Why I, As a Ugandan Christian, Am Not [Just] Worried About the "Gay Agenda."
April, 25, 2023
In Matthew 7:5, Matthew writes out one of Jesus’ famous and oft-quoted passages on the subject of hypocrisy. “First take the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” To get straight to the point of this article, I believe that homosexuality is a “speck” in a sea of “beams” when it comes to the Ugandan sexual ethic vis-à-vis the Christian sexual ethic. It therefore should not be getting the press that it is getting in our Christian community today. When it comes to Christian sexuality, God demands more from us than fashionable causes with empty rhetoric about what sexuality should/shouldn’t be.
Since Pastor Martin Ssempa’s graphic presentation went viral in the early 2010s, Homosexuality has been a lingering topic in Ugandan politics in general and in Christian circles in particular. Few can forget how, with sensational words, he detailed obscenities that he claimed to be descriptors of homosexual behaviour and culture. With these words, he set the stage for the outrage, fear, and disgust that has surrounded this topic in the communal memory of Ugandans for decades.
It is true that the radical claims of some grand “Gay Agenda” are not entirely lacking in a basis. I’ve personally heard stories of available funds for artists and musicians willing to align with this philosophy, the tales of asylum requests based on homophobia seem looked upon with patronizing concern. However, because of a magnification of this perceived agenda, there’s arisen somewhat of a witch-hunt in our society for the “Gay-agenda.” From logos to legislation, to the God-given colors of the rainbow painted on a children’s playground, we live in absolute terror of this new colonization of our perceived conservative morals with everyone calling out, “Look! Here it is, or there it is.” This is exactly where the devil wants us to be.
Africans understand fear. As a culture often defined by a Power-fear matrix (see the 3D Gospel), we either desire to have the power to make others fear us, or we fear the power others could have over us. The devil is well acquainted with this and uses this weakness of African Christians against us all the time, and we, in our ignorance, give him both the power and the space to do so.
CS Lewis’s famous book, The Screwtape Letters brings this strategy out well. He writes, “Tortured fear and stupid confidence are both desirable states of mind [for Satan].” It’s in these areas of “tortured fear” and “stupid confidence” that I often find, as Ugandan Christians, we fail in our discussion of this topic. First, fear that the “gay agenda” is out to get us, and second, the converse of that: confidence that somehow, compared to the back-sliding West that propagates homosexuality, we have the moral high ground when it comes to a biblical view of sex.
The truth is that the Bible’s view of sexuality is a high one and one that we as Ugandans are depressingly far from meeting - even in our church pews.
Oh, how wrong we are on both these accounts. The truth is that the Bible’s view of sexuality is a high one and one that we as Ugandans are depressingly far from meeting – even in our church pews. Who can forget scandal after scandal concerning Ugandan Church leaders who, according to 1st Timothy 3, are to be firstly, above reproach, then (the passage continues as if to explain this above-reproach-ness) husband of one wife? In our “Christian” communities, you hear the defense of Pastors caught in infidelity because of weak arguments such as the wife not “putting out.” As though Christianity somehow permits men to give up their fundamental moral and spiritual foundations in the pursuit of sexual gratification.
On the other end of the spectrum, a recent news article spoke of rape on the rise in Uganda, and teenage pregnancy reaching epidemic levels. Sexual harassment in the workplace has become so normalised that in some places it is included in office orientations (as a fact-of-life type situation rather than a prohibited one). Also, consider that a recent Global Youth Alliance report stated that “Teens in Africa are among some of the most likely in the world to say they have recently used pornography.” In the world.
Estimates put the percentage of the LGBT+ population in the world at about 5% of the global population[1]. Assuming similar (though more likely lower) proportions for Uganda, it must be said that before we start on the speck of Homosexuality, we must first deal with the absolute truckload of logs of polygamy, pornography, adultery, misogyny, rape, incest, paternal abandonment, masturbation, prostitution, pedophilia, and apathy from law enforcers and communities alike. Simply put, we have so many bigger problems than homosexuality when it comes to living Christianly with respect to sex in this country that it almost feels ridiculous to focus national energy on this particular issue.
If your child walks into your home having absolutely trashed their best clothes rolling in the mud and grass, and now they have a half-cup of milk they’ve spilled down their shirt, would you be reasonable to put all your focus on that half-cup of milk? Raging and chastising them about wasting their clothes by pouring milk on them? You’d be considered foolish even if it were a whole liter of brightly colored strawberry milk. It would seem that your focus is not on the cleanliness of their clothes at all but on some absurd obsession with spilled milk.
Do not forget, dear Christian, that God is not foolish. He wants clean clothes, be they dirtied by milk or the mud of the earth, his standard is perfection (Matthew 5:48). He calls us to it and it’s our job as the salt of the earth, to go where the salt is most needed and, to be quite frank, in our culture, the gay-agenda, doesn’t even feature in our culturally acceptable lapses of moral judgment. Indeed, it is a lapse of judgment that makes us focus on the speck rather than the log.
At the end of all this, however, we must never forget that there is grace enough for everyone- from the accuser and witch hunter to the complacent Christian, to the Christian in both heterosexual and homosexual sin. For the person that maintains that the “gay agenda” is the chief of all vices in Uganda, despite all the great sexual sins that darken our holiness; if you assume that the pits of hell burn hotter for “the gays”, please know that there are same-sex attracted people who you shall find in heaven because, despite their heart and body’s inclinations, they did not bow the knee to sin. Also know too, that there will be many vehement opponents of many agendas who, because they were ignorant of their own chief sins, never made it into heaven at all.
