Accept and respect gays, says Catholic priest

Ndorwa West MP David Bahati’s proposed anti-gay law has given rise to serious discussions on whether it will not be a gross violation of human rights in legalising murder or criminalisation of citizens merely for being who they are. Ethics and Integrity Minister Dr Nsaba Buturo is said to have held multiple press conferences telling reporters that the law has the government’s support. He is further reported to have said bluntly that homosexuals can forget human rights (cf. Daily Monitor, Wednesday December 16).

Whereas religious leaders have been generally less vocal on problems affecting the majority of Ugandans like excessive inequality in the allocation of jobs, excessive misuse of public funds for self enrichment, unjust treatment of some regions and excessive corruption in all government sectors, which have rendered our leadership so rotten that a hyena dead for 10 days smells better; Catholic Church leaders, while not condoning homosexuality, have rendered the new proposed anti-gay law unnecessary. It is too brutal!

Having heard all that, I as a trained Catholic theologian would like to offer some reflection on this controversial topic. Essential to the Christian faith is that the principle source of revelation is the Bible. Biblically, male and female were created for a dual purpose conjugal and procreative for the continuous of the human species. Since homosexuality refers to relations between men or women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction towards persons of the same sex, it renders itself intrinsically disordered. Homosexual activities, while they may claim to be conjugal, fail to fulfill the procreative law and therefore under no circumstances can they be approved.

However, we also believe that God alone has the absolute knowledge of the natural law and so what we may condemn as unnatural may be one of those areas God may wish to show his power over what we regard as the laws of nature. This is why Jesus, on being asked whether the man born blind was a result of his parents’ or own sin, responded that it was done to show God’s supernatural power of healing. In my view, there are a good number of people born in a manner we would call abnormal, like children born with six fingers, Mongoloids or any other part of the body abnormally or unnaturally positioned in a strange way. A young boy born with six fingers was constantly teased by his peers who said “give me six!”

In the same way, every sign of unjust discrimination of homos should be avoided. They must be respected and accepted with compassion and sensitivity. They are all creatures of God! Why they are this way is not for us to ask. I would say this is a preferential will of God which is above human understanding and simply has to be accepted.

As creatures of God, these people have as much right to live as any of us. Their condition should be treated with sympathy and compassion. Therefore our anti-gay bill would constitute unjust discrimination. Unfortunately, some of our religious leaders, especially Anglicans, seem to condemn rather than approach this problem from a Christian perspective of love and sympathy. They have used the Bible as a book containing information which they can refer to, to justify their attack on homosexuals. Picking bits of the Bible to justify one’s point is a wrong approach. Homosexuality is a sin just like adultery, fornication, etc. Why capitalise on it and not adultery?

I know there are those who will emotionally jump to the conclusion that I condone homosexual activities. The Bible is not a textbook. It is understood by interpretation. To quote the Bible does not give credence to the “quoter”. I therefore appeal to our law makers to suspend their motions on this topic and be sympathetic to those who have this disorderedness not because of what they did but because like any other disorderedness, they too may not be blamed. They have as much right to live like any of us who claim to be perfectly created.

— Rev Fr Lawrence Kanyike
Makerere University