The Freethinker
ALMOST nine years has elapsed since I was threatened with legal action by a hate preacher and “exorcist” Paul Shinners, above, for posting a piece about a trip he made to Uganda where he spoke at a religious rally in support of a proposed “Kill the Gays” Bill.
Shinners, 62, owner of Cornerstone Cafe/bookshop in St Neots, Cambridgeshire, also operates a charity called Passion for Souls. (In 2019 I questioned why his hateful charity still enjoys charity status.)
Shinners flatly denied ever taking a message of hate to the annual National Day and Night of Prayer Kampala, and told his local paper, The Hunts Post:
It’s absolutely unbelievable. These people have not even heard what I said. I will have to take legal advice – it’s pure defamation. All the people who know me know that I am not homophobic – I accept everyone for who they are, irrespective of race or sexuality.
This bullshit cut no ice with people who read my report, which was snapped up by social and other media in the UK and the US, and a hostile Hunts Post reporter went as far as to accuse me of pursuing a vendetta against a well-regarded local Christian – a vendetta that forced him to shut his business for three days after it was targeted by protesters.
Worse, Hunts Post – clearly sympathetic to the bigot – lacked the decency to contact the African LGBT protestors themselves for a comment, or for a response to Shinners’ accusations and threats. US blogger Melanie Nathan wrote:
Hunts Post did not speak to their plight of LGBT exiles in Uganda who were protesting Shinners because of what has occurred to them and because Shinners’ overt association with those who called for their deaths for being gay and lesbian.
Did Shinners make good his threat to sue me? No, for the simple reason that footage surfaced soon after which showed Shinners telling an ecstatic audience:
There is no other nation the world over that has such a plan and through this, Uganda is going to be blessed.
He was speaking, of course, of the proposed Bill which was mercifully scrapped after an international outcry. President Obama weighed in, saying the Bill was “odious” and could effect US/Uganda relations. He said it was it was:
An affront, and a danger to Uganda’s LGBT community.
Shinners said to loud cheers at the Uganda event that Obama should keep his nose out of the affairs of other countries.
The person who managed to unearth Shinners’ video was Daniel Law, an astrophysics graduate from King’s College, Cambridge, and an amateur filmmaker who organised the Cornerstone protest. He decided this year to create a documentary, Exporting Hate, an expose of the activities of mainly American evangelists who travel abroad to incite violence against LGBT communities.
Apart from featuring Shinners, it also has footage of US evangelist Scott Lively, above, a thoroughly loathsome fundamentalist, who was among the first to urge Ugandan politicians to bring in the death sentence for homosexuality.
Lively is perhaps best-known for co-writing the thoroughly discredited, Holocaust revisionist book The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party (1995), which claims that the Nazi party was full of gay men who, because of their “savagery,” were able to carry out the Holocaust.
Finishing touches are being made to complete Exporting Hate, and this week Law launched a GoFundMe appeal to cover distribution costs.
It is imperative that human rights organisations have access to all credible material that exposes the activities of foreign evangelists who travel abroad to spread hatred, and – having seen a rough cut of Exporting Hate – I believe that Law’s documentary will serve as a very valuable resource.
I have chipped in a a few pounds, and I hope you will too.
I’d love a cup of coffee
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