Uganda's anti-gay bill causes Commonwealth uproar

Uganda's anti-gay bill causes Commonwealth uproar

Proposed law that would impose life imprisonment on homosexuals has the potential to divide leaders at summit.

The Commonwealth convenes for a summit this week amid growing furor over a proposed law that would impose life imprisonment on homosexuals in Uganda, whose President is chairing the gathering.

The law, proceeding through Uganda's Parliament and supported by some of its top leaders, would imprison anyone who knows of the existence of a gay or lesbian and fails to inform the police within 24 hours. It requires the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” – defined as any sexual act between gays or lesbians in which one person has the HIV virus.
The controversy is growing because Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is the chairman of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Trinidad and Tobago, which opens on Friday with Stephen Harper joining the leaders of 52 other countries.

If it is raised at the summit, the issue has the potential to divide Commonwealth leaders, who hold deeply polarized views on homosexuality. A number of Commonwealth countries, including Canada and Britain, have liberal views on the subject, but many African and Caribbean nations are socially conservative and maintain laws on their books that criminalize homosexuality.
Activists are urging the Commonwealth to make it clear that it will suspend Uganda's membership if the law passes.

Human-rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have condemned the bill. They say it is a product of a campaign by evangelical churches and anti-gay groups that has led to death threats and physical assaults against Ugandans suspected of being gay.

The governments of the United States and France have criticized the proposed law, with France expressing “deep concern.”

In Ottawa Tuesday, a spokesman for Mr. Harper also criticized the bill, using words that were virtually identical to the official U.S. comment of several weeks ago. “If adopted, a bill further criminalizing homosexuality would constitute a significant step backwards for the protection of human rights in Uganda,” said Dimitri Soudas, a spokesman for the Prime Minister's Office.
“Canada has clearly spoken out against human-rights violations committed against persons on the basis of their sexual orientation and we urge states to take all necessary measures to ensure that sexual orientation and gender identity may under no circumstances be the basis for criminal penalties, in particular executions, arrests, or detention.”

By chairing the summit without opposing the anti-homosexuality law, the Ugandan President “makes a mockery of Commonwealth principles,” Stephen Lewis, the former United Nations envoy on AIDS in Africa, said in a speech in Trinidad Tuesday. “This intended anti-homosexual statute has the taste of fascism.”

“The credibility of the Commonwealth is hanging by a spider's thread,” he said. “The putative legislation declares war on homosexuality. … What is put at risk here – beyond the threat of the death penalty for HIV-positive homosexuals – is the entire apparatus of AIDS treatment, prevention and care.”

The private member's bill was introduced last month by a Ugandan backbencher who described homosexuality as a “creeping evil.” The bill has not been formally endorsed by Mr. Museveni, but his government has allowed it to proceed through Parliament, and some of his top officials have praised it.

Analysts are predicting that the law will be approved by Parliament with only minor revisions. A senior government member, Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo, said he views the bill “with joy” because it will “provide leadership around the world.”

The law would impose a sentence of life imprisonment on anyone who “penetrates the anus or mouth of another person of the same sex with his penis or any other sexual contraption.” The same penalty would apply if he or she even “touches another person with the intention of committing the act of homosexuality.”

The law requires a three-year prison sentence for anyone who is aware of evidence of homosexuality and fails to report it to the police within 24 hours. It allows for the prosecution of Ugandans who engage in homosexual acts in foreign countries. And it imposes a prison sentence of up to seven years for anyone who defends the rights of gays and lesbians.

These clauses have “a powerful Orwellian flavour” and reflect a “twisted world of sexual paranoia,” Mr. Lewis said in his speech to the Commonwealth People's Forum, a civil-society group. “Can you imagine a father or a mother turning in a son or daughter? Can you imagine a teacher ratting on a student? But that's exactly what this law requires. I've truly never seen its like before.”

Mr. Lewis, co-director of Aids-Free World, an international advocacy organization, noted that many other countries have laws against sodomy. “But nothing is as stark, punitive and redolent of hate as the bill in Uganda. Nothing comes close to such an omnibus violation of the human rights of sexual minorities,” he said.

