Gug worries about his safety, Red Pepper claims Swedish Group pours billions into gay Ugandan groups

Gug has sent me scans of an article printed today in Red Pepper, a tabloid daily newspaper which publishes mostly highly sensationalized stories. The paper was the one used previously to out people. Its owners have connections to the government (it is owned by President’s brother) and it is used by the government to break stories that the other papers will not touch. It is very popular, said to be second only to New Vision, the government owned daily.

Gug has some concern that his jealously guarded anonymity may soon be broken. He is in communication with Pastor Martin Ssempa, the leader of the anti-homosexuality Christian campaign. The conservatives believe that his loss of anonymity will hurt him a great deal, which of course it will. But he thinks it might backfire because once he doesn’t have to hide, he will be free and open to campaign against the Bill in what has become a war, and they may be unpleasantly surprised. He is now more angry and mad than scared, but once exposed he will have more to fear from anonymous other people, those who feel compelled to detest himas an agent of the devil, as Ssempa preaches.

The article from Red Pepper reveals the prejudice against homosexuality which is only too familiar, and the willingness to mix fact with fabrication. If RFSL, the Swedish group named in the report, has indeed poured billions into supporting LGBT Ugandans, then it will be easy to trace, given the transparency of European organizations. Somehow, I doubt that RFSL has sent any money to Uganda, but let’s not worry about such details affecting the truth of LGBT African lives, shall we?

Here’s the article:

Red Pepper, Wednesday December 30, 2009-12-30
City Tycoons who Bankroll Ugandan Homos Revealed
By Stanley Ndawula


As the controversy surrounding David Bahati’s Anti-Homo Bill rages, Red Pepper has landed on a list of city tycoons and professionals who dig deep into their wallets to have the stinking vice lively maintained in Ugandan society.

Ndorwa West Member of Parliament Bahati’s Private Member’s Bill on Homosexuality seeks tough penalties for anal sex promoters. We have landed on several documents that indicate how lavishly the homos are facilitated to keep their vice alive.

Promoters of gay activities do this by recruiting new members, and the recruiters are normally self-confessed homos, documents reveal.

These are referred to as coordinators, who pocket a staggering Shs1.5m [about £12,500] as a monthly net salary.


Organisations such as LGBT (Lesbians, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) and a Swedish federation known as RFSL (Riksforbundet for homosexuaellas, bisexuallas och transpersoners rattigheter), pour billions of money into the country to facilitate several of these homo activities.

Also, loaded Ugandans clandestinely facilitate the cause especially when the foreign funding has not yet arrived. Some of these, we have ably established, include an assistant law lecturer at Makerere University. He normally, together with two other dons, hangs out at Tickles Bar on Gaddafi Road, formerly Makerere Hill Road.

The fellows are said to be highly funded individually. Hence, they are well position to facilitate the coordinators, also known as foot soldiers.

Now, there is a manager who works with Bata Shoe factory. He is said to have ready dime for the foot soldiers that include one Pepe, Kalende and Mukasa, all self-confessed gays.

Other highly loaded tycoons are an Italian, one Pietero who hangs out at Maama Mia and Sarah, a renowned patron at Tickles Bar. Others include Paul, a high-profile city doctor who works with a prominent medical facility. He normally hangs out T Mateo’s on Parliamentary Avenue every Friday, in company of his ‘wife’, Robert, a handsome Rwandese guy.

Paul, on top of using his personal money to keep the vice going, facilitates in the several ‘workshops’ organised for homos, and outs documentary materials that advocate for gay activities in general.

Sam, another loaded city corporate image, works with one of the giant communications houses around the city. He is so much into financing it that he at one time single handedly facilitated coordinators to a workshop in Nairobi.

God and Kar are city tycoons who clandestinely facilitate any homo cause in the country.

There is a city businessman on Nasser Road known in the gay fraternity as one with a huge whopper that has terrorised several youths’ bums. “He doesn’t have a particular partner but uses his money to secure a f**k. He is respected in the gay community because of his generosity towards various activities,” our insider source revealed last night.

The list acknowledges the support of self-confessed sympathisers such as Makerere University don Sylvia Tamale, her husband Prof. Joe Oloka Onyango, and a number of journalists and writers who covertly help to promote the vice in the media. These include Andre, Angela and Charles.

When contacted with our list for confirmation, Paul Kagaba, the estranged Gay Uganda spokesperson burst into long laughter. He said our list of gay sponsors was just the tip of the iceberg.

