A bill now in front of the Ugandan legislature would lead to life imprisonment for gay sex, and death for those having same sex relations if they are HIV positive or having sex with someone under 18. Heterosexuals would have no such restrictions. This law, which would also criminalize any human rights organizing for LGBT rights, could be passed any day.

The campaign for the bill is being led by two friends of Rick Warren's: Archbishop Henry Orombi and Pastor Martin Sempa. And in March 2008, Pastor Warren told his Ugandan friends soon after he got off the plane that homosexuality is not a natural way of life and not a human right. The context was his support of Ugandan Anglicans in their boycott of the worldwide Anglican meeting at Lambeth over the issue of gay ordination.

As my colleague here, Kapya Kaoma, says,

Rick Warren shows one face in the United States where he says he loves gays, and another face in Africa, which is on the verge of pogroms against this community. We need to hear his voice loud and clear on this issue that gays and lesbians are entitled to full human rights.

Kapya is about to release a report about his year-long investigation into U.S. right-wing evangelicals' outreach in Africa and related efforts to destabilize mainline Protestant denominations and their LGBT rights programs and policies in the United States. An Anglican priest himself, from Zambia, he is appalled at the way U.S. conservative evangelicals are exporting their culture wars to his home continent and feeding the dangerous hatred and vitriol toward gays to the point where people's lives are threatened. At a March conference in Uganda this year, he heard church people supporting the idea of going door to door to find and weed out gays in their home communities.

So Rick Warren, what do you say?

URL: http://www.publiceye.org/cc/

(This was originally posted on Daily Kos.)