“What is truly staggering about all of this is that not a peep of skepticism or incredulity has come from President Museveni.”

The proposed law would “demonize homosexuality” and “intensify stigma,” driving gays underground and making it much more difficult to prevent the spread of AIDS, Mr. Lewis said.

Swedish Ministers statements on Uganda‏

Swedish Ministers statements on Uganda‏.

Dear friends, for anyone interested in a little more detail on what the Swedish Minister of International Development Cooperation Gunilla Carlsson has said on Uganda. I have Google translated (with a little improvement) her statements from the Saturday interview aired in the major radio news program (In Swedish: http://www.sr.se/ekot/artikel.asp?artikel=3271190):

------ I [Gunilla Carlsson] think it is terrible. My Secretary of State has in direct contacts with the government raised this. [.] I myself also tried to have contacts with organizations that work for those currently targeted for repression in Uganda. - I am also doubly disappointed, partly because Uganda is a country that we've had longstanding relationships with and where I had hoped and believed that we would begin to share common values and have an understanding.

It is unfortunate the matter directly, but it is also offensive how the Ugandans choose to look at how we see things and how we are treated when we would like to discuss these issues, " says Gunilla Carlsson. Uganda is an important recipient of Swedish aid and during the 2000s, the country has received an average of more than 31 million Euros per year. If the law against homosexuals is powered through the International Development Cooperation Gunilla Carlsson believes that it will be difficult for Sweden to continue with development cooperation [in its current form]:

- It will be very difficult. We have seen in some other areas that we have been forced to channel aid in a different way, to try to work more with civil society organizations, rather than directly with governments, we are also considering to cut down on our assistance. This of course is met with reactions of the host governments as well, but it is the road that I must take, "says Gunilla Carlsson.

---------- Earlier in November RFSL organised meetings between representatives for Ugandan LGBT organizations and the Swedish Human Rights Ambassador as well as members of Parliament and other officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and we have also demanded that Sweden stop foreign aid in the form of budget support to the Ugandan government. This demand has been articulated together with Ugandan LGBT activists.

Harsh laws not answer to our sexuality

Harsh laws not answer to our sexuality’
Rev. Gideon B. Byamugisha
No one really knows how many homosexuals , tri-sexuals, bi-sexuals, hetero-sexuals and non-sexuals we are in Uganda. What is known is that these sexualities are certainly not new ways of life.

When a young person reaches adulthood and finds himself or herself in a certain sexual orientation, it may now be a firmly established life value that will be very difficult to change to what they have not been or are not just by laws and punishments and threats of punishment.
The best law is the one which helps everyone to help one another and children early on in life to discover, establish and maintain a healthy sexual identity, sexual self-esteem and self-sexual perceptions.

In the present circumstances, young people and adults of Uganda need to be taught to love, treat and pray for homosexuals, hetero-sexuals, bi-sexuals, tri-sexuals and non-sexuals as they would do for any other person.

We need not be afraid of each other because our sexuality is not contagious! We don’t need to treat each other as freaks because of not understanding each other. We need not even to discuss someone’s sexuality except where the sexuality is a threat to their own and other people’s peace, health, wellbeing and prosperity.

If we try to understand our fellow human beings, see their pain from their point of view, and show love, we will discover the magic of compassion for all the ‘different’ people in our own lives and in our places of work, worship, residence, education and travel.

Being hateful, arrogant and intolerant of the ‘other’ persons may have even more dangerous outcomes for our country’s peace, health, wellbeing and spirituality at individual, family, local community and national level as inquisitive children and young people seek to “find and eat the forbidden fruit” or simply to be different or to affirm their “machoism and masochism” or to establish their independence from a very intolerant, boxing, sadistic, repressive and boring society.

All of us are capable of being kind, considerate, just and loving in the same way we are capable of violence, destructiveness and sinfulness irrespective of our distinguishing sexualities. Homosexuals are not worse sinners because they are homosexuals in the same way heterosexuals are not better saints because they are heterosexuals!

