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Bahati will not attend National Prayer breakfast with Obama

by Susan Marie Kovalinsky | January 21, 2010 at 07:40 am

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Warren Throckmorton posted this extremely short statement from Ambassador Richard Swett, who Warren identifies as National Prayer Breakfast spokesperson. Since neither the Family nor the National Prayer Breakfast has a web site where these things could be verified, I’ll have to take his word for it. The statement says that Uganda’s MP David Bahati, the guy behind the proposal to lock up Uganda’s gays and throw away the key (the ones he doesn’t want killed, at least), is not coming to the Family-sponsored event on February 4th.

Box Turtle Bulliten

After this author had done this Now Public story about gay bloggers up in arms that David Bahati, author of Ugandan 'Kill Gays' legislation, would attend the annual National Prayer breakfast with President Barack Obama, it is now being reported that Bahati will not be coming to the breakfast.

David Bahati, author of Uganda's "kill the gays" bill, spoke to the The Daily Monitor over the weekend, and they reported that he would attend the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., and had tentative plans to be a featured speaker.

Now, however, 365gay.com as well as several other gay blogs and websites are reporting that Bahati will not attend the event. Some say he has been "disinvited", others say he had declined months ago.

The New Civil Rights Movement blog had put out this petition online to stop Bahati from entering US borders and attending the breakfast (see Stop David Bahati from entering US! )

Whether or not this online petition has anything to do with Bahati's withdrawal from the Breakfast is unclear, but some in the gay blogosphere are indeed marking the petition as a success. ( See, "Success! Bahati will not attend Prayer Breakfast". ) See also Now Public editor Rhonda J Mangus' report on the "Family"'s involvement with Bahati and the Ugandan homosexuality bill. The "Family" is a network of US evangelical churches which have been involved with, and backed the legislation in Uganda , and founded and organized the annual National Prayer breakfast in Washington, DC with the Presidents.

Blogger Warren Throckmorton confirmed Monday thatFellowship Foundation spokesmen Bob Hunter and Richard Swett said Bahati will not be at the February prayer breakfast. Throckmorton said Bahati "was invited to the event months ago as a volunteer, but he will not be allowed to attend the Prayer Breakfast or crash it." Throckmorton said organizers are taking action to assure that Bahati will not come to any of the meetings lined up for foreign dignitaries.
The Week opined that if Bahati attended the event, President Obama would be compelled to boycott it, because his ideals about equal rights for LGBT people is in stark contrast to Bahati's plans to kill them. Andrew Sullivan, writing for The Atlantic, said, "if Bahati attends, the president cannot pray alongside him."

Will Bahati show up in D.C. for the event or not? And if he does, how will President Obama respond? All eyes will be on Washington on February 4th.