Anti-gay bill in Uganda challenges Catholics to take a stand
By John L Allen Jr
Created Nov 27, 2009

As Spiderman has always understood, with great power comes great responsibility. In Catholicism, that’s a point with particular relevance these days for Africa. Explosive growth of the church is turning Africa into a 21st century Catholic powerhouse, which means that Catholic leaders in Africa face a new responsibility to wield their influence wisely.

A startling story percolating in Uganda illustrates that truth.

An Anglophone nation located in eastern Africa, Uganda has a population of 32 million, roughly 40 percent Catholic. By mid-century the Catholic population should soar to 56 million, enough to make Uganda the sixth-largest Catholic nation in the world, ahead of such traditional Catholic powers as France, Italy, Spain and Poland.

As Comte said, demography is destiny, and Uganda’s destiny is to be a force in setting the tone for the global church. Right now Ugandan Catholics face precisely one of those tone-setting choices: How to respond to a draconian new bill in parliament which would impose the death penalty for homosexuality in certain circumstances.

Homosexuality has long been illegal in Uganda, as in most African societies, reflecting traditional African morality and a strong cultural emphasis on the family. Today, however, there is an increasingly punitive mood on the continent, which many analysts regard as an equal-and-opposite reaction to the culture wars in the West: the more Europe and the States insist on gay rights, the more African societies push back. Many Africans regard homosexuality as a Western aberration, so anti-gay backlash is not simply a reflection of family values but also anti-colonial resentment.

In October, a Ugandan parliamentarian named David Bahati, a member of the ruling National Resistance Movement and an Evangelical Christian, introduced the “Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2009.” In a nutshell, the measure would establish life in prison as the penalty for even a single instance of homosexual behavior (which the bill defines in graphic detail). It also creates a new category of “aggravated homosexuality” subject to the death penalty. Examples include:

• Homosexual relations with a minor or a disabled person;
• Cases where the “offender” (the person initiating the homosexual encounter) has HIV, uses drugs or intoxicants to procure sex, or wields authority over the “victim”;
• Repeated homosexual acts.

Anyone who fails to report homosexuals to the police would face a prison term of three years. The bill also bars the “promotion” of homosexuality, in language that would essentially outlaw pro-gay support or advocacy groups.

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To date, there’s been little public comment from Uganda’s Catholic leadership....

As time goes on, Catholic silence will be increasingly unsustainable, especially if the bill comes up for a vote.

At least two aspects of the proposal seem like no-brainers for Catholic opposition: the death penalty, and the threat of sending people to jail for failing to report homosexuals to the police. If enforced, the latter measure could have devastating implications for pastoral ministry with homosexual persons. A few leading Evangelical Christians in the States, including some who believe in “curing” homosexuality, have already expressed opposition on that basis.

More broadly, criminalizing homosexuality to such an extent runs the risk of driving it further underground, with especially worrying consequences for the treatment of HIV/AIDS.

Dr. Edward Green, of Harvard’s AIDS Prevention Research Project, has issued just such a warning. For the record, Green is hardly hostile to religious sensitivities on sexual morality. His research confirms the efficacy of abstinence in anti-AIDS efforts, and last March he defended Pope Benedict XVI when his criticism of condoms in Africa stoked a furor. Green recently said: “The bill sounds dangerous and completely inhumane. As a practical matter, such a bill is unenforceable and would only drive homosexuality underground, terrorize gay men and women and their loved ones, and justify witch hunts.”

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 What will Catholic leaders in Uganda have to say?

[The entire piece is here.]