“I need to get reacquainted with my partner Dan.” – Jim Loney, freed Christian Peacemaker Team member, March 27.
The Christian Peacemaker Team members have been called misguided and naive. But it’s clear from here that Jim Loney is only selectively naive. He could not afford to talk about his partner while in captivity and didn’t.
Homosexuality in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was punishable by death. Amnesty International says the current status of gay and lesbian rights is unclear. But here are few things that are crystal clear.
1) Jim Loney only feels free to speak his mind about his sexual orientation in a country with a government that protects gay rights.
2) Christian Peacemakers claim to have gone to Iraq to prevent the coalition forces from carrying out their mission.
3) Had the the Peacemakers succeeded in keeping Saddam Hussein in power, a homosexual in Iraq would have zero hope for having an openly gay life. We know from Loney’s statement made here in Canada that even he knows that the threat to gays wasn’t coming from Western Imperialism.
While Al Jazeera and other Arab media broadcast for several months the ideology of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, and CPT was only too happy to share with them their anti-American and anti-British views, they did not discuss Jim Loney’s sexual orientation with those media organizations. Some members of the Canadian media knew and kept it out of their stories, respecting the reality of anti-gay hatred in countries that have not known democracy.
Doug Pritchard, a co-director of Christian Peacemakers, said, “Jim was already in a vulnerable position. We didn’t want his family exposed to any more danger.” Alas, the Christian Peacemakers through their peace stunts and propaganda tacitly consented to putting many others in danger.
Throughout the four months of captivity, the CPT had assured all groups in the Arab world that Jim Loney and his mates were allies of those who fight the left wing’s axis of evil, the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel.
On Sept. 12, 2001, the day after the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, the Peacemakers wrote, “We rigorously seek the underlying truth behind the violence at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.”
The underlying truth in the minds of this organization can never be the objective truth, which is available to those who refuse to be hoodwinked by the Peacemakers.
The underlying truth behind Sept. 11 is available to anyone who wants to read the rantings of Bin Laden. Al Qaida has a world vision that does not include Christians or Jews or homosexuals.
The underlying truth according to the CPT is that the United States and its allies Great Britain and Israel are oppressing the children of Palestine and other parts of the Muslim world.
It was also on the day after Sept. 11, 2001, that CPT shared the following on its website: “Our most realistic hope for safety comes from working to make sure that everyone in the world community is treated fairly and being just as willing to give our lives in pursuit of loving the enemy as the terrorists were willing to give their lives to kill the enemy.”
The enemy? Which one of the more than 3,000 victims (many of them Canadian) of Sept. 11 are Christian Peacemakers calling the enemy?
Dear Mr. Loney,
I hope you and your partner live a happy and prosperous life. But I hope you understand that many of us on the “enemies list” will never see you as a partner of freedom or peace or Christ.
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