Louie, my heart is as one with you in your remarks above, but there is more to be said about the historical context of homosexuality in Uganda. The story of the Ugandan Martyrs is bound up together with the sexual demands of a nineteenth-century pederast king and the Christian pages who resisted him - see, http://www.buganda.com/martyrs.htm

From my warm house today in the American Midwest, it looks as though rage and revulsion against homosexual rape are profoundly woven in to Ugandan Christian history. I think that, for LGBT Ugandans to find justice, they will have to re-interpret and re-articulate this powerful shared national shrine and story. Yet I write this in confidence that the Holy Spirit is working in us and among us all over the world and always.

Pamela Grenfell Smith
Bloomington, Indiana

The current Archbishop of Canterbury’s impoverished understanding of human rights as little more than citizen constraints on governments prevents him from fully appreciating the affirmation of dignity, community, and right relationship found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If Anglicanism is to make a meaningful contribution to the world’s understanding of human rights, Anglicans themselves must engage the Universal Declaration through a Christ-centered lens.

Last spring, a group of my students at Princeton Theological Seminary did just that, and their responses are being published by The Anglican Examiner, with an invitation to all Christians to add their own comments via the electronic forum, “Seeing Christ in Human Rights.”

During Advent and continuing through the end of January, the discussion will focus on Article One of the Declaration: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

You can add your comments and sign up to be notified as each new article discussion begins by visiting www.AnglicanExaminer.com. And while you’re there, you might want to read “Eleanor Roosevelt’s Nighly Prayer” for an understanding of how Anglicanism shaped her vision of “a world made new.”

With best wishes for a blessed Advent and joyous Christmastide,

Donn Mitchell
Editor & Publisher
The Anglican Examiner
www.AnglicanExaminer.com

David Virtue rightly warns me that my commentary above is to eurocentric. He sent me a link to the story of the Ugandan Martyrs. Here is my reply:

http://www.buganda.com/martyrs.htm

Thanks for this link. Yes, unquestionably the martyrs story is an important
piece to the response to homosexuality in Uganda.

It is fascinating how each culture names its homosexuality as the fault of
another culture. In France, it was called the malade Anglais; in England,
the French disease. As noted here, in Buganda, the Arabs take the blame.

John McNeill notes that many pharaohs had on their footstools, "I have
penetrated the rectum of all my enemies." They were not bragging about
being homosexual; nor did they think themselves such. They were bragging
about their power to humiliate. Small wonder that the Israelites set such
severe penalties in their laws. Whew!

Homosexual rape is horrendous, as is heterosexual rape. Rapists rarely are
driven by sexual desire; most are driven to overpower and dominate. A
colleague of mine who was viciously raped in her office after evening
classes 18 years ago thinks she probably made it worse for herself by
talking to the rapist about his mother. Every time he lost his erection, he
hit her more brutally, and the rape lasted longer than it might. When he
was apprehended, several other women identified him as their rapist as well;
but the authorities would not test him for HIV infection, saying that would
violate his rights! Evil generation! (I believe that ridiculous law has
been changed.)

Human Rights workers are warning that hysteria over homosexuality could lead
to a blood bath in as many as 20 African countries. Given the ease with
which anyone may be accused, it could become the accusation of choice for
many who want to get rid of persons they do not like. The recent
genocide in Rwanda may look mild by comparison.

One of the greatest dangers of spreading hate and fear is that hate and fear
have movable targets.

From all violence and degradation, Good Lord deliver us.

Louie

France after the Jacobin Revolution of 1789 decriminalized sodomy. 1791 is the date I have found. According to the Enlightenment ethos which the Revolution claimed to embody, only so-called real crime was to be punished and by "real" they meant behaviors which harmed the community. Mere disgust was not good enough, as another Enlightenment figure, the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham argued in his posthumous treatise on sodomy. Behavior which the church disapproved of, such as blasphemy, was decriminalized. Just because the church or the monarch disapproved of something was not sufficient grounds to make it a crime. A citizen could openly express contempt for a religious procession and live.

Tradition in itself was no justification. Would that the Revoluionaries had sided with Bentham and outlawed the death penalty because most Enlightenment philosophes could find no rationale for the death penalty other than tradition and the church. The death penalty was opposed because it seemed Christian.

Napoleon's troops spread the Enlightenment through force, ironically.

My sources are
http://www.glbtq.com/literature/bentham_j,2.html

and

http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/napoleonic_code.html

Napoleon brought religion back with his Concordat with the Roman Church. But even after the Concordat, homosexuality was technically no crime, even though gays would be treated badly for many more decades, just as in England gays were still treated badly after decriminalization in the 1960s.

Gary Paul Gilbert