Substitute punishmentPeople who desperately need love, care, help and protection irrespective of their sexual sins should not receive even more pain and punishment instead.Many heterosexuals and many homosexuals state that they are perfectly happy in their relationships. But many of those in the two camps I have worked with and tried to help confess this is not true. Many are haunted with the fear of rejection, jealousy, and endless anger.

Many in both camps have suffered repeated losses of partners as they become involved in a desperate search for happiness that requires more and more effort but gains less and less satisfaction.

Happiness search Others I have interacted with; gay and straight, are fine, happy and quite normal, productive, industrious, creative, hardworking, welcoming and peaceful people. The one difference is that one of the groups is capable of producing children and another is incapable of producing children just like the celibates, the non-sexual, the infertile and the impotent.
So happiness, wellness and causing other individuals and families to be happy and well or suffering and adversity and causing other individuals and families to suffer and be unhappy are not a preserve of one kind of sexuality.

Of course we will (rightly or wrongly) continue to argue that we cannot afford to be very permissive to lifestyles that are “unnatural” and “unscriptural”. We have the right to argue like that and be listened to! But we cannot continue to argue that we are a deeply God-fearing nation when in the same breath we continue to commit state-inspired, state-protected and state-legislated suicide, genocide and murder.

Continued destructionWe cannot argue also that we are striving to protect our traditional family and community values by choosing not to love but to destroy fellow citizens.
We have a right as Parliament and as citizens to debate on what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, ‘lawful’ or ‘unlawful’, ‘faithful’ and ‘unfaithful’, ‘sinful’ or ‘saintly’ ‘good’ or ‘bad’ ,‘safe’ or ‘unsafe’ in sex, sexuality, and sexual health or any other sector.But to legislate against individuals because they choose to perform their sexual antics in a way that is different from my own thinking, appreciation, liking or even to traditions is stretching my ‘Godly’ values and morals.

Homosexuals, heterosexuals, bi-sexuals, tri-sexuals and non-sexuals who have been born and made by us, should not be helped to commit suicide; to kill or be killed; to be violent or violated against; to be hated or be hateful; to be resented or resentful with state laws of a country that describes itself as “religious”.

GLBTIQ Issues Make Inroads at Commonwealth Summit

GLBTIQ Issues Make Inroads at Commonwealth Summit
For the first time at a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, at CHOGM in Trinidad & Tobago, there was significant representation of GLBTQ (gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender/queer) activists among civil society participants, and a concerted effort to highlight issues of sexual citizenship and rights.

A delegation of GLBTQ activists from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean participated actively in the thematic assembly discussions and drafting process in the November 22-25, 2009 Commonwealth People’s Forum (CPF), a gathering of civil society organizations that meets in advance of, and sends a statement to, the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. Working in partnership with gender, disabilities and other human rights advocates, they achieved visibility for a number of key concerns, and won inclusion of these issues in the broad civil society agenda for the Commonwealth.

The issues cut a wide swath: repealing laws criminalizing non-normative sexualities and gender expression; preventing and prosecuting bias-related murders and violence, including punitive rape of Lesbians; ending discrimination in accessing health services; creating safety in the school system from violence and bullying; addressing the need for support and resources for parents; and developing training and sensitization for a range of public servants and service providers. Both scheduled speakers and participants from the floor made moving contributions related to human rights violations on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity in Commonwealth member countries.

Especially powerful speeches came from Ashily Dior, a Transgender activist from Trinidad; Canadian Stephen Lewis, co-director of AIDS Free World and former UN Special Envoy on HIV in Africa; and Robert Carr, director of the Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coalition. Together, contributors raised a comprehensive range of concerns in several of the assemblies, particularly those focused on Gender; Health, HIV and AIDS; and Human Rights.

The final Port of Spain Civil Society Statement to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting includes language calling on “Commonwealth Member States and Institutions” to “recognize and protect the human rights of all individuals without discrimination on the grounds of…sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression”; to “repeal legislation that leads to discrimination, such as the criminalisation of same sex sexual relationships”; and for “the Commonwealth Foundation to facilitate a technical review of such of laws”.

