriage" is a religious one. This argument makes even less sense than his stance on state constitutions, since marriage, for better or for worse, is very much a government matter.

Read the full article here.

We hope you'll share this widely.

As the email from Advocates for Youth' President James Wagoner indicates, there's a brand-new comprehensive sex ed program in town. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has launched the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP), which allows states to apply for comprehensive, age-appropriate, and medically-accurate sex education. This year, $55 million in PREP funding is available to states.

However, at the same time, HHS is also allowing states to apply for $50 million in abstinence-only-until-marriage programs -- that's on top of the $1.5 billion that our country has already wasted on these discredited programs.

One might shrug their shoulders and say, "such is the wackiness of government," but I think we should take a step back and consider the absurdity of this current political landscape. What kind of system allows states to choose between a science-backed education option and a worthless, crackpot option?

We'll leave that for your own pondering for now...ultimately, we've published this post in the hope that you'll help us take action. Will you take one minute to tell your public officials to support PREP and reject ab-only programs?

Thanks! And here's some more info from James:

August 6, 2010

Dear Advocate,

As a direct result of your hard work — and the work of thousands of like-minded young people, parents, health professionals, and community leaders around the country — the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has officially launched the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP), allowing states to apply for $55 million this year in first-of-its-kind federal funding for comprehensive sex education.

On behalf of everyone here at Advocates for Youth, I cannot thank you enough for your tireless letters and phone calls to your representatives in Congress. Without your hard work over the past months and years, the PREP program would not have been created.

Urge your Governor to apply for PREP funding to bring comprehensive sex education to your community! Take action now!

Sadly, the news isn't all good.

HHS also opened applications for states to apply for $50 million in funding to support Title V abstinence-only-until-marriage programs — programs which extensive research has proven to be ineffective.

Both PREP and Title V were authorized and funded as a part of the recent health care reform package, and states have until August 30th to indicate their interest in applying for either program.

By the end of August, every governor will have to indicate to HHS whether they intend to apply for Title V abstinence-only-until-marriage funding and subject students in their state to these discredited and ineffective programs. The U.S. has already wasted more than $1.5 billion on abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, and it's disheartening to see that Congress is willing to throw away $250 million more.

Even worse, Title V abstinence-only-until-marriage funding requires states to spend $3 on these programs for every $4 they receive in federal funding. With many states facing budget cuts, saying "yes" to Title V abstinence-only-until-marriage programs will reduce available funding for other more-critical state programs.

Help stop wasteful spending on programs that don't work! Tell your Governor NOT to apply for Title V abstinence-only-until-marriage funding.

PREP programs also teach students information about abstinence — along with information about preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. And, they require no matching funds from state budgets!

Together, we can help convince governors throughout the country to do the right thing for America's youth: reject costly and dangerous Title V abstinence-only-until marriage programs — and instead apply for PREP funding to support evidence-based, age-appropriate comprehensive sex education.

The choice is clear. Let's get to work.

Sincerely,
James Wagoner
President Advocates for Youth

At least that's what a new dispatch from GlobalPost says:

Uganda's "Anti-Homosexuality Bill," which raised a worldwide uproar over its death penalty for gay sex, has stalled in parliamentary committee and it is unlikely to be passed in the current session, according to gay activists here.

Right from the start, on Oct. 13, 2009 when Ugandan member of parliament David Bahati submitted the bill, the proposed legislation caused national and international outrage.

Almost 10 months later, the bill remains with the Ugandan Parliament's Committee on Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, never having made it to a vote.

Of course, as we've said time and time again here on Amplify, nothing short of the bill's complete revocation would be acceptable. But it is good to see this hateful measure losing steam.

For more on this issue, check out our resource site StandForUganda.

Looks like the The New York Times and CNN were the first big outlets to break the big news: California's gay marriage ban has been overturned.

The key lines in Judge Vaughan Walker's just-released decision:

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

(Hat tip to Amplify contributor Jordan for providing some great running commentary throughout today.)

Federal Government: We gave you $434,000 in taxpayer money, and all we got was this lousy abstinence-only video game featuring creepy purple avatars.

The Institute for Simulation and Training at the University of Central Florida is developing a virtual reality game designed to teach middle schoolers the merits of sexual abstinence.

