Dr Williams ‘shocked’ by Ugandan Bill

Church Times-

THE Archbishop of Canterbury has described the proposed anti-homosexuality legislation in Uganda as “of shocking severity. . . I can’t see how it could be supported by any Anglican who is committed to what the Communion has said in recent decades,” he said in a newspaper interview on Saturday. The Bill, in its present form, could impose the death penalty or life imprisonment for homosexual activity, and would allow parents to be imprisoned for not denouncing their children within 24 hours of knowing they were gay.

Dr Williams told The Daily Telegraph it would make pastoral care impossible: “It seeks to turn pastors into informers.” He told the paper that the Church of the Province of Uganda opposed the death penalty, but he noted that the Archbishop, the Most Revd Henry Orombi, “has not taken a position on this Bill”. Other Ugandan bishops have spoken publicly. The Bishop of Karamoja, the Rt Revd Joseph Abura, has described those who oppose the legislation as “lovers of evil” (Comment, 4 December). He said: “Our children are ignorant of the vice; but gays and their sympathisers want to appeal to their psyche, to their consciousness that they be infected, too. “They are spreading it in our institutions of learning.

They want to condition every penny that comes to our government or churches or non-government organisations.” Canon Gideon Byamugisha, a Christian Aid ambassador, said that gay people were being used as scape goats for all the problems in Uganda. He has condemned the Bill as something that would “institution alise violence and death to a min ority group simply because the majority do not like them” .

Pressure continues to be put on Dr Williams to condemn the Ugandan bishops’ support for the Bill as unequivocally as he condemned the election of Canon Mary Glasspool, a lesbian priest, as a suffragan bishop in Los Angeles (News, 11 December). The LGBT Anglican Coalition, an umbrella organisation for eight groups which support gay and les­bian Christians, said in a statement this week that the transparency of the elections in Los Angeles con trasted favourably with the “still opaque processes by which Church of England bishops are appointed”.

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