U.S. Christian leaders denounce Ugandan anti-gay bill

WASHINGTON (ABP) — Christian leaders in the United States with diverse viewpoints on homosexuality are joining forces to prostest a Ugandan proposal to punish certain homosexual behavior with imprisonment or even death.

Catholic, evangelical and mainline Protestant leaders including Ronald Sider, president of Evangelicals for Social Action; Jim Wallis of Sojourners; and author and speaker Brian McLaren endorsed a Dec. 7 statement denouncing the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2009, currently before Uganda's Parliament.

"This bill is an affront to human dignity and offensive to Christians around the world who take seriously Christ's command to love our neighbors as ourselves," said Thomas Melady, a former U.S. ambassador to Uganda and the Vatican and one of the statement's signatories.

Baptists signing the statement included David Gushee, a professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University who also writes a regular column for Associated Baptist Press; Melissa Rogers, director of Wake Forest University Divinity School's Center for Religion and Public Affairs; and Derrick Harkins, senior pastor at Nineteenth Street Baptist Church in Washington.

Citing an "extensive history" of involvement by U.S. religious groups in Uganda, the religious leaders said they were speaking out "to bear witness to our Christian values, and to express our condemnation of an injustice in which groups and leaders within the American Christian community are being implicated."

"We appeal to all Christian leaders in our own country to speak out against this unjust legislation," the statement said.

Introduced in October, the draft bill would seek to imprison anyone convicted of "the offense of homosexuality" for life. If the person is HIV positive, the conviction — called "aggravated homosexuality" — would carry the death penalty.

It would also criminalize "the promotion of homosexuality" and imprison heterosexual people who fail to report the names of people they know who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

Purpose Driven Life author and Baptist mega-pastor Rick Warren drew criticism recently for refusing to condemn the legislation, which Reuters says is likely to pass with some modification. Earlier Warren distanced himself from a Ugandan pastor leading the charge for the law who formerly aided Warren in bringing Warren's Global PEACE plan — a development and church-planting strategy that includes combating AIDS — to Uganda.

Later Newsweek quoted Warren as stopping short of opposing the anti-homosexuality law. "The fundamental dignity of every person, our right to be free, and the freedom to make moral choices are gifts endowed by God, our creator," he said. "However, it is not my personal calling as a pastor in America to comment or interfere in the political process of other nations."

The statement by Christian leaders, however, said that regardless on their views of homosexuality that violence, harassment and unjust treatment of any human being is wrong.

"In our efforts to imitate the Good Samaritan, we stand in solidarity with those Ugandans beaten and left abandoned by the side of the road because of hatred, bigotry and fear," the statement said. "Especially during this holy season of Advent, when the global Christian community prepares in hope for the light of Christ to break through the darkness, we pray that they are comforted by God's love."

The religious leaders acknowledged that gays and lesbians also face hostility in the United States and said that such treatment "degrades the human family, threatens the common good and defies the teachings of our Lord — wherever it occurs."

Katie Paris of Faith in Public Life, the group that promoted the statement, said Warren was not asked to sign because he stopped adding his name to such joint public-policy statements several years ago.

Warren has since commented again on the issue.

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.