homosexuals’ hatred is a fruit of an alliance

Source: The Daily Monitor, Kampala

April 18, 2006: Anglican bishops must be cursing their rotten luck. Just when they thought they had gotten rid of the "homosexual problem" in their midst by expelling their dissenting colleague, retired Bishop Christopher Senyonjo, a new spoiler is about to break the virtual consensus of political and religious leaders in our country on same-sex relationships.

Daily Monitor reported last Thursday that the community of St. Sebastian, based in Spain's Canary Islands, is extending its gay and lesbian-friendly ministry to Uganda.

Homosexuality, or the hatred of it, is perhaps the only issue that Anglicans, Catholics, and other churches in Uganda pursue with unanimous ecumenical zeal. So, anytime the winds blow in some news of homosexual activities, almost to a man, the clergy huff and puff in their ruffled frocks about morality and hell.

The politicians, many of whom worship at the shrines of the homophobic clergy, usually channel the same fire-and-brimstone creed in the enforcing and making of law in Uganda.

Buturo spits fire
So, when news of the coming of the church of St. Sebastian broke, Information and Broadcasting Minister Nsaba Buturo, who apparently considers his position as the secular equivalent of the Grand Inquisitor in the medieval church, immediately belched some scary flames, threating to consume the newcomers.

Perhaps the enforcers of Christian morality haven't been reading the news due to the Easter holidays. So, they haven't yet made any noises about the St. Sebastian church’s intentions. But they can’t be far behind Buturo.

I think there shouldn’t be any double-standards in the laws of the land and of religions regarding sexual behavior whether these apply to heterosexuals, homosexuals, or those who don’t fall in those two categories.

Unfortunately, since 1998, the state and several Christian denominations in Uganda have struck up an unholy alliance to beat up on homosexuals, even as they cover up their own abject failures.

Unholy alliance
This alliance is not an accident. Ugandan law and the brand of Christianity that condemn homosexuality as “carnal knowledge against the order of nature,” or bestial are the despotic bastards of European monarchism and of the sexual insecurities of Abrahamic faiths.

Thus, this unholy alliance is also an incestuous marriage of the totalitarian and patriarchal tenets and tendencies that gave birth to white supremacist imperialism, which has been ravaging the world ever since.

So, like the horsehair wigs that Ugandan judges still wear, homophobia is one of those castaways of British colonial law that Ugandan legislators cling to with apoplectic zeal long after the originators of our penal code have moved on.

Last July, members of parliament voted for a constitutional amendment that outlaws same-sex marriage by an overwhelming majority of 111 against 17 with only three abstentions. They also approved the constitutional amendment that has made Museveni a monarch president.

Nkoyoyo, Ssempa the same
The anachronistic legal philosophy at work here resonates with the absolutist pontifications of the clergy. That’s because vociferously anti-gay clergymen such as Archbishop Mpalanyi Nkoyooyo and Pastor Martin Ssempa drink from the same poisoned fountain that President Yoweri Museveni and the members of his cabinet visit to slake their totalitarian thirst.

It is, therefore, not a coincidence that the more conservative wing of Christianity in Uganda is also the one that sees Museveni’s continued stay in power, regardless of runaway corruption and incompetence, as God’s will.

Interestingly, Jesus taught his followers to dispense with the odious prescriptions of Old Testament laws in favor of the law of brotherly love. As a result, he clashed often with the Pharisees, who insisted that those Old Testament laws and their own heavy-handed interpretations should be followed literally.

Uganda's homophobic Christian and political leaders are the spiritual heirs of the Pharisees. They have invested more time and energy in pursuing their anti-gay crusade than in fighting real crimes and vices, such as corruption, that are stunting Uganda's economic and spiritual growth.

Archbishop Sentamu says
Since I am neither an ordained minister nor a theologian, let me quote the words of Dr. John Sentamu, the new archbishop of York, about this not-so-holy joust about homosexuality.

Last year, Sentamu told the London Guardian: “Some of our disagreements are not Christian really . . . It seems to suggest that all the great evils of the world are being perpetrated by gay and lesbian people, which I cannot believe to be the case. What is wrong in the world is that people are sinful and alienate themselves from God and you do not have to be gay to do that. To suggest that to be gay equals evil, I find that quite unbelievable.

“Is somebody saying a gay and lesbian can’t live in Christ? What matters in the end to me is to do what my mother said to me as a little child: John, never point a finger at anybody because when you do three other fingers are pointing back at you. All of us are sinners, all of us have baggage. Why should my baggage as a heterosexual be more acceptable than the baggage of a gay person?”

jicho3wazi@yahoo.com