With an economy in shambles, the world community condemning you for a rigged election, widespread corruption and sickness in his country, it is hard to predict what subject Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe would pick for an emphasis in his inaugural address. Mugabe however went with none of the above and instead lashed out at homosexuality, which he described as filthy, filthy disease.”
The 89-year-old president urged people to “damn” homosexuality and warned them that homosexuality “destroys nations, apart from it being a filthy, filthy disease.” Mugabe has made gays the focus of his public remarks, declaring them “worse than pigs, goats, and birds.” Of course the destruction of his own country by his own hand is almost complete. The country has only a couple hundred dollars in the bank while his wife and family spends lavishly on themselves.
By getting people to hate gays, Mugabe clearly hopes that they will not be thinking of the billions that he and his family has squandered. For most Zimbabweans, it is the Mugabe family that is the filthy disease destroying their name.
Jill –
It sounds like you’re familiar with or even quoting the Genocide Watch website.
http://www.genocidewatch.org/
All the rabidly anti-gay countries in Africa are trying to run through the list, “The Eight Stages of Genocide”.
http://www.genocidewatch.org/genocide/8stagesofgenocide.html
No group of extremists every got the majority to agree to atrocities on Day 1. It always takes months or years of propaganda and hate speech to incite genocide.
Gene,
Will you unleash the spam filter?
The US, UK and others invade countries or meddle in their affairs when it’s in the interests of the oppressor’s financial sector.
Meanwhile, countries which do need to be invaded and their governments overthrown because of atrocities, terrorism or war crimes (e.g. Zimbabwe, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, etc.) the US, UK and others take a “hands off” policy.
Noam Chomsky was right. The term “moral war” is only ever used to justify selfish action. Any moral acts that happen by the attacking country are incidental at best and more often accidental.
Nick, I agree. He is repulsive. I do understand what you are saying, it’s a very good point . I appreciate your insight as to why we do think the way we do and why we say things at first that we may not truly mean.
Jill, I applaud your stance. That said, I also understand the visceral reaction to Mugabe. Sometimes we just have to breathe a bit before speaking or writing. Lord knows I must often remind myself of that.
The AIDS epidemic in Africa is different that the US. We would have been better off, and better served HIV patients in this country back in the 80’s, as if it were a disease, not a political problem. With any sexually transmitted disease we have, and still do, ask the VERY important question, “Who were your partners?” Politicians took that key tool out of the scientific treatment for HIV. That was wrong, and more people became affected because of it. But, that is water under the bridge. The epidemic in Africa is much more heterosexual in Africa. We have a neighbor who served in the Peace Corps as a nurse, fighting this epidemic. She tells me the problem was exponentially worse in Africa but they treated the problem scientifically, not politically. And, they have turned the corner in countries that have been cooperative. I don’t know if Mugabe has been cooperative. Let me end w/ a controversial statement of fact. W has done more for Africa regarding AIDS than anyone else. When folks like Bono and Matt Damon praise him, you know it’s earned. I’m not a W fan. Never voted for him. But, I was taught by the Jesuits how to think, not what to think.
O.S. Once you start calling people a “disease” you have made two ethical and intellectual mistakes: 1. you are removing him from the realm of human being, somehow pretending that human beings are not capable of doing hideous actions. They are. 2. you are becoming a piece of the problem yourself. By dehumanizing others you make yourself and others readily to exterminate the “vermin”, cure the “disease” as it were.
History is littered with people who think like that and commit atrocities. It’s one of the best techniques for turning ordinary people in to people who will do anything.
Obviously, it is your right to say that but there are historical events which could not have arisen until one group of people decided it was acceptable to dehumanize others. That’s exactly what Mugabe is doing. If he is wrong to do this, why are you correct in doing the same thing?
Excellent comment, Jill.
OS,
Seconded.
Robert Mugabe is a disease. I note he is of advanced years. One could hope his delusional rants were the result of some sort of dementia, but alas, it is probably not. He really is that hateful and ignorant. If you look underneath the surface of people like Robert Mugabe and his ilk, you find his mind is still a festering miasis.
Evil is not a word I use very often, and then only with caution, but it applies in this case.
This guy and others high up in the govt. are supported by members of USGinc. who belong to “The Family”. The Family believes god puts people into power, so anyone who is in power is a agent of god on earth.
“Sharlet recently traveled to Uganda to speak with Bahati, the bill’s author. He writes about that meeting in a September 2010 Harper’s Magazine magazine piece, “.” He describes how gay Ugandans are struggling to survive — and recounts his meetings with Bahati — in a conversation with Terry Gross on Fresh Air.
“Bahati said: ‘If you come here, you’ll see homosexuals from Europe and America are luring our children into homosexuality by distributing cell phones and iPods and things like this,’ ” Sharlet recounts. “And he said, ‘And I can explain to you what I really want to do.’ ”
Sharlet 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 bencher — 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.”
