Last night, Rachel Maddow interviewed author Richard Cohen on The Rachel Maddow Show. Cohen’s book, Coming Out Straight claims that:
- Homosexuality is a disorder that one can simply “choose” to renounce
- Homosexuals are 12 times more likely to molest children than heterosexuals
His book is now being used by politicians in Uganda to justify proposed legislation to imprison and, in some cases, kill people caught “engaging in acts of homosexuality.” The law not only targets Uganda’s LBGT communities, but friends and and family who fail to report their loved ones, and even landlords who rent to homosexuals. Uganda’s anti-gay movement is using Cohen’s ludicrous and discredited “statistics” as proof of the horrors of homosexuality, thus significantly contributing support for this law.
Watch the interview below:
“I realize I was taking the risk of helping promote you and the way that you think about these things by putting you on the air,” Maddow said. “But I do think that you’ve actually got blood on your hands because of the way you’ve been used, your organization has been used, and your staffer has been used to make this legislation a reality [if it passes].”
Rachel was right to cover this. We need to know that there are people out there saying this bullshit. And people who might be taken in by this nonsense need to be aware that its not just some type of disagreement about “lifestyle choices”; this is about murder. Potentially state-sanctioned murder that conservative christian activists from the US may have had a role in developing (this legislation was proposed shortly after a visit from American anti-gay christian missionaries).
If this legislation passes, Richard Cohen will most certainly have blood on his hands.