Further, it issues a call for “Commonwealth Member States to ensure universal access to basic” health “services for marginalised and vulnerable groups”, including “sexual and gender minorities”, and to “work to actively remove and prevent the establishment of legislation which undermines evidence-based effective HIV prevention, treatment and care available to marginalised and vulnerable groups, such as sexual minorities”. Its Gender section includes a distinct item on “Transgenders, Gays and Lesbians” (“We call on Commonwealth Member States to include gender and sexuality as a specific theme on sexualities, sexual and gender minorities, related violence and discrimination, making them no longer invisible”) and echoes the recognition in the human rights section “that gender equity implies equality for all and therefore issues related to non-normative sexualities, such as sexual and gender minorities”.

The Statement also makes reference to proposed “Anti-Homosexuality” legislation introduced in the Parliament of Uganda, home of current CHOGM Chair President Yoweri Museveni. The legislation would require reporting of homosexuals, provide a sentence of life imprisonment for homosexual touching or sex, and the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality”, if the offender is HIV-positive. In remarks in more than one CPF assembly and in a special press conference, Lewis, Carr and a representative of the Caribbean HIV & AIDS Alliance, spoke out forcefully against the legislation, asking Museveni to take a clear position on it, and calling on others to condemn it.

The Trinidad & Tobago Coalition Advocating for Inclusion of Sexual Orientation joined these voices, asking its own Prime Minister Patrick Manning, who will assume the chairmanship of CHOGM, and other CARICOM leaders, to do the same. Eighty-six countries in the world currently have legislation criminalizing same-sex conduct between consenting adults as well as other non normative sexual and gender behaviours and identities; half of them are Commonwealth member states. Criminal provisions in these countries may target same sex sexual conduct, men who have sex with men specifically, or more generally any sexual behaviour considered “unnatural”.

Some countries criminalize other non normative behaviours, such as cross-dressing, or utilize criminal provisions on indecency or debauchery, among others, to target individuals on their real or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression. These criminal provisions not only constitute a violation of civil and political rights in and of themselves because they violate key provisions established by international human rights law; they also have significant human rights implications, representing a serious risk for the exercise of other fundamental rights, such as the right to association, the right to assembly, and the right to expression, the right to health, the principle of non discrimination, to mention a few. Furthermore, the mere existence of these laws is in many countries is an avenue for other human rights violations by state and non-state actors.

We acknowledge and welcome the civil society consensus on the above mentioned issues, and call on Commonwealth member states, the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Commonwealth Foundation to implement the recommendations of the Commonwealth People’s Forum. You can access the Port of Spain Civil Society Statement to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 25 November at: http://www.commonwealthfoundation.com/governancedemocracy/CPF2009/NewPublicationsCPF/ · Alternative Law Forum (ALF) - India· Center for Popular Education and Human Rights Ghana (CEPEHRG) - Ghana· Coalition Advocating for Inclusion of Sexual Orientation (CAISO) - Trinidad & Tobago · Gay and Lesbian coalition of Kenya (GALCK) - Kenya· GrenCHAP – Grenada· Jamaica Forum for Lesbians All-Sexuals and Gays – (J-FLAG) - Jamaica· Knowledge and Rights with Young People through Safer Spaces (KRYSS) - Malaysia· Lesbians and Gays Bisexuals Botswana (LEGABIBO) - Botswana· People Like Us (PLU) - Singapore· Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD) – Guyana· The Independent Project (TIP) - Nigeria· United and Strong - St Lucia· United Belize Advocacy Movement (UNIBAM) - Belize· United Gays and Lesbians against AIDS Barbados (UGLAAB) – Barbados· Global Rights· International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC)

Blatant hate speech against homosexuals in Zondervan's Africa Bible Commentary

Blatant hate speech against homosexuals in Zondervan's Africa Bible Commentary cited at Society of Biblical Literature 2009 Annual Meeting

Panel respondant reports churches in South Africa "are hungry" to know what the Bible realy says about homosexuality
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISANNA - November 23, 2009

