In retrospect, last week's Prayer Breakfast shout-downs of the Uganda anti-homosexuality bill look like a carefully orchestrated effort to pressure Ugandan strongman Yoweri Museveni to make the bill go away. The play went like this: Coe to Clinton to Obama.

Coe is Doug Coe, the publicity-shy head of The Family, which has mounted the Prayer Breakfast since its inception over half a century ago. The day before last Thursday's breakfast, Coe met with Warren Throckmorton and gave what counts as the official Family thumbs-down to the bill--which Throckmorton posted on his blog Thursday morning.

Throckmorton is a psychology professor at Grove City College, a conservative Christian institution, and he's made a name for himself working with homosexuals whose conservative Christian beliefs make them want to repress their sexuality. But he does not believe he can convert them to heterosexuality, and he's been a vigorous opponent of the Uganda bill, which he's been tracking assiduously on his blog. He's even created a bit of an alliance with Jeff Sharlet, exploring on his own some of the means by which The Family may or may not have had a hand in the bill.

In a word, Throckmorton is one of the media players in the Uganda situation, and the various conversations he had with Family members (in addition to Coe and including Ugandans) before the breakfast should be understood as a journalistic exercise on both sides. Coe himself made it clear that Bob Hunter, who had done the media appearances up till now, really does speak for The Family on this matter. Message: The Family really really does oppose the bill.

With that clear, Hillary Clinton proceeded in her "surprise appearance" at the breakfast not just to condemn the bill but to call out Museveni on it, in a sentence heavy with linkages: "And I recently called President Museveni, whom I have known through the prayer breakfast, and expressed the strongest concerns about a law being considered in the parliament of Uganda." Whereupon Barack Obama, referring specifically to Clinton's remark in his own prepared remarks, also condemned the bill. ("We may disagree about gay marriage, but surely we can agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are -- whether it's here in the United States or, as Hillary mentioned, more extremely in odious laws that are being proposed most recently in Uganda.")

Some on the left have found both Clinton's and Obama's comments lacking, and Jim Burroway over at Box Turtle Bulletin questions  whether Coe & Co. are really prepared to put their money where their mouths are. The proof, of course, will depend on what happens in Uganda. But it's worth noting the extent to which opposition from the American evangelical establishment (including Rick Warren) has shocked and dismayed the bill's promoters. At this point, all they have left in America is the lunatic fringe. And if the bill passes in anything like its present form, the consequences will be real. A nickel here says Museveni won't let that happen.

Timothy Noah's letter beseeching Benedict XVI to help out with health care reform is on the money, but he'd probably have better luck with St. Jude, the patron of hopeless and desperate causes.

Message of the Day:
Deep-six the condoms (see jump). Deep-six the nuns (see NCR).

Gallup has discovered that 53 percent of Democrats have a positive view of capitalism and 53 percent of Democrats have a positive view of socialism. Also, that 85 percent have a positive view of free enterprise. Republicans are a little more positive about free enterprise (90 percent), a good deal more positive about capitalism (72 percent), and way less positive about socialism (17 percent). The only mystery here is what Democrats think "socialism" means.  Otherwise, we have learned that Democrats like government more than Republicans do. Wow.

So both the secretary of state and the president attacked Uganda's anti-homosexuality bill at the National Prayer Breakfast today. I haven't found Clinton's remarks yet, but Obama had this to say (full text after jump):

We  may disagree about gay marriage, but surely we can agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are--whether it's here in the United States or, as Hillary mentioned, more extremely in odious laws that are being proposed most recently in Uganda.

That's pretty good. One might have wished for a little more, perhaps along these lines: "...but surely we can agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are, and morally irresponsible not to take a stand against those who do--whether it's here..." That would have given his hosts a bit of a smack. Even so, there's no question that the Uganda situation and the ambiguous role of The Family in it have registered at the highest levels of the Administration, and been seen to register.

Update: Clinton's remarks here. The Uganda graph goes as follows:

But we are also standing up for girls and women, who too often in the name of religion, are denied their basic human rights. And we are standing up for gays and lesbians who deserve to be treated as full human beings. (Applause.) And we are also making it clear to countries and leaders that these are priorities of the United States. Every time I travel, I raise the plight of girls and women, and make it clear that we expect to see changes. And I recently called President Museveni, whom I have known through the prayer breakfast, and expressed the strongest concerns about a law being considered in the parliament of Uganda.

That's good, particularly in the context of the sentence that follows: "We are committed, not only to reaching out and speaking up about the perversion of religion, and in particular the use of it to promote and justify terrorism, but also seeking to find common ground." The clear implication is that the Uganda bill represents a "perversion of religion." The word "perversion" hangs there, pregnantly.

Belated: Interviewed the day before the breakfast by Warren Throckmorton, Doug Coe said he opposes the provisions and spirit of the bill.

