A Convenient Disconnect

David Kato, a gay Ugandan described as "the most out" gay Ugandan and the country's leading gay rights crusader, was beaten to death on Wednesday with a hammer at his home outside Kampala. The Ugandan police have said that his death was not prompted by his campaign on behalf of homosexuals, but was a robbery. Nor did it anything to do with "a Kampala tabloid newspaper article, which ran an angry diatribe identifying 100 individuals it described as "Uganda's top homos," accompanied by a front page picture of Mr. Kato and a banner saying, "Hang Them."

It is still difficult to me to imagine, in the year 2011, that a gay person can be killed for just being open about who he/she is anywhere in the world. It certainly makes me appreciate the freedom I have in this country to be who I am. But, it continues to trouble me that American evangelicals--proclaiming to do God's work--can be either so naive as to underestimate the homophobia in Uganda (and other countries), or so reckless with regard to human life unless, of course, that life is their own. When queried about it, one of the American evangelicals, Don Schmierer, was quoted as saying "I don't feel I had anything to do with that. I don't spread hate."

Hmmmm. I don't spread hate. I guess the evangelicals were not spreading hate when, in March 2009, they traveled to Uganda to discuss what they called "the gay agenda--that whole hidden and dark agenda," and to assert that gay men often sodomized teenage boys. No, that wouldn't incite any ill feelings towards gay men in a country that is utterly family-centric. No, siree, Bob. A Zambian minister, the Rev. Kapya Kaoma, who attended the antigay meetings the American evangelicals held was quoted as saying: "They didn't know that when you speak about destroying the family to Africans, the response is a genocide. When you speak like that, you invite the wrath."

Just to be clear, homosexual acts in Uganda are illegal with punishments up to 14 years in prison. And a bill currently before the Ugandan Parliament "would impose life imprisonment for consenting adults who have gay sex, and the death penalty for people with H.I.V., for 'serial' homosexuals, and those who have sex with children younger than 18." So there already existed a hostile anti-gay atmosphere in Uganda just lying in wait of the "good news" brought by the American evangelicals.