Anglican funeral occasion for comparing gays to roaches

According the independent Ugandan newspaper, the Monitor, a member of the clergy of the Anglican Church of Uganda has compared homosexuals to cockroaches. The occasion was a funeral. According to the Monitor the clergyman in also on the faculty of the Uganda Christian University. The vice chancellor of the university is Stephen Noll.

The university has links to ACNA especially in Pittsburgh and Fort Worth, and is backed by in the U.S. by Uganda Christian University Partners. The executive director of the partners is Diane Stanton wife of the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas. Members of the board of the partners include Pam Stephens (Ministry Development Coordinator, Anglican Communion Network, Pittsburgh), and The Very Rev. Dr. Robert S. Munday (Dean and President, Nashotah House Seminary). See Hosea 8:7.

From the Monitor's report:

A senior member of the Anglican Church has thrown support behind the government move in a bid to phase homosexuality out of the country. Rev. Michael Esakan Okwi said on Friday that not even “cockroaches” who are in the “lower animal kingdom” engaged in homosexual relations.

“What about the human being who was made in God’s image?” he asked at the funeral service in All Saints Cathedral - Kampala for Tom Omongole, the former Resident District Commissioner of Bukedea.

Rev. Okwi also lectures Theology and Philosophy at the Uganda Christian University.

Contrast Okwi's image of God with the image of God that Katherine Jefferts Schori paints.

A Ugandan Anglican bishop recently wrote in favor of the bill. More about Diane Stanton and Uganda here.

Thinking Anglicans continues to have excellent roundups on the Ugandan bill. Review the most recent here (yesterday) and here (today). There's more there than has been covered in The Lead.

Posted by John B. Chilton on December 5, 2009 4:44 PM | |
Comments (3)

At times like these, it makes me proud to be a heretic (according to the likes of these folks).

Posted by Peter Pearson [TypeKey Profile Page] | December 5, 2009 4:52 PM

How sure are we about the sexual activities of cockroaches? Sexual orientation variations go pretty far "down" the taxonomic tree -- but knowing that would put them in the position of coming close to admitting that man is related to chimpanzees -- who show the whole spectrum.

Posted by F.Harry Stowe [TypeKey Profile Page] | December 5, 2009 5:44 PM

Use of the term "cockroaches" has an awful resonance with the Rwanda genocide of 1994 in which the Hutus called the Tutsis "cockroaches."

Posted by deirdregood [TypeKey Profile Page] | December 5, 2009 6:43 PM

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