Selectively naive as Baghdad hostage

Winnipeg Sun:

"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.

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These people are not very smart, except when it comes to their own self preservation.