Category: Religion and sexuality

Las Vegas AIDS support group silent on partnership with Canyon Ridge

In June, Canyon Ridge Christian Church ended the silence regarding their mission partner, Martin Ssempa, saying that the church leaders met with the chief pastoral supporter of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill in March.  Church leaders said they regarded some of Ssempa’s methods to be “offensive” but continued to support him. Pastor Kevin Odor said the church hoped to maintain a relationship which would allow CRCC to influence their Ugandan mission partner.

However, Pastor Odor misrepresented the Anti-Homosexuality Bill by saying the bill was designed to close gaps in Ugandan law by providing penalties for child molesters and those who intentional spread HIV.  In fact, the bill provides life in prison for those convicted of homosexual intimacy and death for “repeat offenders” or those who engage in consensual relationships while HIV positive. The bill also provides criminal penalties for those who know someone who is gay but do not report this to police.

In the sermon where Pastor Odor described the church’s response to Pastor Ssempa, he reminded the congregation that they walked in the local AIDS Walk as an illustration of the church’s commitment to helping those suffering with AIDS. That local AIDS group is Aid for AIDS Nevada (AFAN).

On April 25, AFAN hosted the AIDS Walk with numerous community groups and individuals participating. Canyon Ridge organized a team which is listed on the AFAN website and is open to public members. According to a walker who declined to be named, a group of church folks wore t-shirts displaying the church name and marched in the April event. The church team raised $1385 for AFAN.

I contacted AFAN before I found this information on their website. When I did, one staffer I spoke with declined to comment but forwarded my request to the director, Jennifer Morss. I then wrote Ms. Morss two additional emails asking for comment on the relationship with Canyon Ridge and the recent action of Southern Nevada Health to sever ties with the church.

To date, I have gotten no answer. Last week, I went on the Facebook group for AFAN and left a comment on their wall asking for a PR person from AFAN to contact me. Initially, that comment was answered with a recommendation that I contact Terri Maruca, Vice President at Kirvin Doak Communications. When I contacted Ms. Maruca, she replied that someone from the staff would contact me next (now this) week. In the mean time, Michael Bussee also left a request for public comment on the AFAN Facebook group wall. Sometime in mid-week last week, both of those comments were removed by the owner of the AFAN group. Currently, Mr. Bussee has another request for public comment on the AFAN wall.

This silence is puzzling. The partnership is minimal but real. All such partnerships provide benefit to both groups. AFAN gets donations and connections to diverse constituents and CRCC gets a reputation for community involvement and concern for those with HIV. Furthermore, I do not mean to diminish this, those who walk and donate are probably motivated by a sincere desire to help.

However, the dissonance is jarring. CRCC seems to be involved in commendable activities but in this case has partnered with Martin Ssempa to mislead many people about the real nature of the Ugandan bill. Just over the weekend, the Ugandan Daily Monitor made it crystal clear what Anti-Homosexuality Bill author, David Bahati, believes about how the state should react to homosexuals:

Bahati accuses the rich for trying to influence the world with their homosexuality agenda, which he calls a great threat to society and the future generation.

“This habit is learned and can be unlearned,” he adds, quoting the Bible: “Homosexuality is an abomination punishable by death.” When I asked him how, as a Christian, he can advocate for a death penalty, he replied, “It is in Leviticus. Go and read – the penalty for homosexuality is death.”

I suspect it would be quite offensive to many walking in the AIDS walk to know that a church that provides cover for the AHB campaign is a recognized partner of the group hosting the event. Such an event could not happen in Uganda if the bill passes.

From the beginning of this story, I have been interested in how Americans respond to the AHB. Thus far, I cannot discern the stance of AFAN since they have been silent. While I don’t believe AFAN supports the AHB or even CRCC in any direct manner, the silence and removal of comments is surprising.

UPDATE: Mr. Bussee’s most recent comment was deleted.

Straight man’s burden – Jeff Sharlet in Harpers

In the current issue of Harpers, Jeff Sharlet provides glimpses of his trip to Uganda, reporting there in April and May. It has been out to subscribers for a week or so but here is a very brief part of the introduction provided by Harpers in conjunction with The Investigative Fund. I have seen the entire piece and it is a vivid description of time spent with several of the main movers of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. If you have access to Harpers, read it. It begins:

A young man who called himself Blessed had agreed to meet me in front of the Speke Hotel, the oldest in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, but he wsa late, very late, adn I had no way to contact him. Emailing me from a café, he’s said he didn’t have a phone; calling from a pay phone, he’d said he didn’t have a watch. The friends who’d put me in touch with him said he didn’t have an address. I’d see a picture of him: he had a long neck, a narrow face, and a broad smile that made him look both kind and a little sly. I wanted to talk to him precisely because he was hard to find, because he was gay, and because he was on the run.

