ENGLAND: Archbishop of York calls proposed Ugandan law 'victimizing'
Episcopal News Service. January 4, 2010 [010410-05]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
Archbishop of York John Sentamu, a native of Uganda, recently said that proposed changes to that country's anti-homosexuality laws victimize and diminish people.
In a Dec. 24 interview on the British Broadcasting Corp.'s Radio 4 Today program, Sentamu said, "I am opposed totally to the death penalty. I am also quite not happy when you describe people with the kind of language you find in this Private Member's Bill, which seems also not only victimising but diminishment of individuals."
The Ugandan Parliament is considering a bill proposed by one of its members (David Bahati), rather than the government, that would introduce the death penalty for people who violate portions of that country's anti-homosexuality laws. Recent reports have speculated that politicians might be bowing to public pressure and reconsidering the severity of punishments proposed in the legislation.
Sentamu, who was born into Uganda's Buffalo clan, practiced law in Uganda before he came to the United Kingdom in 1974, according to his official biography. He was ordained in 1979 and became Archbishop of York in 2005. The Archbishop of York is also the primate or head of the Church of England and provides support to the Archbishop of Canterbury. He is one of the presidents of the General Synod, the Church of England's main governing body, and the Archbishop's Council.
He and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams are seen as the leading spokesmen of the Church of England. Both had been criticized recently for not speaking out sooner about the proposed legislation.
Williams first spoke publicly about the bill Dec. 14 in the context of a broader interview with the Telegraph newspaper. He said the proposed changes in the law were "of shocking severity" and said he could not "see how it could be supported by any Anglican who is committed to what the communion has said in recent decades."
Homosexuality in the African nation currently carries a penalty of up to life imprisonment. If passed, the proposed bill would introduce the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality," which includes assault against people under the age of 18 and those with disabilities.
Opponents fear that people, including family members and clergy, who support and advise homosexual people could be prosecuted and punished under the proposed law. The law would give Ugandan courts jurisdiction over its citizens who violate the law "partly outside or partly in Uganda."
Williams added in his comments to the Telegraph that "apart from invoking the death penalty, [the proposed bill] makes pastoral care impossible -- it seeks to turn pastors into informers." He also noted that while the Anglican Church in Uganda opposes the death penalty, its archbishop, Henry Orombi, has not taken a position on the proposed changes to the law.
Sentamu told the BBC that assistant bishop of Kampala Zac Niringie, who is also an assistant to Orombi, "is now carrying out an assessment and they will be making their responses to this particular bill."
He said that neither Williams or he "haven't actually come out publicly to say anything is not because we don't want to say anything, because the position is very clear, but rather … We were trying to help, and we are trying actually to listen, and sometimes people are not understood that actually the law in Uganda at the moment without this bill does exactly the same thing and what this bill has done."
Sentamu said "what we need is greater understanding of the context" and added that he was certain that the Church of Uganda "is committed to the pastoral care" promised to homosexual persons by the primates of the Anglican Communion in their 2005 Dromantine Communiqué.
The Archbishop of York said that the Uganda church "is also committed to the listening process to the experience of homosexual people, and people may have very clear, what I may call traditional views about sexuality, but we as a communion are actually committed to listening to the experience of homosexual people."
"You can't do that on one hand and then have language which in many ways seems to suggest that all these people are not children of God," Sentamu added. "I mean, they are valued by God, they deserve the best we can give in pastoral care and friendship and I'm quite sure that the response the Church of Uganda will make in due course will have to take account of all these realities."
In late November, Bishop Joseph Abura of of the Ugandan Diocese of Karamoja wrote an opinion piece in which he said that those who are "sick" from homosexuality "have been overwhelmed by it."
"It should have antidotes to correct it. Indeed, we understand them and pray for healing upon them. The world over should be on the search for drugs or vaccines to treat and prevent it but not to make it acceptable," he wrote, adding that Africans must "save" their continent and resist those who would "coerce African parliaments like the Ugandan one to condone and legitimize the vice."