He, however, confirmed the list, promising to fully furnish us with more shocking revelations. “You caught me at a short notice and this is a very serious issue which requires enough preparation and adequate prayers,” he told this reporter at the Lugogo Shoprite-based Good African Coffee Restaurant on Thursday.

Kagaba said the group we listed facilitates several causes including a long annual retreat at a prominent Priest’s home in Gayaza.

“From December 22nd to January 1st, there is always a retreat at .... in Gayaza and this is when people show their financial might,” Kagaba revealed.

Pastor Martin Ssempa, the renowned anti-gay activist and now chairman of the Pastors’ crusade to support the ‘Bahati Bill’, said fighting homosexuality in Uganda was a very challenging task since the vice had several, well placed sympathisers.

“It is you people (Red Pepper) who recently revealed that two ministers had pocketed giood dime to support homos. True, we are fighting a high-profile and moneyed people but this is a Godly battle we are fighting,” Ssempa stated.

He named Sweden as one of the main foreign sponsors of homo activities in Uganda, saying they channel their sponsorship through local organisations. Such organisations include Icebreakers Uganda, Spectrum Uganda Initiatives, and Freedom and Roam Uganda (FARUG).

Others are Integrated Fellowship Uganda (Integrity), Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), Frank and Candy Initiative, Kuchus Living With HIV/AIDS and, Queer Youth Uganda (QYU). Ssempa further said that the main reason Ndorwa West Member of Parliament David Bahati’s Private Bill is feared is that the mentioned people and organisations will be culprits. He revealed that investigations were underway to ascertain allegations that several politicians and senior citizens were under lobby to frustrate the Bahati Bill.
Watch this space.

Bishop Christopher Ssenyonjo denies newspaper report of $20million grant

The Rt Revd Christopher Senyonjo (second from left in the photo above), President of Integrity Uganda and retired Anglican bishop of the diocese of West Buganda has emailed me denying the allegation reported in the Monitor newspaper that Integrity Uganda is one of the groups benefiting from a $20million grant to promote homosexuality. Bishop Christopher writes:

Dear Rev. Coward

It is true that the Minister of Ethics in Uganda just before Christmas it was reported by Monitor News Paper that he said that Integrity Uganda and GAYUGA were to receive $20 million to promote the cause. This is of course absolutely untrue.
Best regards.

Bishop Christopher Ssenyonjo

Bishop Christopher was a member of our team at the Lambeth Conference in 2008, working alongside Inclusive Church, Changing Attitude and Integrity. He was excommunicated by Archbishop Henry Orombi on 24 March 2006 as a result of his support for LGTB people and his commitment to the Integrity group.

Gug, the Gay Ugandan blogger, was another of the three accused of receiving money, which he has totally refuted on his blog.

Transcript of John Humphries' interview with the Archbishop of York about the Uganda Bill

John Humphries interviewed the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, on the Today programme this morning about the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill. This is my transcript of what he said:

“I think that the context in which this whole bill is coming, which is a private member’s bill not a Government Bill, it’s now going through the Committee stage and they have invited everybody who’s got interested to make some kind of comment and it shall return probably back to Parliament in February next year. My feeling is that in order to understand what is all behind all of this is that unfortunately, or whatever one wants to say, the Penal Code, Chapter 20, Section 145, which dates back to the time when England had similar legislation, that is still what they call unnatural offences, and anybody who commits them at the moment is liable to imprisonment for life. But also that penal code, in cases of rape as what they call aggravated sexuality, in cases of rape, you also face a death penalty, if you have got sex with a girl under the age of 18, you are liable again to suffer death. So this particular high, extreme sentencing already exists. Now what they have done in cases of homosexuality in this particular Bill, they are talking about aggravated in terms of again, a girl of eighteen, somebody living with HIV, a guardian or a parent, and the trouble is, it tends to confuse all of homosexual relationships with what you call aggravated stuff and that’s the problem”

What’s your general moral reaction to this kind of approach?

“I want to go back to the Dromantine Communiqué in 2004 by the Primates of the Anglican Communion where we said, we wish to make it clear that our discussion and assessment of moral appropriateness of specific behaviours; we continue unreservedly to be committed to the pastoral care and support of homosexual people;the victimisation or diminishment of human beings whose affections happen to be ordered towards people of the same sex is anathema to us. We assure homosexual people that they are children of God, loved and regarded by him and deserving the best we can give of pastoral care and friendship."

