Riese’s Team Pick: Vanguard’s “Missionaries of Hate”

As you may or may not know, Current TV is a channel on your teevee if you live in the U.S., and it’s better than all the other channels. It’s responsible for That’s Gay, which you probably love, and Target: Women with Sarah Haskins, which isn’t on anymore, but which you probably also loved at the time.

Current’s Vanguard series, “a no-limits documentary series whose award-winning correspondents put themselves in extraordinary situations to immerse viewers in global issues that have a large social significance,” recently sent correspondent Mariana van Zeller to Uganda to investigate their rapidly growing anti-gay movement:

Correspondent Mariana van Zeller travels to Uganda, where many question whether the growing influence of American religious groups has led to a movement to make homosexuality a crime punishable by death. As an anti-gay movement spreads across the continent, gay Africans and their families face an increasingly uncertain future of isolation, imprisonment or even execution.

Here’s a brief clip from one of the doc’s most shocking scenes, when Pastor Martin Ssempa hosts a press conference to show graphic gay porn to a room of international journalists. The clip is called “Eat Da Poo Poo,” and you can imagine this will shock your socks off:

Here’s the complete documentary. It’s about 45 minutes long, and you really really really must see it.

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Riese

Riese is the 41-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 3257 articles for us.

4 Comments

  1. It’s really good, helped me understand what was really going on. And I actually saw one of the Christian Leaders I interned for back when I was crazy christian, preaching in the documentary. Thank the gays for saving me from that craziness.

  2. I saw this about two months ago, and it is amazing but also thoroughly depressing. At least NOM and Focus on the Family and the people from those organizations stick to a fairly civil discourse — these people don’t even pretend. Their hatred is open, unabashed, and completely revolting.

    But still, totally worth watching, plus Mariana van Zeller is quite a slice of hot journo eye-candy. Mmm.

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