TONIGHT: Missionaries Of Hate

Tonight at 10PM CurrentTV will air Missionaries Of Hate, a documentary about anti-gay American evangelicals working in Africa to further the brutalization of LGBT people there.

Just as it was during the life and times of Harvey Milk, the movement against homosexuality in Uganda is being led by a group of conservative Christian evangelicals. And the arguments they’re using are an echo of Anita Bryant and the Save Our Children campaign. “I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children,” Bryant said in 1977. “Therefore, they must recruit our children.” More than 30 years later, our cameras were rolling as Ugandan pastor Martin Ssempa brought a young woman to a press conference to testify about how she had been allegedly recruited to be a lesbian. “American money…is being used to seduce our children into homosexuality,” Ssempa said. “This bill is in response and desire to protect our children.” The connection, while decades apart, is perhaps not so surprising if you believe those who trace the current anti-gay campaign in Uganda back to March 2009. That’s when three American evangelicals were invited to speak at a conference in the country about how Africans can protect themselves from homosexuality. Being gay in Uganda was never easy. But according to many local gay and human rights advocates, it was that conference where the depiction of homosexuality as predatory by nature gained currency in Uganda.

Here is the trailer for tonight’s show.