This Kony news everybody's talking about has revealed some interesting things, like the anti-gay backers to the Invisible Children fund, the folks who brought this to our attention.
Here's some info on that:
What does Invisible Children share in common with the Discovery Institute, the leading organization promoting “Intelligent Design”, a pseudo-scientific theory created to insinuate creationist ideas into public schools — or with The Call, whose leader Lou Engle claims homosexuals are possessed by demons, calls God an “avenger of blood” and a “terrorist”, and in May 2010 staged a rally in Kampala, Uganda, at which Engle warned of a gay menace to society and shared a stage with one of the authors of Uganda’s notorious Anti Homosexuality Bill ?
990 IRS tax forms and yearly reports from Invisible Children, and 990s from its major donors, tell a story that’s jarringly at odds with the secular, airbrushed, feelgood image the nonprofit has cultivated.
Among the tens of millions of people who have watched Invisible Children’s KONY 2012 viral video, including Oprah Winfrey – a dedicated supporter of LGBT rights who also has given $2 million dollars to Invisible Children, how many were aware of IC’s extensive financial ties to far-right fundamentalism, including major funders of the mounting global war on gay rights ? IC doesn’t go out of its way to advertise these things.Some folks have a problem with it, some don't.
But Invisible Children’s first yearly report, from 2006, gives “special thanks” to the “Caster Family Foundation” and IC’s 2007 report is more specific, thanking Terry and Barbara Caster. In the lead up to the 2008 election, the California-based Caster family was identified as one of the biggest financial backers of the push for California’s anti-same sex marriage Proposition 8.
How do you feel about all of this?
source
3 comments:
I haven't read anything saying that IC is/has changed its mission based on contributions. As long as the far right's agenda doesn't influence them, then I don't have a problem with everyone working to capture criminals like Kony.
Actually, I'm endorsing this campaign on my blog tomorrow. Like you, I had mixed feelings about the supporters of IC but I don't see the IC, at this time, as being political.
I am strongly in favor of ending torture, abuse, exploitation and tyranny. Joseph Kony needs to face justice for his history of evil. I am hoping that by forging a coalition of different groups,somewhere we can learn to work together and from that, maybe hearts and closed minds will open up and some good can result.
I'll go as far as to say let someone hate me all they want, let them lobby against me, let them pass laws telling me I'm the scum of the earth...if that saves a life...it's worth it.
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