UGANDA/SENEGAL: Ugandan Anglicans to boycott Anglican conference over church's stance on gay marriages / anti-gay protesters demonstrate in Dakar

Record ID: 277405

  • Title: UGANDA/SENEGAL: Ugandan Anglicans to boycott Anglican conference over church's stance on gay marriages / anti-gay protesters demonstrate in Dakar
  • Date: 19th February 2008
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (French) PROTESTER CHEIKH TIDIANE NDIAYE SAYING: "We are about to organise an Islamic conference to prove that Senegal is a Muslim country, a country that's 95 percent Muslim. Therefore we don't accept this practice that does not conform to the religion practised in our country. We will continue to struggle for those practises to be wiped out in this country.''
  • Embargoed: 5th March 2008 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Religion
  • Reuters ID: LVAAWKHO00OXJAY1YHYFJWGJST6P
  • Story Text: Ugandan Anglicans say they will boycott an Anglican conference over the church's stance on gay marriages, while in Dakar, police at the weekend fired tear gas to disperse anti-homosexual demonstrators outside the main mosque.
    Uganda's Anglican worshippers praised on Sunday (February 17) their archbishop's decision to boycott a once-in-a-decade global Church meeting over a row over gay clergy and same-sex unions.
    Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi said on Thursday his bishops would shun the Lambeth Conference in June to protest against invitations sent to leaders from the pro-rights U.S. Episcopal Church to the same summit.
    The Anglican Communion of 77 million followers worldwide has yet to recover from a rift between liberals and conservatives that emerged when openly gay U.S. bishop Gene Robinson was consecrated in 2003.
    The row threatens to tear apart the 400-year-old church. This week Kenya's Anglican bishops were the latest to say they would boycott the Lambeth meeting. Bishops from Sydney, Australia, are also expected to skip the summit.
    "There is no reason for us to sit together with the people on the same table on which we disagree on the very fundamentals of the faith, let me tell you this is not about gay and lesbian issues, no, no, no. It is much more fundamental than that, it has got to do with what is the place for the scriptures therefore, how do we read the scriptures, do we read the scriptures together in the same way? We realised no, that is not what is happening, so for the Archbishop of Canterbury to invite those who made decisions that contravene what happened in Lambeth in 1988, for us as a church. We said no," said Bishop Zac Nyiringye in Kampala.
    Uganda is predominantly Christian with more than 8 million Anglicans.
    The east African country does not recognise gay rights, and homosexuality is considered a criminal offence, punishable by life imprisonment.
    "All along we have come to a point where we disagree on fundamentals, what I call fundamentals, the word of God, am afraid there always parting ways, it is a parting of ways," said Paul Kikule, after the weekly Sunday service.
    "It is very absurd and it pains me because the divisions now are inevitable, because our friends in the West recognise that it is natural to be gay, it is natural to fall in love with a fellow man, but for us it is not, it's out of the question, you can't even discuss it," added Charles Senknubuge, another Anglican.
    Under Ugandan laws homosexuals may be charged under "unnatural offences" in section 140 of the penal code. BUHAI HUSSEIN, SAYING:
    "My opinion about homosexuality is I don't condone it, but I don't think it is a crime," says Buhai Hussein, who was speaking at a night club in Kampala.
    "Homosexuals, once you are caught in that act, you should be sentenced to death, immorality," added Justine Kobushinygye, who was also at the night club.
    Tensions are also rising in Muslim majority Senegal over the issue of homosexuality.
    Police in Senegal fired tear gas to disperse anti-homosexual demonstrators outside Dakar's main mosque on Friday (February 15) after the publication of photos from a gay wedding. Homosexuality is illegal in Senegal.
    Piles of rubbish were set ablaze in several housing blocks around the mosque and groups of youths shouting "We don't want homosexuals"
    barricaded roads.
    Some demonstrators said they had been angered by official signs of tolerance towards homosexuals weeks before Senegal hosts a summit of Islamic heads of state.
    "We are about to organise an Islamic conference to prove that Senegal is a Muslim country, a country that's 95 percent Muslim. Therefore we don't accept this practice that does not conform to the religion practised in our country. We will continue to struggle for those practises to be wiped out in this country,'' said Cheikh Tidiane Ndiaye, a fisheries agent among the stone-throwing demonstrators around the Grande Mosquee de Dakar.
    Local authorities had granted permission for the protest but later changed their minds and ordered police to break it up.
    Newspapers have given front page treatment to what has been dubbed by the media "the gay soap opera". Radio phone-ins have been swamped by calls, the majority strongly anti-gay.
    As in most countries in sub-Saharan Africa, homosexuals live an underground life in Senegal where they are termed "gor-jiguene"
    (men-women). Most people in the former French colony consider homosexuality to be "unAfrican", a psychological disorder imported by Europeans.
    Thirty-eight of 85 U.N. member states which outlaw homosexuality are in Africa. South Africa became the first African nation to allow gay marriages in 2006.
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