Thursday, December 09, 2010

Rachel Maddow Misses The Mark

Last night on MSNBC Rachel Maddow interviewed Ugandan MP David Behati, who has recently authored a proposed bill which would impose life imprisonment, and in some cases the death penalty, for the "crime" of homosexuality. I want to say at the outset I don't support or condone any such law, and would hope that diplomatic pressure would serve to reverse this present course in the tragic African country that has seen more than its share of strife, bloodshed, and misrule over the preceding decades.

But Maddow went way off the mark into the realm of political correctness with a vengeance when she made the following statement.

"You're describing one of the foundational myths about how gay people have been slandered and attacked in every country," Maddow told Bahati. "The idea, this myth that gay people are recruiting kids. Assert it as if it is baldly true, and no evidence of it is ever ever ever ever put forward in any way that can be evaluated and every responsible authority who's looked into it says that it's a myth."

Rachel Maddow is of course so full of shit it actually seems impossible. But then I stop and remind myself, well she's not really wrong, she's just lying.

Child sex tourism is a big problem not just in Thailand and other parts of Southeast Asia, but in many other parts of the world, and Uganda is no exception.

There, like in so many other impoverished areas, life is cheap. It's not about gay men "recruiting" or "converting" innocent children into a lifestyle of casual gay sex for fun and pleasure. It's about putting food on the table. It's about survival. When you have a situation where children are recruited as soldiers, its really about clawing your way out of despair. If you can initiate a young child into a life of guerrilla warfare by inducing him to murder a close relative or fellow villager, you can pretty much convince him to do anything else. And when you have smooth-talking, well-connected members of NGO's purporting to offer aid and the hope of a better life to a desperate child who has no one else to whom he can turn, it can all too often set the stage for tragic manipulation and abuse. It has become such a problem in Madagascar there is now laws on the books to fight the sex trade industry in general. It is in fact the fastest growing area of the travel industry, in all parts of the world. But you don't have to take my word for it. The folks at International Sex Guide-Uganda will happily walk you through it. And where there is a burgeoning, prosperous sex industry, there will always be a subset of the species that will cater to the most depraved and perverted of predilections.

And as stated, you can easily disguise your intentions by going under the umbrella of an NGO. That way, you can at least pretend you are doing good by making a positive contribution to the welfare of the least fortunate of the world's population. Although I do not point fingers nor cast stones at any one NGO in particular, I just want to point out that the best of such organizations take on the risk inherent in accepting volunteers who might have, at best, mixed intentions. One such example is Hope Beyond Uganda, which advertises itself as a way of taking part in safaris and otherwise experiencing the beauty of Africa and its people while at the same time working to improve the lives of Ugandan children. In the meantime, their website is dotted with pictures of smiling, eager Ugandan children, predominantly boys, such as the following.



Again, I make no judgments as to the intentions of the site or the organization it represents, but as I mentioned earlier, there has been a problem with individual NGO members. The fact that they might well do good, admirable, even vital work can in some cases afford the best of camouflage. Another one that seems especially dedicated to educating the children of Uganda is Survivors, which bills itself as a project of the Emancipation Network. And I am sure they are dedicated to that cause. But again, this isn't about any one group, or any one person or group that works though them, it is the very real potential for abuse.

For Rachel Maddow to ignore this fact, this proven, demonstrable fact, is damnable on the face of it. Nor am I giving MP Behati a pass for his obvious intolerance, bigotry, and superstitious fear-mongering. He obviously either has a severe psychological problem with homosexuals, or he is pandering to the superstitious fears prevalent in his culture regarding them.

But whatever the case, Maddow missed out on the perfect opportunity to educate him, or more to the point, to educate her audience through him. The sex tourism industry is still one of the back burner issues of the day, always in the back of people's minds, raring its ugly poisonous head on occasion, but for the most part kept in the background, put off while other more immediately pressing matters are addressed.

And let's be clear about this. It is a serious problem. It's not all about consensual sex between adults, nor for that matter is it even a matter of allegedly consensual sex between adults and children. In some cases it certainly is, which in the case of children would still be criminal. But in a great many cases it goes beyond willing consent into the area of sex slavery, with children from all over the most destitute parts of the world sold in some cases by their own parents in the hopes they will have a chance at a better life, only to be sold as sex slaves and as common laborers working for a cot and just enough food to keep them working.

This is the thing Rachel Maddow should be pointing out. The second part of her interview with Behati will come about tonight. I might be wrong about her. Maybe she will broach the issue. But I seriously doubt it. She seems far more interested in separating the two issues of sex slavery/tourism (which she has thus far ignored in the context of this interview) and homosexual pedophilia and grooming, which she would have us believe is a complete myth. Yet, her protestations to the contrary, the two matters are, in this instance, immutably intertwined.

But of course, how can leftists such as Maddow be expected to acknowledge the root of the problem as it exists in Uganda when she and others of her ideological persuasion can't even bring themselves to acknowledge that it happens here, sometimes with an official stamp of approval that will make your head spin.

It hasn't been that long ago that Obama's Safe Schools Czar, Kevin Jennings, promoted a reading list for schools that encouraged homosexual behaviors between boys and adult males. And this list was approved by GLSEN, one of the premiere activist gay organizations of our day, and which is shown to be supported by pedophiles.

You can go to the blog Red Alerts, and read a page which is a category of posts pertaining to child sexual abuse. Although Rob Taylor, the owner of the blog, dislikes labeling pedophiles as either homosexual or heterosexual, regardless of their own particular preferences, they do have a predilection of one flavor or another, and sometimes both.

This is the problem Uganda seems to be faced with, and as I said, it is a problem faced by many poverty stricken countries with high mortality rates and vast numbers of orphaned and homeless children, waiting desperately for help and love, yet all too often taken advantage of. One such example is the case of recently deceased 39 year old Robert Vann Smith, who had earlier been arrested for molesting young boys in Mexico, along with 31 year old Nicholas Simmons. He was the member of no NGO of which I am aware, but he was a pedophile who referred to himself as an omnisexual-which means he would have sex with anything, of any gender of any age. Yet, he insisted he loved and only wanted to "help" his victims.

Or if that seems a little too obscure, who could ever forget the outrageous conduct of director Roman Polanski.

Ah, you say, but Polanski's crime was against a young girl, not a boy, so that's beyond the scope of your argument. Rachel Maddow was objecting to the "myth" that homosexuals groom children to become homosexuals.

But the point is, Polanski was an adult, and his victim was a child whom he drugged and raped repeatedly, someone whom he had power over. The sex of the victim is almost irrelevant, useful only as a means of identifying the preferences of any given predator. And as sure as night follows day, there are abusers who prefer the same sex, just as there are those who prefer the opposite sex.

And this is what is going on in Uganda, in Ugandan cities and more than likely in Ugandan schools, probably facilitated by many elder Ugandan men and women, and possibly teachers and other persons of some authority in the various towns and villages, as well as the larger urban centers, adult individuals who play the role of pimps to a large and growing number of the international idle wealthy, the demented sex tourists who do not respect the integrity of innocence, and to whom boundaries, like mountains, exist to be conquered.

As horrific as are the very real human rights crimes enshrined in Ugandan law by David Behati, due seemingly to religious fanaticism and ignorance, this actually pales into relative insignificance in comparison to the willful blindness and criminal disregard for the rights of abused children propagated thus far by Rachel Maddow, and by extension MSNBC, for nothing more than the sake of a political agenda.