Congressional Member of Shady Religious Group Backs Plan To Kill Gays
A conservative congressman who has been a longtime trump supporter, LGBTQ opponent, and member of an influential, secretive religious organization has traveled to Uganda to praise that nation’s plan to kill gay people and others in the LGBTQ community under a new, so-called, “Kill the Gays” bill.
Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich., visited the African nation in October, on a trip that was funded by the furtive, Fellowship Foundation, also known as “The Family,” a powerful, private organization based in the U.S. Among The Family members are Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and the Ugandan lawmaker who sponsored the “Kill the Gays” bill.
The Family sponsors the annual National Prayer Breakfast in the U.S. Walberg was the co-chair of the 2023 breakfast which was held on Feb. 2. Numerous members of congress attended the breakfast.
The Family supports the African Student Leadership Program at Uganda‘s National Prayer Breakfast. Past breakfast guests have included former Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla. a member of The Family. Inhofe was a senator from 1994 to 2023 and gained notoriety for his rejection of climate science, opposition to same-sex unions, efforts to make English the national language of the U.S. and abstaining on a vote to create an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by trump supporters.
Walberg’s trip was the first time an American lawmaker has publicly supported the “Kill the Gays” legislation. The congressman’s remarks were first reported in the “Take Care Tim” blog, which reports on Walberg and Michigan’s fifth congressional district.
“Though the rest of the world is pushing back on you…though there are other major countries that are trying to get into you and ultimately change you, stand firm. Stand firm,” Walberg said about Uganda’s anti-homosexuality law in a speech on Oct. 8 at Uganda’s National Prayer Breakfast.
Uganda’s National Prayer Breakfast is held annually on the eve of the country’s Independence Day celebrations to promote unity and prayers for the nation and Ugandans. Walberg was the keynote speaker of the event held in Entebbe. According to published reports, Walberg called for Uganda to “stand firm” on the new law as other speakers called LGBTQ+ advocates, “a force from the bottom of Hell” and urged government officials to adopt “Christocracy” over democracy.
Walberg used Biblical parables as he pressed Uganda to defy international condemnation of the law.
“Worthless is the thought of the world,” Walberg said. “[W]orthless, for instance, is the thought of the World Bank, or the World Health Organization, or the United Nations, or, sadly, some in our administration in America who say, ‘You are wrong for standing for values that God created,’ for saying there are male and female and God created them.’”
Walberg, 72, has been a staunch conservative member of congress since 2011. He rejects the scientific consensus on climate change, saying in May 2017, “I believe that there is a creator in God who is much bigger than us. And I’m confident that, if there’s a real problem, he can take care of it.”
He voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, which provides health insurance to millions. He also co-sponsored resolutions to ban same-sex marriage. During the 2008 presidential election, Walberg repeated birther conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama, arguing that Obama should have been impeached over his birth certificate. In 2020, he supported a move to challenge Biden’s election.
Walberg is an ordained Baptist pastor who identifies as nondenominational and attends a church affiliated with the Church of the United Brethren in Christ.
In March, Walberg included a measure in the Parental Rights Over the Education and Care of Their (PROTECT) Kids Act, requiring schools to get consent from parents before a student is allowed to change their preferred pronouns. The bill is pending in Congress.
In addition to Walberg, Uganda has links with other well-known American evangelicals and lawmakers including Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala. Aderholt is associated with the Fellowship Foundation, which paid for his trip to Romania in 2017 to promote “traditional family values.” Over 16 years, Aderholt traveled to 18 countries on the Fellowship’s behalf. Aderholt voted not to certify Biden’s presidential election and has sided with proponents of the false claim that the election was stolen through voter fraud.
Aderholt’s wife, Caroline, is leader of this year’s National Prayer Breakfast. She also is a trustee at the anti-LGBTQ+ organization Concerned Women for America (CWA). CWA is a socially conservative, evangelical Christian non-profit women’s legislative action committee. Based in Washington, D.C., CWA is involved in social and political movements, through which it aims to incorporate Christian ideology. The CWA has opposed issues including abortion, sex education, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, needle exchange programs, pornography, cloning, drug abuse, secular education, gambling or any other efforts which “intervene with natural human life.”
Trump was the keynote speaker at the Concerned Women for America 2023 summit in Washington, D.C. CWA president Penny Young Nance offered opening comments in which she said, “Thank you God, for giving us a president that was willing to do the hard things to make America strong, to make our military grade again, to support innocent life.”
“I pray that you will continue to bless America and God, I pray for president trump. I pray that you will surround his family with the angel armies and keep them safe from those who wish to harm him, even those who wish to hurt his children,” Nance said.
Caroline Aderholt was formerly chief of staff for the CWA.
A major proponent of the new law is a Ugandan pastor, Martin Ssempa. Ssempa is known to American evangelicals as he has been a frequent guest of Pastor Rick Warren, founder of the 57,000-member, One Saddleback Church in California. Warren is a longtime crusader against the LGBTQ community.