On October 14, 2009, a Ugandan member of parliament named David Bahati introduced legislation called the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Among its provisions: up to three years in prison for failure to report a homosexual; seven years for “promotion”; life imprisonment for a single homosexual act; and for “aggravated homosexuality” (which includes gay sex while HIV-positive, gay sex with a disabled person, or, if you’re a recidivist, gay sex with anyone — marking the criminal as a “serial offender”), death. As of this writing the bill has yet to pass, despite near unanimous support in Parliament. But the violence has been building, a crackling fury not yet quite a fire: beatings, disappearances, “corrective” rapes of lesbians, blacklists in a national tabloid, vigilante squads and church crusades, preachers calling out “homos” in their own pews.

It was Blessed’s pastor, a celebrity with an American following who had outed him. “Am being hunted by my family at the moment,” he’d written in an email apologizing for his inability to commit to dinner plans. “Am moving place to place now.” Then, in case I didn’t understand: “They want to kill me.”

To read the complete article, pick up the September 2010 issue of Harper’s.

American Bible college opens Ugandan branch, discourages “gay culture in Africa”

In the FYI file:

A Life Christian University is starting up in Kampala this month and one its purposes will be to discourage gay culture.

From the Daily Monitor:

A US-based Life Christian University has opened up a branch in Kampala to teach ethics, evangelism and church management, its officials have said. The Academic Dean, Dr. Dennis Sempebwa said the university will apply the American syllabus of evangelism and discourage gay culture in Africa.

“To be a pastor, God calls you but you must be trained. They should have the knowledge on how to handle the church.” The campus director, Dr Steven Kawula said the university will open this month on Bombo Road.

“We developed the idea of expanding to Kampala to access evangelists so that we can save the growing born again churches from getting wasted. We shall also offer other courses to suit businessmen and other academicians,” Mr Sempebwa told journalists in Kampala last week.

A Dennis Sempebwa is also the pastor of Santuary of Life church in East Lenox, IL, near Chicago. I emailed the church to learn if this is the same man who is leading the Kampala campus. I suspect so given that SoL’s pastor is from Uganda. Life Christian University in Florida is the awarder of Dr. Sempebwa’s degree and I suspect the chartering school for the Kampala branch.

Martin Ssempa didn’t like the article on gays in Uganda

Sunday, the Uganda Observer published an article on July 22 titled, “Inside the world of sexual minorities.” The article quotes local physicians with an informative article regarding various terms for sexual minorities. The article seems to make an effort at balance and information rather than opinion and moralizations.

Well, that did not sit well with Martin Ssempa who wrote a letter to the editor published today:

Wednesday, 04 August 2010 17:50

I am responding to the story ‘Inside the world of sexual minorities’ (The Observer, July 22-24, 2010). I view the two pages of extensive research you presented in such a national newspaper as any outcry of sympathy and acceptance of homosexuality and the people involved in the evil practice. It is a betrayal of readers’ loyalty and the family values in Uganda.

Your stories created the impression that:

•Homosexuals are a minority group, which should be accepted in society.

•Families can still survive even after one spouse turns gay, probably with the other spouse getting another lover too and ‘they live happily ever after.’

•The definitions given of the various forms of homosexuality are meant to encourage the young minds to explore the vice.

•The pictures that ran with the story give an impression of happy, blossoming relationships, which is not the actual case with homosexuality.

•It is okay for children to turn to homosexuality and that their parents can just seek counselling and everything will be fine.

On the other hand, the stories missed out the following facts:

•Homosexuals are 100% more likely to contract HIV/AIDS compared to normal heterosexual couples.

•Homosexuality has a negative impact on the body’s external organs and is a health hazard.

•Homosexuals are very depressed people who face gender identity disorders.

Besides, homosexuality is already illegal in Uganda. Therefore, unless you are promoting a crime, I do not see why you presented homosexuality as a scientific normality.

As loyal readers of The Observer and parents, we demand an apology and counter coverage on the pro-family issues.

Dr. Martin Ssempa,

Kampala.

Who knows where Rev. Ssempa gets his statistics. I am not sure what external organs he is referring to but I am sure many readers will take issue with his “facts” as I do. He is however, welcome to provide supporting documentation here if he would like to.

I may be missing some of the article given what Ssempa refers to in his letter. If anyone has a more complete version, if it exists, please let me know.

Kuchus in the news

Not sure if I have used that term before to refer to homosexuals in Uganda but it appears in Huffington Post via an article by Mark Canavera.

The kuchu movement is abuzz in Uganda. Kuchu is a (plural: kuchus) word, apparently of Swahili origin, that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) Ugandans have minted to describe their identities. “We do not use the word ‘queer,'” explains Frank Mugisha, chairman of Sexual Minorities Uganda, an umbrella entity that brings together LGBTI organizations for advocacy purposes. “We’ve got our own word that encompasses the whole idea: kuchu.”

I appreciate that Canavera says that “Most American evangelical churches have distanced themselves” from the bill. He also notes that Canyon Ridge Christian Church has not done so. Indeed, Canyon Ridge has added insult to injury by misrepresenting the bill in such a way that their congregants are publicly defending a false picture (see Change.org “be informed” commenter).

Anyway for a brief summary of what is going on in Uganda among opponents of the bill, see Canavera’s article.