The African Biblical Hermeneutics Section of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) featured a paper today at the SBL annual meeting centered around the "Lot and Abraham Story" from the Africa Bible Commentary (Zondervan, 2006). The respondent to the paper, Gerald O. West of Kwa-Zulu Natal University, in his remarks, made a brief reference to the Africa Bible Commentary's featured article entitled "Homosexuality," found in the Romans section of the single volume commentary, to illustrate how the "Lot and Abraham Story" of the Africa Bible Commentary is predisposed to the evangelical anti-homosexual position. During the open discussion that followed the papers, Rev. Steve Parelli, Executive Director of Other Sheep, said the publisher, Zondervan, was guilty of "hate speech" against homosexuals. Parelli said the Zondervan Africa Bible Commentary article quotes uncritically a so-called common-enough view held in Africa that "homosexuals are worse than beasts."

The Africa Bible Commentary article further states, said Parelli, that "the Anglican Church in Africa has rejected Bishop Tutu's call for tolerance and acceptance of homosexuals." Parelli said, because the Africa Bible Commentary article links, uncritically, the two statements that "homosexuals are worse than beasts" and that "the Anglican Church rejected Tutu's call for tolerance" that the article is hate speech against homosexuals, that the evangelical Nigerian author of the article, because he is uncritical of the quotes he uses, owns the quotes as his own viewpoint. Parelli said Rick Warren of the United States, John Stott of England, and Douglas Carew of Nairobi, Kenya, have all endorsed the Africa Bible Commentary.

Parelli, citing Uganda as an evangelical country, tied the evangelical view of homosexuality to the current criminal Anti-Homosexuality Bill of Uganda that calls for the death sentence and life imprisonment of homosexuals who meet certain conditions. Another attendant of the SBL session, sitting at the rear of the room, who did not identify himself when he spoke and who left early, thanked the audience for their comments on the Africa Bible Commentary and said that the "insensitivities" of the Africa Bible Commentary as noted in this meeting would be taken into consideration.

Apparently, from his remarks, the gentleman is somehow associated with Zondervan. West, in his final reply to the audience as the respondent, thanked Parelli for his comments on the Africa Bible Commentary and related his own disappointments with the volumn. In addition, West gave an account of how religious groups within South Africa are forming meetings around the study of the issue of homosexuality and the church in Africa in order to discuss seriously the Biblical texts traditionally associated with homosexuality.

West said South Africans "are hungry" to really know, and not assume, what the Bible does and does not say about homosexuality especially in light of the very really present situation that their South African constitution provides for the right of same-sex marriage. Robert Wafula, Drew University, and Robert Wafawanaka, Virginia Union University, each gave a paper and West responded to each paper separately. Elelwani Farisani, University of South Africa, presided. In 2008, Parelli and his same-sex spouse, Jose Ortiz, conducted Other Sheep seminars on the Bible and homosexuality in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.

Are Homosexuals the Lost Sheep?

Are Homosexuals the Lost Sheep?
By Revd Rowland Jide Macaulay, 22nd November 2009

In Jesus’ parables and analogy, Matthews’s gospel in Chapter 18:10-11 concluded on Jesus Saying on how we are to treat or indeed respect little children. This metaphorical illustration sync with the way we treat each other, Children are innocent, children are the best illustration of innocence and also said to be vulnerable. Many people today are innocent of who they are, and I hold out in this analogy to speak boldly of sexual minorities, who neither wanted to be or wish this on themselves in a world that fails to consider their innocence on matters of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Jesus said, “See that you do not look down on one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my God in heaven”.

The same can be said of sexual minorities, same gender loving people, a warning that the rest of society should not look down on us in any way including disgust, prejudice and alienation. We all have angels in heaven that will intervene and intercede on our behalf, seeking the face of God in heaven to rescue us from our situations.

Jesus made this conclusion having spoken to his disciples about “who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” I believe that innocent people will be considered innocent in the kingdom of heaven and the oppressors, including religious oppressors will be severely judged.

