Just hours after last week’s Do you MIND?? reported on the growing repression and violence against LGBTQ people in Africa and Eastern Europe Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed the notorious Anti-Homosexuality Bill into law, instantly criminalizing LGBTQ people and any advocacy on their behalf. Two days later, California-Pacific Annual Conference Bishop Minerva Carcano sent a deeply moving letter to her fellow United Methodist bishops in Africa, imploring them to speak out in defense of the persecuted. “You and I disagree about homosexuality,” Carcano wrote, “but I beseech you to consider that discrimination and violence against persons because of their sexual orientation cannot be justified under our Christian faith. Jesus consistently went to the margins of society to minister to and redeem those whom society considered unclean and unworthy of God’s grace. As servants of Christ Jesus we can do no less. I beg you to act in behalf of those whom Jesus also considers his beloved. I do not ask you to stand in support of homosexuality. I ask you to raise your voices against hatred and violence.”
“African homophobia is promoted and propelled by religion,” regional expert Kapya Kaoma wrote the week before the Ugandan bill was signed. “So the answer to Uganda’s anti-gay bill lies in the primarily Christian electorate of Uganda….U.S. Anglican, and Evangelical/Pentecostal leaders should equally speak to their friends in Uganda about the dignity and fundamental human rights of sexual minorities.” Bishop Carcano has done just that. Will the African bishops respond and help avert a brewing human rights disaster? Will others in the U.S. speak up? Will you?