News Watch

Two of the most talked-about and disturbing stories concerning sexuality have come from those two major faces of the Christian church, the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholics.

The first of these may well be happening in Africa, but it’s had repercussions here in the UK, where many mainstream Christians have been deafening in their silence over news of the evil Anti-Homosexuality Bill proposed for Uganda.

Indeed, while the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, was still saying he would not be making a public comment on the Bill, he did speak about the appointment of another gay bishop – in this case a suffragan – Mary Glasspool, in the Episcopal Church in the USA (see “World Watch”.

His silence infuriated human-rights activists, and his office was quoted as saying that “attempts to publicly influence either the local church or political opinion in Uganda would be divisive and counterproductive. Our contacts, at both national and diocesan level, with the local church will therefore remain intensive but private.”

However, after numerous protests and calls and a petition signed by thousands, he has issued a statement expressing his opposition to the Bill.

The Bill – proposed by MP David Bahati – would, among other things, ensure the death penalty for what he calls “aggravated homosexuality”.

“Promoting” homosexuality

This, it seems, means having sex with anyone under 18 or anyone who is disabled (whether with that person’s consent or not), and in any way promotes or disseminates materials that affirm homosexuality.

If someone knows of the very existence of a gay person and doesn’t report it to the authorities within 24 hours of being told, he or she could face a jail term.

Several organisations have spoken out against the Bill, both Christian and nonreligious. Among the Christian groups is the British think tank Ekklesia, whose associate director Symon Hill writes on the issue in this issue of G&LH.

Symon Hill
of Ekklesia

Since Hill’s article first appeared in a magazine called The Samosa, it has been reported that Rowan Williams has been in talks with the Anglican Church in Uganda, and has since – in an interview with Britain’s Daily Telegraph, called the Bill a thing of “shocking severity”, adding that he cannot see how it can be supported by any Anglican “who is committed to what the [Anglican] Communion has said in recent decades”.

Lambeth Palace initially defended his silence on the issue, saying, “It has been made clear to us, as indeed to others, that attempts to publicly influence either the local church or political opinion in Uganda would be divisive and counterproductive.

“Our contacts, at both national and diocesan level, with the local church will therefore remain intensive but private.”

One has to ask why Christians who so often cite the “love thy neighbour” principle feel the need to hold secret talks, as Williams did, with prelates in Uganda instead of simply condemning Bahati and his evil measure from the very beginning, when the world was clamouring for Williams to do so. Then would have been the time for getting down to some talking, once he had condemned the measure for the evil it is. One cannot help but ask why there needs to be any equivocation over speaking out.

The think tank Ekklesia believes silence was the wrong course. Spokesman Jonathan Bartley suggested the silence was more to do with current battles over homosexuality.

Petition

“We still think [Williams] should publicly speak out,” he told Pink News before Williams’s statement. “The statement [on his silence] from Lambeth Palace doesn’t hold a lot of weight.

“The gay Christians in Uganda are asking for him to speak out publicly; the gay Christians in this country are asking him to; and, as our petition shows, the clergy are asking him to speak out.”

The Pink Triangle Trust were among the first to criticise the Bill and wrote a letter of protest to Joan Rwabyomere, the Ugandan High Commissioner in the UK:

We are writing to you to express our great concern and dismay at the proposed anti-gay legislation in Uganda.

As you will be aware, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 was recently tabled before the Parliament of Uganda. The Bill’s provisions are draconian and among them are:

Any person alleged to be homosexual would be at risk of life imprisonment or in some circumstances the death penalty.

Any parent who does not denounce their lesbian daughter or gay son to the authorities would face very heavy fines or three years in prison.

Any teacher who does not report a lesbian or gay pupil to the authorities within 24 hours would face the same penalties.

Any landlord or landlady who happens to give housing to a suspected homosexual would risk 7 years of imprisonment.

Similarly, the Bill threatens to punish or ruin the reputation of anyone who works with the gay or lesbian population, such as medical doctors working on HIV/AIDS, civil society leaders active in the fields of sexual and reproductive health, hence further undermining public health efforts to combat the spread of HIV.

All of the offences covered by the Bill as drafted can be applied to a Ugandan citizen who allegedly commits them – even outside Uganda!

The existing law has already been employed in an arbitrary way, and the new Bill will greatly exacerbate that effect. There is a continued increase in campaigns of violence and unwarranted arrests of homosexuals.

We regard this sort of bigoted homophobia as a gross violation of the human rights of a sizeable minority of the Ugandan population and quite contrary to civilised humanitarian norms.

Please bring our concerns to the attention of the authorities in Uganda.

George Broadhead, secretary of the PTT, commented, “In March this year, American Christians travelled to Uganda for a conference that pledged to ‘wipe out’ homosexuality. Seven months later, a draconian Bill has been introduced that pledges to make good on this threat.

“This witch hunt has all the hallmarks of leading American Christian Evangelicals. The Family Life Network, one of America’s most powerful Christian Evangelical organisation’s, seems to have converted Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni to its antigay brand of Christianity, and this is the impetus behind the antigay crackdown.”

Catholics in disgrace

The other big story has been the Murphy Report (under Judge Yvonne Murphy) in the Dublin Archdiocese, which came some months after the Ryan Report into yet more disturbing reports of abuse against vulnerable young people in Catholic-run homes in the Republic of Ireland.

We learn this month that religious orders in Ireland are to hand over almost €500 million (about £455 million) in total to compensate victims of the abuse).

The Sisters of Mercy alone have revealed that they are handing over more than €20 million (about £18.2 million) in cash and €107.5 million (about £98 million) in property.

In the three-year Ryan Report, investigators looked at a sampling of 46 priests with complaints from 320 children between 1975 and 2004. Of the 46, only 11 were ever prosecuted, and some died without ever facing accusations.

The Ryan Commission also received information about complaints and suspicions of child sexual abuse by 172 named priests. It concluded that 102 of those priests were most likely serious sexual abusers.

Justice Seán Ryan, who headed
the commission into priestly sex abuse

The Murphy Report came some months after Ryan, which looked specifically at abuse in homes run by Catholic religious orders. Murphy was an independent report commissioned by the Irish government to investigate the way in which the church dealt with allegations of sexual abuse of children by priests over the period 1975 to 2004. It concluded that:

the Dublin Archdiocese’s preoccupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid-1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities. The Archdiocese did not implement its own canon law rules and did its best to avoid any application of the law of the State”.

The 720-page report said that it has “no doubt that clerical child sexual abuse was covered up” from January 1975 to May 2004.

What is disquieting is the way the secular authorities have allowed the Catholic Church to do its own investigations. In many of the abuse cases, it’s been reported, the Irish police passed authority to the church so it could carry out its own internal investigations. Archbishops knew about the abuses but did virtually nothing because they put the church’s image above justice for the victims.

You can read the Murphy Report here (the links on that web page are to PDFs). See also Wikipedia’s entry on the Ryan Report here.

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