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Never trust a man named "Scott Lively," if that indeed is his real name -- Monday's open thread

I have to confess I should have been paying closer attention to this story -- it is truly awful:

The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organizer, was "the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda" — and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family.

For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how "the gay movement is an evil institution" whose goal is "to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity."

Now the three Americans are finding themselves on the defensive, saying they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that could lead to what came next: a bill to impose a death sentence for homosexual behavior.

Scott Lively was one of the three Americans who whipped this up; he's also the author of "7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child," coming to a bookstore near you. What he and his two pals did in Uganda is a holy mess -- and needs to be undone, somehow. The AP photo at top shows David Cato, a gay rights activist in Uganda who has been beaten, arrested and fired from his job.

You'll notice that this is an open thread -- there's something of a new schedule for Attytood between now and the end of March, which is an open thread in the day, something closer to actual content at night, but that's only until late January when I'll begin exhausting my time off for the year -- then you'll be getting open threads or nothing. Hopefully we can keep the plates spinning until things pick up in April, around the time the Phillies begin marching back to the World Series. This is actually good news -- at the end of 2010 we'll be looking back on this year as the most exciting one around here, ever. But you'll find out why at a later date.