This finely leads to the Parable of the lost sheep, Chapter 18:12-14 says;

“What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety nine on the hills and go to look for the one (go in search) that wandered off (went astray)? And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he is happier (rejoices) about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your God in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost”.

It is clear that many Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) people can be seen today as the lost sheep from the Christian community, due to religious discrimination and other forms of ostracism.

Jesus said what do you think? A question that we ask fellow Christians, for every hundred heterosexuals in church, there is no doubt that they have lost one homosexual person, who needs a home in church, who is looking for a safe place in the sanctuary, but what most LGBTI people are faced with is oppression and intolerance. A homosexual for reasons of doctrinal and religious oppression has been forced to go astray, not willingly but through cruelty. Homosexual persons are no less of a sinner or in need of repentance as heterosexual people, the illustration of the lost sheep can be a conclusion on the lack of knowledge of the church in the matters of sexuality.

Many LGBTI people go astray, because they cannot identify with the selfish doctrines of the church, many are shrouded in self stigmatisation, hatred, many for these reasons and more, often wander off from church because of the inability to withstand the heaviness and fanaticism of the church. It is not surprising today that many continue to seek an inclusive Christian family, some overburdened with harshness of religious dogma.

In 2001, the Holy Spirit led me to find the Metropolitan Community Church in London, through a very special group of friends and evangelists from South Africa. The Metropolitan Community Church under the anointing and leadership its founder Revd Elder Dr Troy D Perry is a ministry established out of the goodness of the love of God in order that LGBTI people may find the heaven on earth, a welcoming congregation and thus many LGBTI people are now able to work towards reconciliation and restoration as ordained church workers.

Let me take you on an exegesis illustration of Jesus’ words according to Matthew 18:12-14 repeated in Luke 15:3-7.

“What do you think?
Do you think that LGBTI people should be part of the church? Do you think LGBTI people should be welcomed and ordained in to ministry? Do you think a place should be made available at the communion table of Christ in the church for LGBTI people? Do you think it is right to welcome and love LGBTI people? Do you think LGBTI people who are servers, pastors, music leaders, praise and worship leaders, should be displaced?

If we look in our churches, LGBTI people are missing, not physically but emotionally, spiritually, socially etc. We need not consider this analogy as lost in sin alone, we also need to consider this as lost in the ability to reconcile, settle, bring together, resolve and reunite. We need to also consider the fact that LGBTI people are lost in the inclusion of the family of God, the church. Now again, what do you think?

If a man owns a hundred sheep and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety nine on the hills and go to look for the one (go in search) that wandered off (went astray)?
There is no doubt that if the church consider LGBTI people precious and worthy of inclusion, the church will not hesitate to welcome LGBTI people, there was a time in history that the services of a woman as a Priest in church was frowned upon and in many places in our world the idea of a woman serving at the altar is not acceptable. There was a time not too long ago in human history that Black people were not allowed to worship in the same church building or seat in the same pew as white people, these evidences are still apparent in post apartheid in South Africa and several decades after the civil rights movement in the United States of America, and religious racial tension in some part of Western Europe. There is no doubt that the church struggles on the issues of inclusion to the peril of finding the lost sheep, even though many are amongst us.

Many LGBTI people are lost in our congregations and unable to become visible and fully enshrined in the celebration of the church. These no doubt makes God very sad. LGBTI people have not wandered nor gone astray in sin, but LGBTI people have been forced onto the margins and are simply lost in church, they are actually present in church but their spirit and souls wanders and have gone astray due to hostility.

Therefore, I say to the church look within your hearts and you will find the lost sheep yearning for inclusion, longing for celebration of their humanity and spirituality, a place they can truly call home and hear that still small voice of love and the victorious shout of triumph.

And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he is happier (rejoices) about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off.
When the churches opens up and allow all people to be, then there will be no secrets on LGBTI people’s humanity, “if the man finds the lost sheep”, that is when everyone is accounted for and included in the growth and life of the church, the churches will be happier, the church will be able to see all the fullness of a joyful congregation, in high spirit, ecstatic, again and again, Luke 15:5-6 says;

“When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost”

I believe that those called to office as Christian ministers have the responsibility to include LGBTI people in the life of the church, I believe that the church only rejoices when walls of hatred and discrimination are eradicated, dismantled and destroyed.

