It was with heavy and angry hearts this that we began this month of February when we read of the murder of David Kato Kinsuule, a human rights advocate brutally beaten to death in his home, most likely, by someone he knew. Such is the state of viciousness that surrounds the advocacy of homosexual rights in Uganda.
In Christ Church Cathedral some of us gathered to pay homage to a man who left the safety of South Africa, where his sexuality was not a danger to him, and returned home to his native Uganda where his work was, and still is, desperately needed. Founding the group Sexual Minorities of Uganda, Mr. Kinsuule put himself in harm’s ways, and there he remained up until his death.
Upon his death, this member of our Church, was not buried by a priest but by a lay reader. During his funeral service, the reader began to make inappropriate remarks condemning homosexuality and stated the Church of Uganda's position, that homosexuality is a sin and goes against the Bible. In the midst of this diatribe a member of Sexual Minorities of Uganda seized the microphone from the reader and began to defend Mr. Kinsuule’s life and work in what had become an anti-gay rally.
These are difficult times to be an Anglican, difficult times to belong to a Church that has such colonial baggage. I call this colonial because when the British Empire spread its commonwealth across the globe, it also spread its anti-sodomy laws with it, thus the same laws the imprisoned Oscar Wilde in 19th century Britain are the lineage of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill pending in the Uganda parliament.
That is part of the history, but it would be a lie to call it the whole picture. Whereas the American Christian right has lost so much ground on homosexual issues on this continent, they have been strategically pooling their efforts into twisting other countries domestic policy. Kapya Kaoma, an Anglican priest from Zambia, has clearly documented connections between the far right funding, to Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, to Ugandan politicians. In his report Globalizing the Culture Wars: US Conservatives, African Churches, and Homophobia he ties these connects together and does justice to the complexity to the hornets nest our communion is being sucked into.
I wish only to allude to these issues to in this article and to present some of this complexity, as I fear that the polemics of the same-sex marriage debates within our Church gives the illusion that are easy answers on how we, as a globe communion, address the murder of David Kinsuule. I hold that it would be an added insult to his death to not see it as a result of a very complex mess. Let us do justice to his memory, let us embrace the complexity of this madness with the cutting light that we have been given by the example of Christ. For no matter where we stand in the maelstrom of homosexual issues, Jesus is quite clear what we are to do with stones and sinners.
Our God is a God of reconciliation, a God that wishes for us to be as one, and I believe that our Church has been consistent in advocating tolerance and mutual respect. As Rowan Williams said to the African Bishops Conference 6 months ago: “We have a have the responsibility brothers and sisters of showing the world how precious a thing is a human being – and a special responsibility to show the world the preciousness of those who are hated or neglected by others or by society at large.”
Let us live up to this responsibility. Let us not risk deepening the divides in a world already so fragmented. Our faith is about meeting the other, encountering the reject of society as Jesus would greet a leaper. Surely if we are so devout in our fight for the politics of the Church, we can be sincere in our approach to each other.
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