Yesterday, WaPo's Michelle Boorstein and William Wan commemorated the one-year anniversary of President Obama's version of President Bush's faith-based initiative with a story and a blog post suggesting a measure of unhappiness among the members of the advisory council that has been the most distinctive element of the Obama version. The charge, in a word, is that 2.0 is mostly window-dressing.

I'd put it this way. Under Bush, the initiative had a clear idea and purpose. The idea was that social service provision could be done more effectively by faith-based organizations (FBOs) because they were, well, faith-based. The purpose was to make it easier for FBOs to have access to public funds to do their good works. In fact, the idea remains unproven and the purpose was based on the largely false premise that FBOs didn't have access to public funds already. There were legal problems. There was politics. But still, you knew what the thing was.

Under Obama, the idea of FBO superiority has been jettisoned, the money-funneling purpose shuttled aside. In their place is generalized outreach to the "faith community"--understood in a much broader way than the Bushies did. It's all about motherhood-and-apple pie...make that fatherhood. Controversial sticking points like the Bush permission for FBOs to hire only their own co-religionists with public funds have disappeared into the Justice Department's Office of Legal Council, never to be heard about again.

Advisory council member Jim Wallis told WaPo: "I want him to listen to faith groups as much as he listens to people on Wall Street. I want him to listen to faith groups as much as military leaders on Afghanistan." Ain't gonna happen.

Elisabeth Bumiller in today's NYT:

Gay rights leaders pointed soon afterward to comments Mr. McCain made in 2006 on "Hardball" on MSNBC about his willingness to change the policy if Pentagon leaders called for repeal. "The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, 'Senator, we ought to change the policy,' then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it,' " he said then.

To explain the apparent discrepancy, Brooke Buchanan, a spokeswoman for Mr. McCain, said that the senator thought Admiral Mullen was speaking personally, not on behalf of the Joint Chiefs, and that once a Pentagon review was complete, Mr. McCain would listen to military leaders as a whole.

Yep, the chairman of Joint Chiefs comes up to Capitol Hill to share his personal feelings.

Kos' new poll of Republicans shows a party committed to the equality of women--and some other, less liberal ideas. Probably to the surprise of the pollsters, 76 percent of Republicans think marriages are equal partnerships, as opposed to believing that men are leaders of their households. And 86 percent think women should work outside the home. Sorry, Saudis, no allies there.

On the big culture wars issues of our time, the Republicans are locked in: 76 percent think abortion is murder and 77 percent oppose same-sex marriage. In the stupid question department, 77 percent think public school students should "be taught that the Book of Genesis in the Bible explains how God created the world." Well, I've got no problem with teaching kids what's in the Bible either.

It's interesting that 43 percent of Southern Republicans think that Barack Obama was born outside the United States and that 33 percent of Southern Republicans want their states to secede from the Union. Could it be that those 33 percent want their kids to be like Barack Obama? Nah.

Perhaps of greatest note, Republicans turn out to be a lot more religiously exclusive than Americans generally. Fully two-thirds "believe that the only way for an individual to go to heaven is through Jesus Christ." By contrast, a Pew poll of a year ago found that two-thirds of all Americans believe that many religions can "lead to eternal life." If Republicans are, say, 25 percent of the population, then upwards of 80 percent of non-Republicans believe that heaven is open to non-Christians. Call it the Pearly Gates gap.

In a comment on the previous post, Jeff Sharlet, who wrote the book on The Family, asks that we continue to explore the significance of this organization "of tremendous reach and influence, very little institutional structure, and less transparency." While I admire Jeff's sleuthing and story-telling more than his broader interpretive moves, there's no doubt that The Family presents a real interpretive challenge. It is a very odd animal--sui generis, one might say.

In his State of the Union address, President Obama repeated his pledge to get rid of Don't Ask Don't Tell. On Tuesday, the Pentagon will present Congress with recommendations on how to enable gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military. On Thursday, according to the White House, the president will deliver remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast.

Obama's appearance at the breakfast became a bit controversial earlier this month after it was reported that David Bahati, author of Uganda's notorious anti-homosexuality bill, was going to be on hand at the invitation of The Family, the Jesus fellowship that sponsors the thing. Subsequently, Family spokesman Bob Hunter has been at pains to make clear that Bahati will not be on hand, and gone so far as to inform Box Turtle Bulletin, which has been bird-dogging the situation, that a whole bunch of other Ugandan supporters of the bill won't be either. The Family has become very, very eager to make the issue go away, but is still on the hook.

Obama shouldn't let them off it. Uganda is moving towards criminalizing homosexuality up to and still possibly including the death penalty, while the Obama administration is proposing full inclusion of gays and lesbians in the U.S. military. How about using the podium to ask which approach Jesus would have preferred, Mr. President?