Conger

First published in The Church of England Newspaper. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has acceded to the private entreaties of church and world leaders and will block the proposed ‘Anti-Homosexuality Bill’ before his country’s Parliament.

Speaking to members of the National Resistance Movement’s (NRM) legislative caucus on Jan 13, the Ugandan leader rejected the controversial bill that would have toughened the East African nation’s sodomy laws.

“I told them that this bill was brought up by a private member and I have not even had time to discuss it with him. It is neither the government nor the NRM Party’s” bill, he told legislators, according to Ugandan press reports.

“This is a foreign policy issue and we have to discuss it in a manner that does not compromise our principles but also takes care of our foreign policy interests,” the president said.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Canadian Prime Minister Alan Harper and other world leaders had pressed President Museveni to block the bill, introduced on Oct 14 by MP David Bahati of the NRM. In their annual joint Christmas statement, Uganda’s Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox churches voiced their public disapproval of a coercive approach to the issue of homosexuality, while top church leaders are understood to have pressed their views upon the president in private meetings.

Bahati’s bill sought to re-write British colonial era vice laws, establishing a legal definition of homosexual acts and provide for their criminalization. Consensual homosexual acts between adults would be subject to penalties of up to 10 years imprisonment, while “aggravated homosexuality”—homosexual relations with a minor or homosexual acts committed by an HIV-positive individual—would be a capital crime or merit life imprisonment.

On Nov 15 President Museveni indicated he was sympathetic to Bahati’s concerns, but signaled he would not endorse the bill as written, telling a youth awards banquet that Uganda “used to have very few homosexuals traditionally. They were not persecuted but were not encouraged either because it was clear that is not how God arranged things to be.”

In November church leaders the Uganda and Britain came under sharp criticism from gay activists for inaction. The Rev. Sharon Ferguson, Chief Executive of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement (LGCM) said the bill was “unjust, cruel and can only strike terror in the hearts of LGBT people, their families, friends and supporters”

She added she was “particularly distressed that many Christian groups including Churches in the Anglican Communion in Uganda appear to be supporting the proposals.” The Archbishops of Canterbury and York also came under sharp attack from activists in Britain for not publicly denouncing the bill.

On Nov 6 the Church of Uganda said it was studying the bill and had no official comment, but reiterated its long-standing opposition to the death penalty. Senior Ugandan church leaders told The Church of England Newspaper that their views on the bill would be communicated privately to the president and government leaders.

Ugandan church leaders took umbrage at the suggestion that the only moral way to proceed in response to the legislation was to mount a Western-style publicity campaign, warning that an aggressive campaign of censure and ridicule would be counterproductive in Uganda.

One senior cleric told CEN “the Church of Uganda is not passive about current issues, but we have chosen not to be publicly confrontational. People will work behind the scenes to influence current events and discuss issues with the players rather than go to the newspapers. For example, you will never know when the Archbishop meets with the President. This is the way we Ugandans do things, which is different from the West.”

In the wake of the president’s comments, Bahati told the local media he hoped to redraft the bill to accommodate the president’s concerns while being faithful to Uganda’s social and religious heritage.

The draconian penalties in Uganda’s proposed ‘Anti-Homosexuality Bill’ have come under sharp criticism from the Christian Churches of Uganda.

In its December 17 Christmas message, the Uganda Joint Christian Council, a coalition of the country’s Anglican, Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, said that while its individual member churches had not yet issued formal statements on the proposed bill, all were opposed to the harsh penalties proposed for the suppression of vice.

On 14 Oct MP David Bahati of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) tabled a private-members bill before parliament entitled the ‘Anti-Homosexuality Bill’ that would stiffen Uganda’s sodomy laws. The proposed law has come in part in response to concerns over growing child-sex tourism in East Africa and the highly publicized arrests of two NGO workers, as well as with the perception that Uganda’s culture is under siege by the West.

Bahati’s bill seeks to establish a legal definition of homosexual acts that would provide for their criminalization. Consensual homosexual acts between adults would be subject to penalties of up to 10 years imprisonment, while “aggravated homosexuality”—homosexual relations with a minor or homosexual acts committed by an HIV-positive individual—would be a capital crime or merit life imprisonment.

Article 13 of the bill imposes a seven year term of imprisonment or fine for promoting homosexuality, while organizations found guilty under the law would be closed down. Failure to inform would be an offence under the act punishable by imprisonment.

The proposed bill has drawn sharp criticism from overseas governments, NGOs and church groups. On Dec 24, the Archbishop of York Dr. John Sentamu told Radio 4’s Today Programme that he was “opposed totally to the death penalty” and was “not happy when you describe people with the kind of language you find in this Private Member’s Bill, which seems also not only victimizing but diminishment of individuals.”

On Dec. 14 Dr. Rowan Williams told the Telegraph the proposed penalties were of “of shocking severity” and “makes pastoral care impossible. It seeks to turn pastors into informers.”

In its Christmas message, released under the signature of the Uganda Joint Christian Council’s chairman, Metropolitan Jonah Lwanga of the Uganda Orthodox Church, the churches said they were “particularly concerned” about “ritual murders, corruption, homosexuality, road accidents and reckless life styles.”

All three churches were agreed that “homosexuality is a detestable act.” While the social mores of some societies now viewed it as a “fashionable way of life” this did not change the fact that it was a “biblically unacceptable practice.”

The churches had been “following the ongoing debate on the current bill on homosexuality that is being considered by Parliament,” noting that “we ourselves are currently studying the Bill and have not yet adopted a common position on all the issues.”

However, the churches were agreed upon the need to suppress vice and supported laws prohibiting “homosexual practices including same-sex marriage.”

The proposed penalties were unacceptable, as “we do not, as matter of principle, support the death penalty or other forms of extreme punishment such as life imprisonment as proposed in the Bill,” the said.

The “problem of homosexuality cannot be addressed by the law alone,” the churches noted, adding that Uganda’s Christian Churches were “concerned about the spiritual wellbeing of all members of the human family, including those who find themselves trapped in questionable lifestyles such as gays and lesbians.”

Coercion was not the solution, the churches concluded, appealing to “all parties to seek sustainable solutions to this problem. This would, among other things, involve teaching, mentoring, counseling and rehabilitation of all victims who are within reach,” the Uganda Joint Christian Council said.