An Orlando newscast (see the video above) recently provided a glimpse of the gameplay. From the looks of things, the engineers have been working hard on upping the game's cool factor:

- You control a character's movement by flailing around in a full-body motion-capture suit.
- You earn points every time you learn a new social skill. Did you just refuse to kiss or have sex with that sketchy avatar who cornered you on the playground? Congratulations! You are now a Level 5 Abstinent Master.
- Moments of challenging sexual innuendo are interspersed with immersive day-to-day school adventures. The screenshot below, for example, shows the level where you and your fellow avatars nosh on invisible lunches in the school cafeteria:


All of this for the low cost of $434,000. That's how much the National Institutes of Health granted The Institute for Simulation and Training to engineer and pilot its creation in Florida classrooms. (The game is targeted at middle school girls, and is scheduled to be tested in after-school programs in the Spring of 2011.)

In all seriousness, we're not against using novel technologies (including socially-minded video games) as a tool for positive behavior change. But this video game appears to be the opposite of that. It leans on shortcuts and gimmickry when the real task at hand should involve providing students with comprehensive, medically-accurate, and age-appropriate information — i.e., practical knowledge that empowers young people to make responsible decisions regarding their sexual health.


What we see here is a fantastical world inhabited by souped-up puppets whose language consists entirely of pick-up lines. In this world, there's apparently no info about what sex actually entails (from a biological, social, or personal/emotional standpoint). No info about condoms. No info about contraception. No info about relevant community resources. And no info about how students might go about talking to their larger network — including parents and teachers — about important sexual health issues.

Ultimately, the biggest problem isn't the amount of money wasted. Rather, it's the fact that our government doled out $434,000 to help create a game that could damage the health of young Americans via mass-distributed ignorance.

Bless the day when our public officials realize that you can't take a widely discredited abstinence-only-until marriage ideology, wrap some fancy new technology around it, and expect it to spit out something good. Special dancing avatars notwithstanding:

(Hat tip to RH Reality Check for bringing our attention to this story.)

Good for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Earlier this week, the largest Lutheran denomination in the U.S. reinstated seven Northern Californian gay and transgender pastors who had been barred from participating in the church's ministry.

By all accounts, the reinstatement was long overdue. Last year, the ELCA voted to allow gay men and women with partners to serve as clergy members. This reversed the church's earlier policy, which required LGBT pastors to take a vow of celibacy.

Rev. Jeff R. Johnson, one of the reinstated pastors, summed up the change:

"Today the church is speaking with a clear voice...all people are welcome here, all people are invited to help lead this church, and all people are loved unconditionally by God."

Let's hope that other Christian denominations follow the ELCA's lead.

More coverage in The New York Times and SF Chronicle.

Happy Wednesday! Here's some mid-week fun for you. We recently came across this photo in an abstinence-only product catalogue distributed by NIMCO, Inc.:

Because who needs to be bothered with honest discussions about sex and sexuality, anyway? In lieu of actual conversation, all you really need is to flash this handy "Get REAL SmA'rt Gold Ring [Credit] Card" to your friends, classmates, and family members -- assuming that you can afford to pay NIMCO, Inc. the $39.50 plus shipping and handling for this piece of paper.

Amplify Community Editor Samantha (also known here as the awesome Mahayana) in front of the Advocates for Youth Lounge at Netroots Nation.

The Amplify team just finished up a great trip to Las Vegas for Netroots Nation 2010. We heard from the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Al Franken, presented to hundreds of progressive leaders on the state of the pro-choice movement and the power of online organizing, and exchanged ideas with young activists from all over the world.

We'll have more convention stories and recaps for you later this week, including Amplify's exclusive video interview with Lt. Dan Choi, who brought many of us to tears on Saturday after he handed Harry Reid his West Point class ring during the Senate Majority Leader's keynote address. (Reid had previously pledged to Choi that he would end Don't Ask, Don't Tell by 2009.)

Stay tuned!

