“Ugandans are hospitable people.”

Right, unless you sleep with your own gender, and then they throw you in jail for your -entire life-.

Really, christians, you’re reaching for support from Uganda? It’s not enough to argue against homosexuality here, so you decide to go ahead and mess around with foreign countries?

Well, I say go SMUG. Even if it is a rather stupid name (in my opinion).

You might recall that not 100 years ago, the percentage of those apposed to homosexual rights would probably be very similar.

As well, the notion of Gay Rights was all but unheard of until the 60’s. Remember, we were just ‘perverts’ back then!

Well, to each his own ‘sputtering’. If you can sputter off your religious beliefs across Europe in the middle ages, we’re gonna sputter off about human rights now.

Try Libya next!

Hallelujah! At last a country that knows right from wrong & is not afraid to stand up & be counted. Homosexuality is completely against nature & utterly contrary to the character of God. God does not, repeat NOT, create homosexuals! they choose the lifestyle they wish to follow, an aberrant and an abhorrent one. Why they should expect anyone to support them is beyond any kind of logic or reason! And why should they want to be married is completely illogical? The western nations are weak & pathetic & utterly lack moral fibre. It is not difficult to understand why some people are attracted to Islam & why Islamic extremists find fruitful pickings among the many people who are totally disenchanted with the wicked west. How anyone can possibly call homosexual rights progressive when the society that approves of it is going backward? And if their cause is so right then why do they need to hide behind the word “gay”, which they are palpably not, instead of having the courage to simply be homosexual? It’s because they are trying to whitewash, or camouflage, the ugly connotations, the unnatural and perverted acts, that are part & parcel of homosexual sexual behaviour!

“SMUG is not likely to give up. They do not just want to be accepted or left in peace.” This is exactly the problem, and the Ugandans sense it, hence their mass resistance. Perhaps they will have more luck in preserving their societal sanity than we.

So ... it’s ALL about “rights” not what is right eh?

“As well, the notion of Gay Rights was all but unheard of until the 60’s. Remember, we were just ‘perverts’ back then!”

And so it goes “The Trouble with Normal is it always gets worse” Bruce Cockburn

“...being so close to the realities of life and nature—most of them very harsh—they regard homosexuality as a terrible abomination. And no amount of Western sputtering is likely to change that.”

Excellent comment, and too rarely is it heard.  The West is governed by metropolitan elites for whom life and death are abstract notions.  They are out of touch with reality and nature, leading them to champion these perverted ideas.  Africans generally have no time for such Western indulgences, life and death are all too real, and consequently their societies at the domestic level are profoundly life-giving and sane.

I guess that Colonialism is not quiet dead yet.

150 years ago, Europeans reject the right of free African peoples to have their own culture and values.  Instead the Western powers impossed their own values upon these cultures through technology and military might - because the Africans believed something different than our ‘Western’ norms.

Today, the West may have changed its definition of what is normal, but our refusal to let these independent nations practice what they believe has not changed.  We react exactly the same way, “How dare their society believe something different than ours.”

Gladstone would be pleased.  Chinese Gordon would be ecstatic.  Even Queen Victoria would be amused.  There still are Imperialists among us.

Thank you Martyn for this article. The subject has appeared before and, I suspect, will appear again on this forum. The message bears repitition and well done.

Whereas I appreciate the effort to keep the article balanced, I take exception with your use of the word “progressive” in the article. It may or may not have been your intention but on both occasions progressive seems to imply “having to do with progress”, which in my opinion is quite a claim to make for homosexuality.

Sadly, Ugandans acrimonious hostility towards homosexual people brings them no credit. Leaving aside the rights or wrongs of homosexual actions, homosexual orientation is very rarely in my extensive experience a “lifestyle choice” freely selected. Perhaps Uganda’s Christians should look more towards the Catechism of the Catholic Church which enjoins compassion reminding us that they indeed are also God’s children. Moreover, as St Augustine so wisely pointed out, that which causes us most outrage in our dealings with others often mirrors our innermost failings. Jesus trenchantly condemned hypocrisy even as he spoke with utmost gentleness to the woman caught in adultery calling upon him without sin to cast the first stone.

I know how the gay advocates will change the Ugandan public opinion on homosexuality but I bet it will take time. They will have to learn from their legal abortion advocates who changed tactics and are now working quitely. In brief they will :

1. Utilise the influence of the media---get a couple of columnists, editorials and extensive coverage favourable to the gay ideology.

2. Play the Catholic card. Although the Church is not exactly unpopular since it commands over 50% of the citizens, it will in future as more Catholics lapse into indifference or join the mushrooming Pentecostal denominations whose anti-Catholicism keeps gaining public acceptance as the Church leaders don’t seem to care or notice. In future, it will be said that the homophobia was due to Catholicism and once it wanes,…

3. Get respected ivory tower thinkers to advance the homosexual agenda in lecture rooms. Sylvia Tamale, the dean of Makerere University’s law faculty is already doing a commendable job in her “Gender and the law” classes. Her faculty even obtained sponsorship for a gender and sexuality project. Unfortunatley, her work is cut out, she can’t work for both the radical feminist agenda and lobby for the gays as well, more recruits needed to assist her, especially since she is viewed with suspicion from many corners.

When everything is set, amending the Constitution will not be hard, at least not with the quality of our lawmakers.

May I remind Christopher Canaris that the Pericope de Adultera (John 7:53–8:11) he is referring to ends with Jesus saying to the woman, “Go AND SIN NO MORE”? If homosexuals followed that commandment, i.e., chose a life of complete celibacy, Christians would have no problem whatsoever with them.

RE:
Jesus trenchantly condemned hypocrisy even as he spoke with utmost gentleness to the woman caught in adultery calling upon him without sin to cast the first stone

He also said, “go, and sin no more.”

My dear Mariusz and Charles – I am all too familiar with the John’s Gospel. We all need to be reminded, “Go, and sin no more.” We are all sinners whether African, Australian, European, heterosexual, homosexual, or generically human. Our Ugandan friends seem to be casting boulders, not stones. Perhaps Ugandans could learn from their fellow Africans, the Hausa, who have a proverb, “Faults are like a hill, you stand on your own, and then talk about those of other people.”

My dear Christopher,

You are basically saying that, since we are all sinners, sin does not exist. I don’t think Jesus would agree with that.

Mariusz, with the greatest respect, your comment doesn’t follow. I am all too conscious of sin and its all-pervasive presence in our lives. After all, it was for this and only this reason that Jesus died on the cross for your sins and mine. In his resurrection lies our our only hope of forgiveness and union with God. We should be wary however of thrusting sexual matters into some special category which allows us to feel superior to those we think don’t measure up. Jesus kept company with a pretty dodgy bunch of misfits – publicans, prostitutes, and other riff-raff. This, inter alia, was one reason we (and I do mean we) nailed him to a cross.

Mariusz, look up Luke 18:9-14.