This just in. WAIT Training, the abstinence education group has broken ties with Uganda’s Martin Ssempa.
Here is the statement from their website:
WAIT Training does not affiliate, endorse, associate or partner with anyone seeking to hurt or wound others. Our goals are to impart skills to help ALL individuals have healthy relationships, to LIVE WELL, LOVE WELL and if they choose, to MARRY WELL.
Recent developments in Uganda and around the world associated with Martin Ssempa have caused us to sever all former associations with him.
We have requested he remove all wording on his web site that references our organization. If there are any questions about this, please call Joneen Mackenzie RN, President / Founder of WAIT Training at 720 488 8888 ext 201.
Developing…
I spoke earlier this evening with Joneen Mackenzie, Founder and President of WAIT Training about their connections to Martin Ssempa. Ms. Mackenzie tried to help Dr. Ssempa by helping put him in touch with people who helped with his website and believed he was focused on helping people with HIV. She told me that she was “shocked that he would endorse hurting anyone.” Learning of Ssempa’s support for the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda, she said, ” I don’t want to be associated with that. I have to get any association with him and that bill away from me. Our desire is to dissociate ourselves from him.”
Ms. Mackenize told me that she has asked Ssempa to remove all references to WAIT Training from www.martinssempa.org. Currently, WAIT Training is listed as a group who will book speaking engagements for Ssempa. Ms. Mackenzie said that her group had only booked one such event. Now, they want to sever ties completely as Ssempa’s current advocacy is contrary to their mission and values.
Ssempa has yet to remove the references to WAIT Training from the site.