Uganda and the Anti-Gay Movement

There's a new development on the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda, which first made headlines in 2009.  It looks like the death penalty is being dropped from the bill, but there's a chance the rest of it will be voted into law after the new parliamentary session begins next week:

[A]ccording to AP news agency, MP David Bahati, who proposed the legislation, last month said that the death penalty "was something we have moved away from".

Pastor Ssempa also rejected this clause but nevertheless urged the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee to back the bill.

"The parliament should be given the opportunity to discuss and pass the bill, because homosexuality is killing our society," AP news agency quotes him as telling the MPs.

Two things grab my attention.  First, I wonder if the death penalty proposal was actually a trick designed to focus the backlash on an extreme position that they didn't really want - at least not for the time being. By backing away from it now, they can make a show of bending to international pressure and still end up with a bill that sentences gay people to life in prison.

Second, I worry that the influence of American Evangelical activists in Uganda and other African nations points to a long-term political strategy, summed up in this editorial in the Falls Church News-Press:

In essence, they are using Uganda to fight a proxy war against homosexuality. Their goals are:

1) Pass the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda
2) Use this law as a model for copycat legislation in other African nations
3) Have these laws serve as examples to the West - and eventually export them back to Europe and the United States when conditions are ripe
4) Make the case that governments have the right to arbitrarily punish and execute LGBT people with impunity because they have no right to protection from discrimination.

It sounds like a conspiracy theory, but Adrian Wooldridge from The Economist has described the same theory in broader terms: wealthy American churches exporting their ideas overseas, building up a power base in developing countries with booming populations, and then using that as leverage for politics back home. 

I have personal reasons to dislike the Evangelical movement, so maybe I'm accusing them of too much; but the more I learn about this situation, the more disturbing it gets.