Condemn the Ugandan Gay-Killer Legislation

Richard Ammon, GlobalGayz.com
Laguna Beach California

Populist pastor Rick Warren, the Jesus-loving pastor in California who proclaims Christian values as his life guides, has again elbowed his way to notoriety by his refusal to condemn the gay-killer legislation being considered in Uganda. (Read bill here)

He is hiding behind the charade of “not commenting on the political process of other nations.”

So his previous condemning of homosexuality only applies to the USA and to no other nation? Hardly

His invectives against LGBT people apply worldwide. We are everywhere and we are much more similar than different. Condemn one and he condemns us all.

What outrageous hypocrisy to posture as a Christian leader and not be aghast at the horrors of more impending cultural genocide in Africa. The intended Uganda legislation proposes the death penalty for a sexual act between consenting people and criminalizes a parent for not reporting their gay or lesbian child. "It's catastrophic," said Frank Mugisha, chairman of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), a local activist group. "People are already being arrested and intimidated without the new law. What's going to happen if it's passed?"

This is a step far backward, even beyond the 1885 British laws that forbade ‘unnatural acts’ between consenting adults. Those laws resulted in the spread of the disease of homophobia across the world to all the UK colonies, including Uganda, of which today 40 of the 53 commonwealth countries still criminalize same-gender love. It should be a source of great shame to modern Britain.

How could Warren, a ‘man of the cloth’, not immediately see the danger of such draconian legislation and not jump in to condemn it. Warren has protested that thousands of Christians were killed for their faith in recent times. Does he not realize that 95% of the gay people being put under threat in Uganda are Christians? He is, in essence, by his silence on this matter, saying that it is OK to persecute Christians for reason of their sexuality, but not for their faith?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a clergyman of far greater wisdom and compassion is against Uganda’s use of religious bigotry to formulate state legislation that criminalizes citizens who simply want to love someone. He sees this as a defiling of religious purpose and a violation of Jesus’ message.

Uganda’s misguided violation of human rights in this matter is frightfully similar to South Africa’s former president Mbeki’s misguided opinion about HIV (not being the cause of AIDS) that resulted in needless tens of thousands of deaths among his countrymen, until he was thrown out of office for incompetence.

Ugandan president Museveni stands on the verge of egregious incompetence if he allows this legislation to go forward without opposing or vetoing it.

And Rick Warren faces a similar challenge. Either you subscribe to Christian values or you don’t. Jesus didn’t say you should love only certain neighbors and not others. Every Christian should condemn Uganda for proposing such an un-Jesus bill.

And don’t just blame Warren and Museveni. Behind this malevolent legislation is the bill's author, lawmaker David Bahati, who claims the legislation is about promoting family values. "Homosexuality is not part of the human rights we believe in," he said. (Author Jeff Sharlet claims this bill came about as a result of Bahati's membership in The Family.)

And don’t just blame Bahati. It’s no coincidence that this dimwit submitted his egregious bill to parliament shortly after a pitifully small but highly publicized three-day anti-gay conference was conducted earlier this year by American homophobics Scott Lively, who runs the California-based Abiding Truth Ministries (and claims gays caused the Nazi holocaust), Don Schmierer from International Healing Ministries (and board member of Exodus International) and Caleb Lee Brundidge, "a dreadlocked 'former' homosexual who claims he is cured and now works as a mentor of homosexuals looking for a cure." All are advocates of "praying away the gay," and have ‘faith’ that gay people can be made straight through spiritual intervention.

The trio also met with Ugandan parliamentarians and Uganda-based groups working to diminish human rights of LGBT persons; groups such as Kampala-based "moral watchdog," Family Life Network whose leader is Ugandan Stephen Langa. In their publicity, FLN said that Uganda "is now under extreme pressure from homosexual groups to de-criminalize homosexuality." (Last year a Uganda High Court ruling cited constitutional violations of the rights to privacy, property and the fundamental rights of women in the case of a lesbian who was arrested and harassed by police.)

Subsequent to the mini-conference an anti-gay group called Anti-Gay Task Force was formed to "fight against the spread of homosexuality and lesbianism in the country," according to Langa.

The anti-human rights effort was also fueled by Pastors Martin Sempa, Solomon Male and Michael Kyazze who said they received about 150 complaints from alleged sodomy victims claiming to have been abused by a number of church leaders. Uganda's gay community (SMUG) challenged the validity of the claim especially since the sources were dubious and there is no breakdown of the figures into heterosexual vs homosexual abuse. Sodomy is ignorantly presumed to be only a gay activity.

The sad thing is that all this friction and drama is really a tempest in a teacup as very few Ugandans have any interest in homosexuality. Gays have lived their lives quietly among the majority population for generations. The issue is being manipulated by a mere handful of political, religious and media groups to whip up attention, which in turn brings in foreign funds to ‘save’ Uganda from the evils of homosexuality and increase newspaper sales. Meanwhile less attention is paid to government corruption and the nation’s decrepit road systems (to name two of many wanting issues).

And it points out that American nosing into the affairs of other countries is not all military.

See more news about this issue at GlobalGayz News & Reports (Reports #30 +)