So it is anathema to you?

“I think when you begin ... 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.”

Well, they are being demonised in effect.

“Yes, I think that is not a very helpful way, but having said that, already the law in Uganda is where we were before the 1967 Act.”

Well absolutely. There’s a question about what those people who are affiliated to the Anglican Communion in Uganda feel about this and what they can do about it. There’s been a great deal of publicity in recent years about the difference between the views, generally speaking, of the Church of England, and the views of many people in the African Churches in the Anglican Communion. How concerned are you about that huge gulf which seems to exist?

“Well, I am absolutely convinced that Dr Zac Niringie, the assistant bishop of Kampala, assistant to Archbishop of Uganda, is now carrying out an assessment and they will be making their responses to this particular Bill. The gap can actually grow when is seems as though we are have a dialogue of the deaf, and the reason why Canterbury and I 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 ..”

Because you were trying to help?

“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....”

So in other words in your view it’s bad enough already even without this.

“
Without this, and therefore it seems to me that what we need is greater understanding of the context and I’m absolutely committed that the Church of Uganda, and I can only speak about the Church of Uganda, is committed to the pastoral care which is in the Dromantine Communiqué, 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. 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.”

Conservative Christian desperation 2: In the UK

The Christian Institute

The Christian Institute reports that Michael Foster MP, a Government equalities minister, when asked whether the Equality Bill would lead to legal action between churches and atheists, admitted that churches should be “lining up” lawyers to defend themselves against secular legal challenges. Both sides “need to be lining up (their lawyers) by now,” he said, adding: “The secularists should have the right to challenge the church and if the church’s argument is good enough – which I believe it is – then the church should win through.”

The Christian Institute claims that the Equality Bill will dramatically shrink the liberty of churches to insist their staff’s conduct is in accordance with the Bible’s teaching on sexual behavior and will lead to legal action against the church. A Christian Institute report claims to reveal the extent to which Christians are being marginalised by equality and diversity laws which leave them the first to be punished and the last to be protected.

The Christian Institute is a self-appointed conservative voice on these issues. Changing Attitude is an alternative Christian voice, and we disagree. We value the legal changes being made by the Government which will afford greater protection to LGBT Christians, protecting us from abusive language and behavior towards our sexuality and from abusive uses of the Bible and so-called ‘orthodox’ Christian teaching.

LifeSite News

Hilary White writing for LifeSite News adds to the hysteria by reporting that Christians in the UK are warning that the government’s equality legislation will drive Christian believers out of public life. Some Christians, Hilary, a minority who are homophobic and anti-gay equality fear this. Many other Christians will feel liberated by the legislation and be more able to participate in public – and church – life.

I hate the arrogance of the way UK conservative Christians report their views as being held by all Christians as much as I hate the way in which some African Christians lie so easily. People only need to lie and distort the truth when they feel threatened. Conservatives are clearly feeling very threatened indeed. Do they have a case? Are all Christians disturbed by the proposed legislation and joining a campaign including all Christians? No. It is the prejudice of a small minority of conservative Christians that is under threat.

Conservative Christian desperation 1: In Uganda

The Daily Monitor in Uganda has a headline today about the reports that President Museveni has assured American authorities that he will veto Ndorwa West MP David Bahati’s proposed anti-gay law. The online newspaper DC Agenda reported on December 19 that Mr Museveni had assured the US State Department of his willingness to block the Bill.

The newspaper reported: “Jon Tollefson, a State Department spokesperson, told DC Agenda that Mr Museveni has pledged on several occasions to the top US diplomat engaged in Africa that he would stop progress on the anti-gay bill,” and “Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson received this assurance from Museveni on Oct. 24 during an in-person meeting with the president in Uganda and again during a phone conversation with Museveni on Dec. 4, Tollefson said.”

Yesterday Mr Museveni’s spokesman, Mr Tamale Mirundi, said he was not aware the President had spoken to Mr Carson: “But if it was a discussion between two elders about a serious matter, then it should be kept private.”

According to DC Agenda, Mr Tollefson said when the Bill started gaining international attention, Mr Carson on Dec. 4 contacted Mr Museveni by phone “to reiterate US concerns, and the president again expressed his commitment to stop the Bill from becoming law”. “So that being said, the assistant secretary is expecting the President to live up to that commitment and … he expects President Museveni to live up to his reputation as a leader in the HIV/AIDS struggle,” Mr Tollefson was quoted as saying.

