Less talked about are the ties between the anti-gay measure and the far-right evangelical movement here in the United States. The author of the bill is David Bahati, a Ugandan lawmaker who has close ties to US organized evangelical groups that operate across several African countries. The groups are members of parliamentary prayer fellowships organized by the Family, one of the most powerful Christian conservative groups in Washington, DC.
The Family, also known as the Fellowship, is so highly secretive it didn’t even admit it existed until last year, when three political sex scandals, those of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, Nevada Senator John Ensign, and former Mississippi Congress member Chip Pickering, forced it into the open. All three men lived at one time in the Family’s clubhouse on Capitol Hill, known as the "C Street House."
For more, we’re joined by journalist and author Jeff Sharlet, author of the bestseller The Family. His new book is C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy. He traveled to Uganda earlier this year and wrote in-depth articles on the anti-gay legislation for Harper’s Magazine and The Advocate. Jeff Sharlet joins us now from Dartmouth College, where he’s an assistant professor of English.
The full transcript can be found here..