Last week Politico published a whopper of an op-ed by fundamentalist mouthpiece and former Family Research Council President Gary Bauer, entitled "Obama's anti-youth agenda." Among other accusations, Bauer claims:

But the Obama agenda isn't just hitting young people in their wallets. It’s tearing their souls, literally and figuratively. With his Supreme Court picks and by advocating taxpayer funding of abortion.

Obama has advanced the abortion rights cause more than any other president. Obama's position on abortion can credibly be called pro-abortion, not pro-abortion rights, because, through numerous measures, he is compelling all Americans to underwrite the procedure.

Yesterday Politico published a great rebuttal by Advocates' very own Sarah Audelo and our colleague Gregory Cendana, President of the United States Student Association. The two write:

According to Bauer, Obama has "advanced the abortion rights cause more than any president in history." Really? Health care reform offered a unique opportunity to pursue public funding by ending the Hyde Amendment. Instead, Obama declared "this is a health care bill, not an abortion bill."

By defending the status quo rather than progressive principles, Obama again put women's rights on the chopping block.

Read the full response here.

My colleague Meghan (who is the Senior State Strategies Program Manager here at Advocates for Youth) just sent out this action alert to some core Ohio activists. If you're from Ohio and have a few minutes to spare, please take the action below and share it with your friends. Thanks! -Nikki

In Ohio, 5,000 lives hang in the balance.

As Ohio faces further budget cuts, the Ohio AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) is in on the chopping block — with thousands of lives hanging in the balance.

In Ohio, nearly 5,000 people living with HIV and AIDS are enrolled in ADAP to receive life-saving treatment and medications. The state even has a waiting list of 320 people who are eligible for the program but cannot be served due to lack of funds.

Congress is considering the ACCESS ADAP Act, which would provide critical funds and support to state AIDS assistance programs. Ohio needs your help — and your Senators need to hear from you!

In the 25 years since the beginning of the HIV/AIDS crisis, treatment options have improved dramatically — but these medications can cost thousands of dollars each month. For many, ADAP is the only hope for receiving desperately needed treatment.

Until now, Ohio has been a model of effective ADAP implementation. But, with mounting need and not enough funding, Ohio may join the growing list of states that are cutting services, restricting eligibility, and limiting the medications they provide.

For thousands of Ohioans, this is literally a matter of life or death.

Tell Senators Brown and Voinovich to support the ACCESS ADAP Act and protect the health and lives of people in Ohio!

Without access to these vital medications and services, people living with HIV and AIDS will no longer have access to the treatment they need to stay healthy. We can't let that happen!

Sincerely,
Meghan

P.S. Will you help us spread the word? Click here to share this action on Facebook, and click here to share it on Twitter.

Here's hoping that this new United Nations body advances the rights of women across the world immediately:

In historic move, UN creates single entity to promote women’s empowerment

In a bid to accelerate the empowerment of women, the General Assembly today voted unanimously to create a dynamic new entity merging four United Nations offices focusing on gender equality, a move hailed by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other senior officials.

"The newest member of the UN family has been born today," Mr. Ban told the Assembly after it passed the resolution setting up the new UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, to be known as UN Women. "This is truly a watershed day," he declared.

Read the full article here.

A guest post from our friends over at the Religious Institute, a multifaith organization dedicated to advocating for sexual health, education, and justice in faith communities and society. The following was written by Tim Palmer, the Religious Institute's Director of Communications and Outreach.

It's bad enough that religious conservatives are still managing to do their dirty work — like sneaking more federal money for abstinence-only education into health reform, passing new abortion restrictions in Oklahoma, and taking back marriage equality in California and Maine. But what is particularly galling is when this crowd claims to speak for all people of faith, when they don't speak for people like us.

That's why the Religious Institute has launched the Faithful Voices Network, a multifaith movement of people of faith who support comprehensive sexuality education, reproductive justice, and full inclusion of women and LGBT people in faith communities and society.

The Religious Institute was created in 2001 to raise a faithful and progressive voice around sexuality and religion. Since then, we have built a national network of clergy and religious professionals who support our work. Now, the Faithful Voices Network will expand our outreach to the "people in the pews" — individuals who want to hear more about sexual justice from the pulpit, and may be more progressive on issues like marriage equality, abortion rights and sex education than their own faith leaders are.

The Faithful Voices Network will raise a progressive voice from the grassroots.

