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Lutherans Concerned / North America condemns in the strongest terms the Anti-Homosexuality Bill currently under consideration by the Ugandan government and calls on the ELCA to publicly oppose the legislation as well.
While the Ugandan government already treats LGBT people as criminals, this legislation is tantamount to declaring life-threatening "open season" on LGBT people and anyone else conveniently accused of being LGBT. The proposed legislation also makes it a criminal offense to advocate for LGBT people, or to write anything about homosexuals or homosexuality that sounds positive and supportive. The bill provides that "a victim of homosexuality shall not be penalized for any crime committed as a direct result of his or her involvement in homosexuality." This is an open invitation to violence and murder. The bill provides for anonymity of the "victims"/accusers of homosexuality, with penalties for revealing anything in the media about who the accuser is. The bill also provides for closed trials, no media, whenever the court thinks it is appropriate.
LC/NA calls on the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) to end its strange silence on this outrage and to condemn this legislation in no uncertain terms. It should not be possible that a Christian church which includes and welcomes its LGBT members and pastors could remain so silent.
LC/NA Executive Director, Emily Eastwood, said, "Prior to the 2009 Churchwide Assembly, the ELCA opposed violence and discrimination in society against LBGT people. In 2008 the ELCA supported the Hate Crimes Bill and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act with official letters to the members of the House and Senate. It is frankly astonishing that since the August passage of a social statement which is abundantly clear on issues of violence and employment, the ELCA has withheld its support of both bills and its condemnation of the proposed horrific legislation coming forward in Uganda. The White House, the Secretary of State, the Vatican, the World Council of Churches, the Canadian Prime Minister and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada as well as numerous other governments, denominations and organizations including LC/NA have denounced the Ugandan legislation. The ELCA social statement provides the platform and permission for the ELCA to speak on these issues, and speak, it must. In this case, especially, our silence will most assuredly equal the imprisonment or death of LGBT people and their allies in Uganda and beyond.
"LC/NA was a signer of the ecumenical statement against the Ugandan legislation presented at the United Nations and sent to Uganda Minister of State of Ethics and Integrity Dr James Nsaba Buturo expressing deep concern about allegations in Uganda 'wrongly associating sexual minorities and human rights defenders with sexual abuse of people.' The more than 300 organizations and leaders signatory to the letter 'hold that all people, of all sexual orientations, are created in the image of God and are loved by God.' And, 'further [they] believe that the responsibility incumbent upon people of faith and good will across the globe is to respond to hate with compassion, charity, and love.'
"Despite our best efforts at inquiry, education and direct request, the ELCA has continued to choose silence."
The full text of the Ugandan bill can be seen on our blog.
What can we do?
Email or call your synodical bishop. For those of you in Canada
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with your thanks. For those members of the ELCA request that the bishops take up this issue and ask that the ELCA make an official response condemning the legislation. The bishops meet next in their annual academy retreat the first week of January.
Join us in praying for the LGBT people in Uganda, for the aid workers who support and treat those among them who are ill, and for the courageous heterosexual people who rise to support, welcome and affirm them. They are all at lethal risk.
Write to the Ugandan ambassador, His Excellency Professor Perezi K. Kamunanwire, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, 5611 16th Street NW, Washington, DC 20011. Tell him you are dismayed at the backward step on human rights his country is about to take.
Contact your U.S. Representative and Senators to tell them of your disgust and ask them to voice opposition publicly. Ask them to question continued governmental and commercial ties to a country that would have such a law.
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, Executive Director of the ELCA Unit for Church in Society, asking what the ELCA's public stance is on the criminalization of people for being LGBT, calling on the Presiding Bishop to speak out plainly and strongly in opposition.
Contact the White House to ask the President to be crystal clear in his remarks to the coming Ecumenical National Prayer Breakfast that criminalizing LGBT people is unacceptable and a big step backwards for any nation that calls itself civilized. |