The Daily Monitor continues its report with the news that yesterday the Ethics Minister Nsaba Buturo “named three civil society organisations allegedly promoting homosexuality activities in Uganda. He said Sexual Minorities Uganda, Integrity Uganda and Gay Uganda had been given $20m to promote the practice.”

Gug, the gay Ugandan blogger, is not a civil society organisation but a lone individual with the courage and determination to reporting in detail on the Bill from inside Uganda. He doesn’t think Museveni is happy that that particular cat is out of the bag. Not surprisingly, he thinks the most amusing, the most flabbergasting and hilarious piece of news comes at the end of the article, the news about him being the recipient of a share of $20m.

In his blog today, he sets out to correct some of the misinformation. He, gayuganda, is a single human being. He is not a group, or a family, or a cabal or whatever. He is one human being, a Ugandan, living, working in Uganda, who happens to be gay. He is certainly not a Civil Society Organisation.

In his dreams, he’d like a share of $20million. He’d settle for much, much less! Christmas is here, and the bills are not completely paid. Hi lover wants more than he can give him and if he had just a fraction of that total, he’d would be really, really happy.

Why, asks gug, in the name of all that is holy and true, why does the Honourable Minister of Ethics & Integrity, Dr. Nsaba-Buturo tell a LIE like that, of a small Ugandan guy like me? He says he has been in contact with him for some time, sending him helpful updates. So he immediately sent Buturo a note saying that he was really disturbed by the lying Christians of Uganda.

Martin Ssempa also mentioned GayUganda as one of the organisations that spread homosexuality in Uganda in his letter posted on Warren Throckmorton’s blog. Martin knows perfectly well that gug is just one single, ordinary human being, but chose to lie again.

In a final flourish, gug says that Martin Ssempa once accused him of conspiring with some friends to kill him and Nsaba-Buturo.

Why do Christians and politicians in Africa need to lie to try about those whom they claim at one moment, don’t exist, or are creations of western influence, or are an insignificant minority? I know this is another dimension of “African culture” which has to be accepted, the ease with which stories can be invented and lies told by those who claim the moral, Christian high ground. I hate it. And I hate the way western conservatives support, fuel and fund those who live with a false Christian morality and witness.

Will Museveni kill the Bill?

What happens when Christians transition from the privileged to the equal and ordinary

‘Sapphire’, a writer living in Plymouth, has commented on the post " Christian Institute claims Christians are being marginalised by equality and diversity laws" His comments deserve a wider viewing and therefore a blog of their own. He writes:

The whole point of living in a society that is governed by rule of law is that individuals and groups give up some of their freedom in order to be protected from the results of unfettered action by all. Thomas Hobbes wrote "Leviathan" explaining just that concept noting that life otherwise would be "nasty, brutish and short."

The problem that Christians have is in making the transition from the privileged to the ordinary. Not so long ago the church could say pretty much what it liked about individuals and whole classes of people because it held the moral high ground. People, even if they didn't actually believe, nevertheless looked to the church for moral leadership.

That's changed. The church is only one among many claiming to have the answer to our moral dilemmas. In fact the church doesn't even have a single voice any more. There are many competing perspectives within Christianity. There are different views on what the Bible says and even on what it is.

Some Christians think they are marginalized. Perhaps they are but as Merseymike commented on the same blog, they have marginalized themselves if they think they still live in the world of privilege.

[Mike commented that what is notable is that it is only religious extremists who are in the least bothered about these laws - for everyone else they have caused no problem at all.]

Equality laws are tricky things and best avoided if there is another way of protecting minorities. I'm not convinced that this raft of regulations is the best way but we're stuck with it and we all need to try to make it work whenever we come into contact with it. Getting involved in a few doubtful cases and giving them a higher profile than they deserve is not going to help the legislation work, whoever is using the tactic. All it does is set up a "tit for tat" game that nobody can win but everybody loses.

Christians are not the "last to be protected". They have enjoyed positive discrimination for centuries. Not so long ago Islam, Judaism and the major Eastern religions were, if not illegal, unrecognised. They were not allowed to build their mosques and temples and no provision was made for observance of their traditions and ceremonies.