Take this pledge today: "As a person of faith, I support sexual health, education and justice in faith communities and society." And spread the word among your family and friends.

Tell the world that the religious right doesn't speak for us.

In case you missed it. This last weekend Governor Charlie Crist of Florida vetoed a bill that would have forced women to get an ultrasound — and pay for it out of their own pockets — before receiving an abortion.

Here's the key excerpt from the official letter announcing the veto:

"[P]ersonal views should not result in laws that unwisely expand the role of government and coerce people to obtain medical tests or procedures that are not medically necessary. In this case, such action would violate a woman's right to privacy."

Governor Crist is locked in a high-profile reelection battle this year as a registered Independent. Not surprisingly, one of his opponents, Marcio Rubio, immediately pounced on Crist's decision and accused the Governor of "put[ting] politics ahead of principled policy-making."

No matter the politics involved, though, one thing is clear: coercing women into a 100% unnecessary procedure and forcing them to cover the cost isn't principled policy-making by any means — if anything, it's reckless, medically unsound, and brazenly ideological policy-making. Pro-choice advocates can breathe a sigh of relief that medical fact and legal precedent won over the Florida State House this time around.

Earlier today The Washington Post published some great photos from this year's Capital Pride parade and festival in Washington, DC. My favorite:

Find more photos here.

Yesterday we asked all of you to tell Representative Eric Cantor to end spending on wasteful abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. Well, it's been just one day, but you've already come out in full force. Thank you!

Your grassroots message is even being featured right now on Congressman Cantor's YouCut website...click the screenshot below to see the full image. (Note the message in red.)

We just sent out the action alert below. Please help us spread the word by forwarding this blog post to 3 of your friends. Thanks! -Nikki

This week Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA) introduced YouCut, a new GOP initiative marketed as a "first-of-its-kind project...designed to defeat the permissive culture of runaway spending in Congress."

Here's how it's supposed to work: Each week the GOP asks the public to go online and vote on five different spending cut proposals. The top-ranked idea is then taken to the House floor, where it receives a full up-or-down vote.

House Republicans are promising that YouCut will help bring the axe down on taxpayer-funded pork and patronage. However, in the case of one extremely wasteful and damaging ideological earmark — the massive $250 million that Congress pumped into failed Title V abstinence-only-until-marriage-programs earlier this year — GOP leaders (not to mention their colleagues across the aisle) have already looked the other way.

Will you help us put the GOP and its YouCut marketing to the test? Click here to send the following message via the official YouCut submission form (you can paste in the text below):

"Dear Representative Cantor: If you're serious about cutting unnecessary government spending, then I urge you to end ALL funding for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs immediately. These discredited programs have wasted more than $1.5 billion in federal funds so far."

To be honest, we'll be pleasantly surprised if Rep. Cantor heeds our proposal. The larger point, though, shouldn't be missed. As advocates for the rights of youth, we need to use every public opportunity to tell our elected officials one important truth: ending ab-only is a no-brainer.

If the YouCut project is going to be more than a partisan gimmick, its sponsors need to show some economic sense and moral backbone. Let's tell them to end all dangerous abstinence-only-until-marriage programs for good.

Sincerely,

Will Neville
Director of Strategic Communications
Advocates for Youth

P.S. Help us spread the word. Click here to share our YouCut action on Facebook, and click here to share it on Twitter.

Over at Alternet, Shelby Knox shares the interesting backstory about Congressman Mark Souder's "Praise Abstinence-only" video:

At the end of the video, Rep. Souder claims to have been “particularly offended when two young people were added to the supposed scientist panel” to testify about their experience with abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. He goes on to attack the youth, one of whom had contracted AIDS after he’d been told by his abstinence teacher that condoms don’t work, for coming to testify on something “they know nothing about.”

Max Siegel was the brave young man who risked his personal safety to disclose his AIDS status in an effort to keep other teens from being exposed to the lies that put his life in danger. I was the other young person who testified that day. Contrary to Representative Souder’s claims that I was almost thirty, I was three years out of high school and six years into my fight to make sure no other teen would be subjected to the shame and misinformation taxpayer dollars funded in the form of a pastor hired to give a ‘Love, Sex, and Dating’ seminar to my senior class.