I believe that the churches with its history as a place of refuge need to consider these truths and open up a mission of welcome to the lost within the body of Christ. Then we can begin to heal those estranged from the church.

When the churches fail to include LGBTI people, it reinforces the spirit of exclusion, elimination, segregation and hostility, unfriendliness, resentment and aggression, who then are they going to call to rejoice over the ways they have treated LGBTI people? Who are the neighbours they are going to invite to support them in the atrocities, unfairness, inequality and injustices?

When the churches opens up for the inclusion of LGBTI people and make them more visible in the glorification of God’s name, then the church can truly rejoice, I strongly believe the church is hurting, missing out on the richness of the beauty of God’s people and needs healing from the pains and aches of exclusion and the way it has badly treated LGBTI people.

This is the time I believe the church need to repent. The church need to find LGBTI people who have over the years be cast off and made invisible, find them, place them on their shoulders and pronounce a welcome in celebration of inclusion.

In the same way your God in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost”.
It is not in the willingness of God that physically challenged individuals, or black or any ethnic racial minority people or women are discriminated against in the church, after all, the church is the body of Christ and all persons are members of the body of Christ. 1 Corinthians 12:12-15

“For just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ...the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body”.

The same is applicable, for we are all members of Christ body, heterosexuals cannot say to homosexuals that because they are not heterosexuals, they do not belong to the body of Christ, that would not make homosexuals any less a part of the body of Christ. The same principle applied in the history of racially excluded missions in places where racial or ethnic segregations were a huge problem, regardless of race or ethnicity, we are all still part of the body of Christ.

We all need each other to realize the core mission of inclusive gospel of Christ. We must adhere to the will of God that no one should be lost, no one should be alienated from the church, no one should be missing or ignorantly excluded from the communion table.

The next time, around the table when we dine, we must make room for any group or persons not included. This is the perfect will of God our parent in heaven. The church must adopt the all-encompassing standard of Jesus and accomplish the will of God on inclusion, we do this in consciousness of healing the wound of many and restoration of hope.

Groundbreaking PRA Investigation Exposes Influence of U.S. Religious Conservatives in Promoting Homophobia in Africa

http://www.publiceye.org/ark/africa-report/press-release.php

Groundbreaking PRA Investigation Exposes Influence of U.S. Religious Conservatives in Promoting Homophobia in Africa by Kapya Kaoma.

U.S. Christian Right also mobilizes African clerics in U.S. “culture war” over ordination of LGBT clergy

Sexual minorities in Africa have become collateral damage to our domestic conflicts and culture wars as U.S. conservative evangelicals and those opposing gay pastors and bishops within mainline Protestant denominations woo Africans in their American fight, a groundbreaking investigation by Political Research Associates (PRA) discovered.

Globalizing the Culture Wars: U.S. Conservatives, African Churches, and Homophobia, a new report by PRA Project Director Reverend Kapya Kaoma, exposes the U.S. Right’s promotion of an agenda in Africa that aims to criminalize homosexuality and otherwise infringe upon the human rights of LGBT people while also mobilizing African clerics in U.S. culture war battles.

U.S. social conservatives who are in the minority in mainline churches depend on African religious leaders to legitimize their positions as their growing numbers makes African Christians more influential globally. These partnerships have succeeded in slowing the mainline Protestant churches’ recognition of the full equality of LGBT people. It’s working despite the real movement toward full equality within deonominations because of the sensitivity of liberals to the question of colonialism. Are we being insensitive to the realities of Africa? But, Kaoma argues, although U.S. conservatives have organized African religious leaders as a visible force opposing LGBT equality, it is not true that all of Africa takes this stand.

In the United States, Kaoma focuses on “renewal” groups in The Episcopal Church, United Methodist Church USA, and Presbyterian Church USA; U.S conservative evangelicals; and the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a neoconservative think tank that has sought to undermine Protestant denominations’ tradition of progressive social justice work for decades.