And he has connections to American leaders. Sharlet explains that Bahati is one of the Uganda leaders of an American evangelical movement called , or the Family — the secretive fellowship of powerful Christian politicians who wield considerable political influence, both in Washington and abroad.
Jeff Sharlet
is an assistant professor of creative nonfiction at Dartmouth College and a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine and Rolling Stone.
Courtesy of the author
“I discovered … that there was this very direct relationship,” Sharlet says. “And [the Fellowship members] are emphatic and saying: ‘We haven’t killed any gay people in Uganda. This isn’t what we had in mind. We didn’t pull the trigger.’ And that’s true. They didn’t pull the trigger. But there’s a sense in which they built the gun, which was this institutional idea of government being decided by small groups of elite leaders like Bahati, getting together and trying to conform government to their idea of Biblical law. And this is what their American benefactors wanted them to do.”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129422524
JT: I strongly object to calling even someone as heinous as Mugabe a filthy disease. He is despicable. He is someone who belongs in jail. We must not use that kind of language to dehumanize other people or we are losing our own value system.
Davidm2675 strikes at the heart of ignorance with “If we had suffered with unrestrained homosexuality”
Because none of the gay people in western countries — especially in the U.S. — have consensual sex. That a lot of that sex may be loving seems to be completely lost on you.
David, your theatrical obsession with denigrating gay people seems to know no bounds. It will not work, especially since your warped views are based on trauma you yourself admitted. This is no excuse to be ugly about gay people who did not attack you, and that you do not know personally.
And that is the vast, vast majority.
DavidM wrote:
“This country has more than 20% of the teenagers 15 to 19 years old suffering from AIDS. If we had suffered with unrestrained homosexuality as long as they have, we might not be so high and mighty in pronouncing judgment against this country’s efforts to curb the societal problems caused by sexual immorality.”
James Knauer wrote: “David, your theatrical obsession with denigrating gay people seems to know no bounds.”
You perceive gay denigration only because of your ideology of making gays a protected class of people who needs to be coddled and protected from any criticism. I care more about gays and have done more to help gays than you can even imagine. My perspective is about sexual morality regardless of whether a person identifies as gay, straight, bisexual or pedophile. Such labels more often than not obfuscate the issues at play.
You are like a self-righteous man patting the back of a homosexual jogging down the road, proclaiming your approval of him as he runs toward a cliff that you refuse to see no matter how many people tell you about it. The homosexual heads toward a destructive lifestyle of promiscuous sex, higher rates of STD’s, and higher rates of depression, much greater chance of dying from murder, suicide, or in a traffic accident. Yeah, you just wish him blessings as he continues on his way. Then when someone cares enough to warn him about his direction in life, you attack with vileness that person, thinking that you are protecting the homosexual from him when really he is working toward saving that gay person’s life. You think you do society a great service when actually you are contributing to its destruction. Maybe you should consider just minding your own business if you don’t care enough to research all the facts.
In this particular situation, we have a country with numerous problems, especially in the area of sexually transmitted diseases caused by sexual immorality. The problem is aggravated by homosexual activists flying into the country to pass out ipads and iphones to young teens in order to promote the sexually destructive lifestyle that causes them to die earlier than others in society. Rather than consider the problem and its causes, you would rather rail against anyone who would even suggest that the homosexual activists are contributing to the problem rather than helping it.
People suggest better medical services to fix the STD problem, but many of these diseases such as AIDS cannot be treated effectively. We know the root of the problem is sexual promiscuity. Even if your own sexual proclivities do not allow you to address this root of the problem, you should not judge others who do, and you certainly should not block them in their efforts. We are talking about a life and death situation here.
Or maybe . . . if people like you and Mugabe, David, would quit trying to force your “morality” on people, then the people with HIV could get proper medical treatment and programs could be put in place to mitigate infection.
Not only homosexuals get, have or transmit HIV.
Unlike you, viruses don’t discriminate.
Bigotry is a filthy disease.
This country has more than 20% of the teenagers 15 to 19 years old suffering from AIDS. If we had suffered with unrestrained homosexuality as long as they have, we might not be so high and mighty in pronouncing judgment against this country’s efforts to curb the societal problems caused by sexual immorality.
Power corrupts.
“By getting people to hate gays, Mugabe clearly hopes that they will not be thinking of the billions that he and his family has squandered.”
I’m Shocked SHOCKED someone would use such a ploy for political strategery.
Mugabe: Homosexuality Is Filthy Disease Destroying Nation
I believed it was Mugabe and his crinies who were destroying the Zimbabwe.
Robert Mugabe and his ideology/philosophy are a filthy disease which destroyed his nation.
Can someone unleash the spam filter, thank you….
And we only furnished 32 million to them last year from the USAide to foreign agriculture….USAID…..