“Sex inside of marriage is the only way to prevent AIDS,” we were told. “If you have sex before you get married, your husband won’t want you because you’re like a dirty, dingy toothbrush,” he said. “Sex inside of marriage is like a fire inside the fireplace — it keeps you warm and makes you feel good. Sex outside of marriage is like a fire in the middle of the living room — it will burn your house down and ruin your life. It can and probably will kill you.”

Representative Mark Souder of Indiana, one of the most ardent supporters of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, will be resigning his Congressional seat effective this Friday, after admitting to an extramarital affair with a staffer in his district office.

Some news reports this week have portrayed Souder as a kind of run-of-the-mill "family values" ideologue. Such a characterization, though, misses the larger point: Souder was a particularly active, stubborn, and vindictive ideologue.

As chairman of a powerful "Government Reform" subcommittee during the Bush administration, Souder was infamous for launching broadside attacks against not only the proponents of comprehensive sex ed, but also community health workers who dared to provide urgent HIV/AIDS-related services to at-risk populations. Over at Firedoglake, you can read Teddy Partridge's story about Congressman Souder's outrageous witch-hunt against a San Francisco AIDS nonprofit — an organization that Souder targeted (using taxpayer dollars) because its disease prevention messages contained too much about...sex and condoms.

We'll leave you with this. Talking Points Memo just dug up this November 2009 video interview, in which Souder talks about the "failures of condom distribution" in schools. The interviewer seen below is Tracy Jackson, the staffer with whom the Congressman had an affair.

Watch it:

Good news (in part). Recent news reports suggest that changes may be on the horizon that would modify or drop the harshest clauses from Uganda's "Anti-Homosexuality Bill."

(Important note: A separate New York Times article suggests that the bill may be withdrawn all together — but we're waiting on further confirmation.)

If these reports are borne out, Ugandan parliamentarians will remove a clause from the measure that makes "aggravated homosexuality" (which includes homosexual activity by a person living with HIV) an offense punishable by death. The "failing to disclose the offence" stipulation — i.e., the offense of a "person of authority" failing to report their gay neighbors to the police — would be removed as well.

This development points to a rapidly changing political landscape in Uganda. Just a few months ago, the measure's author David Bahati confidently predicted that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill would be passed in its original form. But now he and his political supporters are telling a different story. According to a recent New York Times update, Bahati has admitted that he expects substantive changes to his bill.

Why the shift? In large part, the Ugandan government is feeling the heat from the international community and the human rights community at large. The Obama administration has publicly condemned what has come to be known as the "Kill the Gays" bill. Grassroots activist groups — who have mobilized through online resources like Avaaz.org and www.StandForUganda.com — have collected signatures from hundreds of thousands of petitioners calling for the measure to be stopped.

Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni has also responded to the threat of targeted economic sanctions. Earlier this year, in answer to an effort spearheaded by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the State Department signaled that they would consider eliminating Uganda's special U.S. trade status — which allows Uganda to deliver goods to the U.S. tariff-free — if the Anti-Homosexuality Bill were signed into law.

More...

From Campus Progress, a heartbreaking story about Sara Isaacson, an ROTC student who's now facing $80,000 in unexpected debt for following the values that the ROTC taught her:

For those who don't know, could you tell us about what happened?

I had been on an ROTC scholarship at the UNC–Chapel Hill that I had received at the very beginning of my college career. I had initially received financial aid from the university and then was able to get my ROTC scholarship. At the point when I came in to ROTC I had identified as straight. I had not really come out to myself or to anyone else as lesbian yet.

Then in about November I started really coming out to myself as lesbian and in that process spent a lot of time considering what I wanted to do with ROTC just because of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy and law. What it came down to for me is that I felt I needed to come out to my commander because of integrity. Integrity is one of the seven Army values and is something that they train us to live by every day, every second, whether someone's watching or not. … Without realizing it, the policy really asks people to lie, to lie about who they are, to tell small lies about what they did or didn't do. It's something that I wasn't willing to do because if I don't have my values to fall back on, I have nothing.

