The struggle for the civil rights for women, sexual minorities, and people who are HIV+ outside of the United States, in hundreds of countries, involves fierce protection against imprisonment, mutilation, violence, and death. The abuse of power is monumental, and first world countries mostly sit idly by while this miscarriage of humanity is put forward by governments, religions, commerce, and often vile social custom.
This alone should make every American care about this silent genocide, the systematic “disappearing” of people who are HIV+ or lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender and gender-nonconforming (LGBT) and severe restrictions on the rights of women.
But, there are still other reasons, all very troubling, that should lead every global citizen to be concerned with this tyranny which causes the unnecessary shattering of people’s lives on every continent.
American foreign aid supplies all or a portion of the budgets of many foreign governments but we fail to do enough, anything, to interrupt the associated civil corruption which swallows sometimes half and mismanages what is supposed to be benefiting their populations. This has the most severe impact on women, sexual minorities, and people with HIV+. When will the United States live up to its own principles and condemn these practices and add more safeguards for our US tax dollars? Quiet and overt diplomacy and more public statements from President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton must be forthcoming, not just occasionally reactive or opportunistic sound-bites.
The US has a great opportunity to save a whole class of people in other countries, but looks away. Are we to look back on this period and say we stood quiet instead of interceding to prevent the mass murder of thousands and thousands we could have saved?.
To stand by not only misses that opportunity, America sends the wrong message, attitude, and philosophy out to the rest of the world, whose eyes are fixed on what we are or are not doing to make the world a better place. Will the US just perpetuate the global culture of sexual violence or do something about it?
Worse, and complicating this terrible worldwide problem, is the direct manipulation of dishonest, hypocritical, and greedy past and current US elected and appointed officials. These men very unofficially and unlawfully earn millions for themselves and their cronies on the backs of foreign populations. They are connected and primarily loyal to secretive christianist corporations/organizations, such as “The Family” (aka “The Fellowship”), the Family Research Council, and to religious leaders whose congregations comprise primarily of honest people who may be blissfully unaware that their financial and moral support of their church is being funneled into the pockets of these commercial adventurers.
Like past charades and crusades, these zealots come in the disguise of acting “in the name of Jesus” and today use fear of women’s rights, fear of people who are HIV+, and fear of anyone who is LGBT to terrorize entire populations. This is a ruse to distract because they are chiefly concerned with who gets the contracts, for roads, schools, hospitals, and especially the extraction of national resources, and most important, “What is the margin? Their profit, how much can they get their hands on?
They lobby at home to unadvisedly turn out more foreign aid, even to countries under dictatorships, to keep the revenue stream pregnant with multiple opportunities to make even more money. One U.S. Senator has boasted of hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel and security he received as senator to fund his “Jesus work” in Uganda.
More in the weeks and months to come exposing the voting and lobbying histories of these current elected and appointed US officials (virtually all Republican, white, and male) which will disclose this egregious mishandling of US tax dollars for spreading homophobia and hate abroad, lining the opposition’s own pockets, and working to blur all lines separating church in state everywhere.
How about a round up and forced resignations of a few dozen members of the US Congress?
We will delve deeply into the cause which motivates these christianist corporations/organizations which advocate adherence to a duty they place higher than any civil duty whatsoever, including government service. Their shared cause is to bring about a world where the rule of law is replaced by the rule of [their] God. And their rule of God includes putting women in their place, and erasing sexual minorities that make them uncomfortable or scare them (itchy about one’s own sexuality, really) and any evidence of HIV+.
This goal to erase the rule of law is foundational to their political and private lives, as Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, and Michele Bachman are showing us right now (don’t they know we can see them??). To me, this parallels the oft-disdained mission of jihadists. As for our the members of the US government involved in this cause, ahead of their oath to the US Constitution, this is a vile form of organized crime secretly draining our treasury and ought to be considered sedition.
Are we going to just sit by and let them do that? Their mayhem here and abroad must come to an abrupt end.
If we fail to get involved and act, these self-styled American Fundamentalists, these abusers of powers, will continue their mission of eradication of what they find unacceptable, bringing their theocracy to Main Street USA and every continent on the globe.
These forces are engaged in a worldwide, well-organized attack on all countries’ governments and their populations to extend their exclusionary religious beliefs and unreckoned homophobia and hate, all in the name of their religious cause.
We are broadening out contacts with foreign groups representing women, people with HIV+, and LGBT rights, and will be regularly reporting here, organizing grassroots activism in Washington, DC, and working with watchdog groups to expose the secretive disloyalty of US elected officials. We welcome new contributors.
Let us know what you think? What are you doing to right this terrible and shame wrong being perpetuated by our hard-earned tax dollars?
Where is the outrage?