In Africa, Kaoma investigates ties U.S. conservatives have established with religious leaders in Nigeria, Uganda, and Kenya and the impact of homophobia exported from the United States to these Anglophone countries.

As Kaoma argues, the U.S. Right – once isolated in Africa for supporting pro-apartheid, White supremacist regimes – has successfully reinvented itself as the mainstream of U.S. evangelicalism. Through their extensive communications networks in Africa, social welfare projects, Bible schools, and educational materials, U.S. religious conservatives warn of the dangers of homosexuals and present themselves as the true representatives of U.S. evangelicalism, so helping to marginalize Africans’ relationships with mainline Protestant churches.

The investigation’s release could not be timelier, as the Ugandan parliament considers the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009. Language in that bill echoes the false and malicious charges made in Uganda by U.S antigay activist and Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively that western gays are conspiring to take over Uganda and even the world.

"We need to stand up against the U.S. Christian Right peddling homophobia in Africa," said Kaoma, who in recent weeks asked U.S. evangelist Rick Warren to denounce the bill and distance himself from its supporters. "I heard church people in Uganda say they would go door to door to root out LGBT people and now our brothers and sisters are being further targeted by proposed legislation criminalizing them and threatening them with death. The scapegoating must stop."

While the American side of the story is known to LGBT activists and their allies witnessing struggles over LGBT clergy within Protestant denominations in the United States, what’s been missing has been the effect of the Right’s proxy wars on Africa itself. Kaoma’s report finally brings this larger, truly global, picture into focus.

“Just as the United States and other northern societies routinely dump our outlawed or expired chemicals, pharmaceuticals, machinery, and cultural detritus on African and other Third World countries, we now export a political discourse and public policies our own society has discarded as outdated and dangerous,” writes PRA executive director Tarso Luís Ramos in the report’s foreword. “Africa’s antigay campaigns are to a substantial degree made in the U.S.A.”
Leaders within mainline Protestant denominations hailed the report.

"The exploitation of African Christians by right-wing organizations in the United States is reprehensible. Where were these individuals and organizations and their leaders during the struggles against colonialism and apartheid? They certainly were not standing in solidarity with the people of Africa. Today, they use a variety of corrupt practices and methods in a vain attempt to turn back the tide of history. This report reveals the truth about what is going on and should be required reading for American church leaders," said Jim Winkler, the general secretary of the international public policy and social justice agency of The United Methodist Church.

For his 16-month investigation, Kaoma, an Anglican priest from Zambia, traveled in the United States and Uganda, Kenya, and Nigeria, attended the notorious antigay conference of Uganda’s Family Life Network in March, and documented concerns among the region’s clergy that U.S. conservatives are contributing to corruption among bishops with their lax requirements for donated funds.
Although written primarily for a U.S. audience, Globalizing the Culture Wars is certain to cause a stir in English-speaking Africa, where conservative U.S. evangelicals have for too long escaped the close scrutiny of African social justice activists and movements.

Kapya John Kaoma
Project Director Kapya John Kaoma is an Anglican priest from Zambia now leading churches in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. A doctoral candidate at Boston University School of Theology, he has studied in evangelical schools in Zambia and the United Kingdom. From 1998 to 2001, he served as dean of St. John’s Cathedral in Mutare, Zimbabwe and lecturer at Africa University, where he coauthored a text in ethics, Unity in Diversity. From 2001 to 2002, he was academic dean of St. John’s Anglican Seminary in Kitwe, Zambia, where he launched its women’s studies and church school training programs. An active campaigner for women’s reproductive rights, Kaoma is a passionate activist for social witness in the world.

Political Research Associates
Political Research Associates (PRA) is a progressive think tank devoted to supporting movements that are building a more just and inclusive democratic society. We expose movements, institutions, and ideologies that undermine human rights, with a focus on the U.S. political Right. Political Research Associates seeks to advance progressive thinking and action by providing accurate, research-based, information, analysis, and referrals.