The “Kill The Gays” bill was introduced by Ugandan legislator David Bahati, who has been influenced by an American anti-gay minister, Scott Lively. In March 2009, Lively and other Evangelicals went to Kampala, the capital of Uganda, to host a well-attended conference called “Seminar on Exposing the Homosexuals’ Agenda.”
Lively lead the crafting of Uganda’s first anti-gay bill in 2014. He has called homosexuality “abnormal, wrong, harmful and perverse,” has compared it to child and animal rape, and supports laws criminalizing consensual same-sex relationships. In 1995, he co-authored “The Pink Swastika,” a book that falsely claimed that gay people were prominent in the Nazi Party and were behind Nazi atrocities. He has called for the criminalization of “the public advocacy of homosexuality” as far back as 2007. Lively is listed in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Extremist Files”, for “actively propagandizing against LGBT people since the early 1990s.”
In January 2021, Lively claimed that God allowed trump to lose the 2020 election because of the former president’s alleged support of the LGBTQ agenda. That claim is in contrast to the opinion of most national and international LGBTQ rights groups that trump is the most anti-LGBTQ president of all time.
“If God had given [Trump] favor, nothing that mankind could have done could have removed him from that office,” Lively said. “And yet the one thing that he did during that time that would virtually guarantee God’s favor from being removed was to put his own personal stamp of approval on behavior that God condemns in the harshest possible terms in the Bible, which is specifically male homosexuality.”
A story in the Los Angeles Times found that Fellowship Foundation members “share a vow of silence about Fellowship activities.” The U.S. classifies the Fellowship as a church and not a political lobbying organization, making its financial sources unreportable.
Since 1953, the Fellowship Foundation has hosted the National Prayer Breakfast each year on the first Thursday of February in Washington, D.C. It is now attended by more than 3,400 guests, including the U.S. president and dignitaries from many nations. Democrats and Republicans serve on the organizing committee, and chairmanship alternates each year between the House and the Senate.
The Fellowship Foundation, also known as the International Foundation is a non-profit religious and political organization founded in April 1935 by Methodist minister, Abraham Vereide. The stated purpose of The Fellowship is to provide a forum where decision makers can attend Bible studies and prayer meetings, worship God, experience spiritual affirmation and receive support.
The Fellowship holds one regular public event each year, the National Prayer Breakfast. Every sitting U.S. president since Dwight D. Eisenhower has participated in at least one National Prayer Breakfast during their term. Participants have included high ranking government officials, corporate executives, heads of religious and humanitarian aid organizations, and ambassadors and politicians from across the world.
More than 50 Russians attended the 2018 National Prayer Breakfast, including leading members of President Vladimir Putin’s government.
The annual U.S. breakfast is organized by Doug Burleigh, a key figure for The Fellowship. Burleigh spoke at the Russian prayer breakfast in February 2017 and was seen beside Russian politician, Alexander Torshin. Burleigh said in 2017 that “a breakthrough in relations between Russia and the US is about to occur.” Maria Butina, an aide to Torshin and an undeclared Kremlin agent, helped arrange for five Russians chosen by a top official to attend the 2017 National Prayer Breakfast. Burleigh was interviewed by the FBI because of his relationship with Butina.
Butina was arrested on July 15, 2017, and convicted in 2018 of acting as an unregistered foreign agent. She was accused of attempting to infiltrate multiple conservative organizations in the U.S. in a years-long campaign to establish a secret communications back channel with Russia.
A Senate Finance Committee report determined that one host of the 2018 U.S. breakfast was Tim Burchfield of Tennessee, an executive of Chick-fil-A, a company known for asserting Biblical values and opposition to LGBTQ rights.
Torshin was a leading figure in the ruling United Russia party. He also has been accused of being a leading figure within the Russian mafia.
Between 2011 and 2018, Torshin and Butina established a cooperative relationship between the National Rifle Association of America (NRA) and the Russian-based “Right to Bear Arms,” which Butina founded in 2011. Torshin had been attending NRA annual meetings in the United States since at least 2011. Torshin has tweeted that he and Butina are the only two Russians he knows of who are lifetime NRA members.
Torshin has been a subject of an investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. On May 16, 2018, the committee released a report stating it had obtained “a number of documents that suggest the Kremlin used the National Rifle Association as a means of accessing and assisting Mr. Trump and his campaign” through Torshin and Butina, and that “The Kremlin may also have used the NRA to secretly fund Mr. Trump’s campaign.” In April 2018, the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed sanctions on 23 Russian nationals, including Torshin. The New York Times reported on July 17, 2018 that Torshin was scheduled to visit the White House in 2017, but the meeting was canceled after a national security aide noted Torshin was under investigation by Spanish authorities for money laundering.