Christians, on the other hand had the Sunday trading laws and the Lord's Day Observance Act to make sure no one enjoyed themselves on a Sunday. I'm not ancient but I can remember when the swings in the park were chained up from Saturday evening until Monday morning. Blasphemy laws have only just been removed from the statue book yet anyone could say whatever they wished about Hindus, Sikhs or Moslems even calling their faiths Satanic if they so desired.

Mike Judge (spokesperson for the Christian Institute) and the others never mention one point. They could invoke the same legislation against their "persecutors" if they so wished.

One of the speakers at Spring Harvest this year advised Christians who felt marginalised to stop complaining and get on with the job of showing the love of God to those who need Him. And that means being genuine and knowing when to back off. The Christian Institute and others may like to get their noses out of their law books and start doing just that.

Shepherding the sheep: Trans people's right to protection

The Bishop of Chester, Peter Forster, has made an interesting speech, during the Lords Second Reading of the Equality Bill, in which he rightly highlights how the widening gap between rich and poor in the UK represents a fundamental inequality that is hardly touched by the extensive provisions of the Bill.

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/lords/?id=2009-12-15a.1432.5&s=speaker%3A13253#g1448.0

Well said, Bishop Peter.

Where I began to feel less comfortable with the Bishop’s words was towards the end, where he says that the Bill tends to see society as a collection of individuals with rights, rather than as an ‘interplay of individual rights with the rights of other individuals, and the broader rights of society and the socio-cultural and religious communities in society’.

The example he brings forward, and hence my concern, as a Changing Attitude Trustee for Trans people, are ‘the provisions in relation to those who are undergoing, or have undergone, a change of gender’.

The Bishop continues: ‘society holds different views about the basis of gender reassignment, and there are different views in some of the faith communities’. Even if the latter point is true - and Chapter 7 of Some issues in human sexuality does indeed document, what are basically two ‘opposing’ Christian views, one in favour of medical intervention, with hormones and or surgery, the other antagonistic to this approach - it seems disingenuous to imply that they command ‘equal’ weight and endorsement. We don’t really know what the majority in the Church think about the basis of gender re-assignment because this conversation has hardly begun.

However, what we do know is that society at large, in the UK and beyond, seems to have accepted the validity of Trans people’s experience, and that a gender transition, is, in many instances, a therapeutic and authentic journey to make. Think only of popular culture: For many years now a Trans person has been a much-loved character in a television soap opera; a Jewish Trans woman won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1998; and millions voted a Portuguese Trans woman – a Roman Catholic Christian, who often prayed on screen – as the Big Brother winner in 2004.

We have come a long way from the freak show reporting of the tabloids of yester year, and while red tops can still slip in the occasional sensational headline, most people seem to recognise the normality of gender reassignment for those who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria - a persistent dis-ease or dis-comfort with one’s assigned gender.

To his credit, the Bishop says that he accepts the possibility of gender dysphoria and the psychiatric and medical treatments on offer for it. What troubles him is that the Bill, if passed, would extend legal protection to those who express an intention to transition, or who do so without recourse to medical intervention or supervision. In fact, these are the most vulnerable type of transgender people you will come across, and they are badly in need of whatever protection is going.

In this instance, I think, the Bishop is being misled by the drafters of the Bill who have opted for the phrase ‘gender re-assignment’ - perfectly applicable in the case of transsexual people who do transition - but here in the legislation used inappropriately, as a catch-all term, to include anyone who adopts a gender variant expression, and which could, in certain circumstances, provoke physical or verbal abuse. See my earlier post on this problem of terminology

http://changingattitude-england.blogspot.com/2009/06/black-man-or-white-woman.html

Anyone at the beginning of transition, who must dress in the clothes of the gender to which they aspire, but without the benefit of the hormone therapy that will masculinise or feminise their face and body, can be a prime target for such abuse. So too can the occasional cross-dresser, who represents a very different constituency from that of transsexual persons who transition. What the Bill is trying to do, albeit clumsily in its use of words, is to offer protection to as many Trans people as possible.

That, I would argue, is the main motivation for this section of the Equality Bill, not, as Bishop Peter suggests, simply to safe-guard individual rights, but because Trans people are regularly attacked and murdered simply because of their gender variant behaviour and expression.

I hope to discuss the rest of the Bishop’s remarks on this subject in a second post (after Christmas), but for now I would just like to note that Jesus once told a parable about a shepherd who left ninety-nine sheep in order to search for the one that had gone missing.

Likewise, we look to our shepherds, the bishops, to speak up for minorities who are bullied and picked on just because they are different.