Last night, we told you about the launching of the Southern Poverty Law Center's 2013 report called "Dangerous Liaisons: The American Religious Right and the Criminalization of Homosexuality in Belize".
The report purports to track the influence of extremist right wing religious groups and their influence in Belize for the last 3 years as they provide assistance to local religious groups in resisting the UNIBAM Challenge to the sodomy laws.
The 26 page document is extensive, looking at US groups like Extreme Prophetic Ministries of Phoenix, Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), and the Alliance Defending Freedom and tracking their influence on local organisations like Pastor Scott Stirm's Belize Action.
Stirm denies the reports findings, but SPLC is internationally recognized as a credible outreach Organization. One thing which is certain is that if the report is accurate, then the leading personalities have been participating in the very same thing that they've accused Activist Caleb Orozco of doing; that is, working with and for organizations with a so called "foreign agenda".
So, yesterday 7News caught up with Orozco, and we asked him to explain the nature and importance behind the SPLC report.
Caleb Orozco - Executive President, UNIBAM
"The basic intention was to launch the report 'Dangerous Liaisons' and that is really an attempt to look at the do minus movement that has been occurring all over the world and precisely who was pushing the menace movement. A part of it is knowing that yes, Evangelicals as they loose their grounds in the US - they have been exploiting their media strategy, their educational material - their language public in regards to how you oppose LGBT human rights. And so strategies and those materials have been borrowed by Belize action for example Belize action had a fellow at their first family meeting held at UB and he spoke about true human rights and helped them in a sense build a capacity of understanding what human rights is and they have continued to copy that too. He not only influenced the way Belize Action spoke. We've collected all of Belize Action's support material and why we saw was the Catholic family in Human Rights institute presence - what we saw was the Alliance Defence Fund and I want to explain to explain ADF. ADF is a Christian fellowship of lawyers created just to undermine the fundamental rights and freedom of LGBT citizens in the US and one of their biggest thing was opposing Prop8 which was launched in California. They have a budget of $30 million dollars - in no way can we even come close to half a million so where David tried to defeat Goliath that's one. CFAM - they have a history of conflating, confusing and working with places like Saudi Arabia and Iran to undermine rights."
As we reported, we spoke with Pastor Scott Stirm who categorically denied any involvement with any foreign interest. He told that Belize Action is 100% Belizean funded, directed and managed.
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