U.S. officials are continuing to pressure Uganda not to pass an “anti-homosexuality” bill that Ugandan leaders have said they want to pass as a Christmas present to the Ugandan people.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland confirmed that Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson reiterated the Obama administration’s “vocal” concerns about the bill when he was in Uganda this weekend.
The bill originally contained a measure calling for the death penalty for people found guilty of “aggravated homosexuality,” which was defined as one of the participants being a minor, HIV-positive, disabled or a “serial offender.” But the death penalty has been removed and replaced with shorter prison sentences, according to published reports, though under certain circumstances offenders could get life sentences.
“Ugandans want that law as a Christmas gift. They have asked for it and we’ll give them that gift,” parliament speaker Rebecca Kadaga told Reuters earlier this month.
The new bill also prohibits any “promotion” of gay rights and calls for the punishment of anyone who “funds or sponsors homosexuality” or “abets homosexuality.”
Despite the stance of the U.S. State Department, the Ugandan bill is getting praise in some conservative quarters of the U.S. Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, sent out a tweet congratulating Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni for embracing criminalization of homosexuality.
“American liberals are upset that Ugandan Pres is leading his nation in repentance–afraid of a modern example of a nation prospered by God?” Perkins said in his tweet.
As some publications have pointed out, the American religious right might have had some involvement in Uganda’s bill. In March 2009, anti-gay missionary Scott Lively, head of Abiding Truth Ministries in California, gave a series of talks in the Ugandan capital city of Kampala claiming homosexuality is evil and undermines marriage and family.
Shortly after Lively’s trip, Ugandan legislator David Bahati introduced the “Anti-Homosexuality Bill,” which was initially tabled after the West
But anti-gay sentiment in Africa certainly isn’t specific to Uganda. Homosexuality is illegal in 37 countries on the African continent, including Uganda, and activists say few Africans are openly gay, fearing imprisonment, violence and loss of jobs.
The Human Rights Campaign said it has yet to see evidence that the death penalty clause in fact has been dropped from the Ugandan bill.
Fred Sainz of the Human Rights Campaign called on evangelical leaders “to reach out to their influential friends and colleagues in Uganda to urge them to condemn the bill and work to halt consideration. American Christian faith leaders have been active in Uganda for decades and have significant ties to Ugandan political leaders and faith leaders. Such influential American faith leaders, including Rick Warren, T.D. Jakes, Joel Osteen, and voices from the Trinity Broadcasting Network, have a moral obligation to urge their Ugandan friends and allies to condemn the bill.”
But Rick Warren was taking this in another direction last night in an appearance on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight. Warren told Morgan that being gay is like consuming poisonous arsenic or having the desire to punch a man in the nose. Both things are “natural,” Warren said, but we should never act upon them.
Warren said, “It wouldn’t bother me if there was a ‘gay gene’ found,” because regardless of whether we deem it “natural,” it is still wrong.
He explained: “I have all kinds of natural feelings in my life and it doesn’t necessarily mean that I should act on every feeling. Sometimes I get angry and I feel like punching a guy in the nose. It doesn’t mean I act on it. Sometimes I feel attracted to women who are not my wife. I don’t act on it. Just because I have a feeling doesn’t make it right.”
“Not everything natural is good for me. Arsenic is natural,” he concluded.