In January, two days before the State of the Union address, I walked into my commander's office and handed him a memo saying that I had recently come to identify as lesbian. In that memo I also talked about what has drawn me to the Army and what I loved about it and how much it meant to me—how much pride I had in being part of that organization and how serving was something I had wanted to do for so many years. But then I went on to say that because of these values of honor and integrity that the Army teaches … that I was no longer comfortable lying about who I was.

How did your commander [Lt. Col. Monte Yoder] react?

In that conversation, he told me that "don't ask, don't tell" does not prohibit gay or lesbian people from serving; however it prohibits them from doing so openly. … I don't think that the policy is working because when we don't allow people to serve openly we're forcing them to lie and to break those values that are supposed to drive everything. He told me that because I had come in and handed him this letter that I would be dropped from the ROTC program and that he would make the recommendation that he had to repay all the scholarship money that I received.

Read the full article.

Nicholas Kristof writes on his Facebook Page:

"Spent the day in rural Congo Republic, visiting schools and clinics. Family planning is desperately needed here yet mostly absent. And a woman who wants contraceptives has to bring her husband to prove that he has consented — a huge disincentive. It's hard to see how one can lick poverty here if contraception isn't in the picture."

By now you've probably heard that Elena Kagan, the U.S. Solicitor General, is President Obama's choice to replace Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court.

Her Congressional confirmation hearing should reveal a lot more about where Kagan stands on a number of important issues — including abortion. For now, we'll have to lean on the public record and the news media's own digging in order to make some best guesses.

Over at RHRealityCheck, Editor-in-Chief Jodi Jacobson writes:

"Little is known about Kagan's positions on the right to choose abortion or broader reproductive and sexual health issues, and the reaction of women's groups has been tempered by the lack of a track record."

(Be sure to read Jodi's article in full -- it provides a great snapshot of the media's reactions and shades of punditry so far.)

Yesterday, The New York Times led its nomination coverage with a story entitled "As Clinton Aide, Kagan Recommended Tactical Support for an Abortion Ban." The article discusses a domestic policy memo that Kagan wrote while she was working for the Clinton administration.

Time will tell. Based on the past few Supreme Court confirmation hearings, we can expect at least one Member of Congress to ask Kagan whether or not she thinks the constitutional right to privacy includes the right to choose. Justice Sonia Sotomayor gave a clear "yes" in answer to this vital question. I certainly hope that Kagan does the same.

Earlier this week the popular American religious fundamentalist Lou Engle took the stage in front of over 1,300 people at Makerere University in Uganda. He was speaking in the country as the organizer of TheCall Uganda, an event billed as "a gathering of fasting and prayer to confess our personal and national sins."

In reality, the event was a rabid defense of Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which seeks to make being gay a capital crime.

Engle's organization TheCall — which first gained national and worldwide fame as one of the loudest proponents of California's Prop 8 — denied knowing anything about the Anti-Homosexuality Bill when it was first invited to Uganda. Engle even issued a press release before his event promising that he wouldn't promote the measure on the stage.

A number of news stories and eyewitness accounts, however, tell a very different story. The following is from a Ugandan LGBT activist who attended Engle's rally (hat tip to Waymon Hudson):

"Pastor Lou Engle from America noted that he didn't know by the time of his invitation to Uganda that there was a homosexuality bill. He went ahead to emphasize that it is the Western World using non-government organizations to promote homosexuality. He warned the youth in the crowd that when America allowed homosexuals freedom it was the end of their nation."

"He [Engle] called upon the government of Uganda to be firm and hold on its righteous stand against the evil. He mentioned that homosexuals have penetrated the educational system and Ugandans must be aware of the evil. He also lectured about how God planned marriage only between man and woman and that marriage is for procreation."

Really? Lou Engle comes to your country and tells you that the evildoers have "penetrated" your schools. He warns that giving LGBT people freedom will bring the "end of [your] nation." He claims that the United States — a country that many people look up to around the world — is already monumentally corrupted given its and U.S. NGOs' promotion of homosexuality.

Lou Engle went to Uganda and incited hate, pure and simple. He's so lost in ideology that he has forgotten the rules of his faith. "In everything, do to others what you would want them to do to you" — have these ideologues forgotten the lessons of the Gospel?