November 1st, 2010
A second Ugandan tabloid, the Sunday Onion (no relation to the U.S. satirical paper by the same name) has decided to join Rolling Stone (no relation to the U.S. magazine by the same name — why can’t anyone come up with anything original?) in a “me, too” game of gay outing. Sunday Onion’s cover story proclaims “Fr. Tony has turned me into his sodomy boy: Boy confesses being sodomized by priest, names partners in homo sex.”
The priest named in the Sunday Onion, “Fr. Tony,” is Fr. Anthony Musaala, a popular Catholic priest and gospel singer who was accused of homosexuality more than a year ago. That so-called “outing” was the start of an intensive “pastor’s war,” in which rival pastors accused each other of homosexuality as a means of discrediting the more popular and wealthy pastors. Martin Ssempa was a key player in many of those accusations. He was eventually brought up on charges of filing false reports with the police, but it is unclear today where those charges stand.
Ssempa is also believed to be behind the latest anti-gay campaign being executed by Rolling Stone. That tabloid was ordered by a Ugandan court earlier today to cease publishing “identities by name or pictures or any relevant implication of the person or person perceived by the respondents to be gay, lesbian or homosexual in general.”
Sunday Onion is under no such injunction. In addition to a very florid account by a so-called “top gay activist,” Sunday Onion pubished the identities of nearly twenty LGBT Ugandans. Many of those identified were well-known LGBT advocates, but many more were ordinary private citizens. In some cases, their occupations and towns were listed as well.
Meanwhile, Red Pepper, the tabloid which practically invented the art of anti-gay vigilantism, engaged in a bit of gay-baiting itself in its most recent issue. A page 6 article, titled “Media Advisory: Serial Lesbo On the Run,” alleges that a lesbian had “surfed the yoyo” of her housekeeper and was now being sought by police.
Of course, the main intent of the story is not whether there is any factual information behind it, but to reinforce the stereotypes that run rampant in Uganda of predatory gays and lesbians. Undoubtedly, if there’s anything we’ve learned from watching Uganda’s tabloids, it’s that the easiest way to get back at someone — whether it’s a pastor or an unpopular sports figure — is to accuse that individual of homosexuality.
Red Pepper routinely carries stories in which various public and private figures are accused of homosexuality. It’s last major anti-gay campaigns however occurred in April and December of 2009.
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Soren456
November 2nd, 2010
Nothing to contribute, except to note that these easy, unfounded accusations were the backbone of McCarthyism in the US, and that they did literally destroy lives and careers.
I’m looking for hope in comparisons to the course anti-communist panic took here, but I don’t see any. In the US, at least, countervailing forces finally discredited (to an extent) McCarthy and his believers.
But I don’t know from what source competent resistance will materialize in Uganda. I just don’t see it.
Matthew
November 3rd, 2010
To add to the unoriginal paper names, Red Pepper is a left wing magazine in the UK. Clearly again no relation to the Ugandan tabloid.
Neon Genesis
November 4th, 2010
Has anyone been tempted to accuse Martin Ssempa of being gay?
s
February 12th, 2011
Hi all,
This issue is quite complex, but I am glad it has made the headlines. Homosexuality when practiced in a developed country is very different when practised in a developing country.
In Uganda, the law is not upheld and enforced as reliably as it is here. Therefore, the homosexual environment is full of practices that would be unacceptable and unachieveable in the UK. I am yet to see the BBC 3 programme,The Worst Place in the World to Be Gay, but I would be surprised if it highlights the uncontrollable issue of paedophilia in Uganda. In recent times, Uganda has become rife with child abuse of boys by gay men. Let me make this clear, I am not saying that all gay men are doing this.
[This portion of the comment has been redacted as it contains an unsubstantiated allegation of criminal wrongdoing against an individual which cannot be individually verified, which is against our comments policies — JB.]
The point being made here is that tome wealthy/NGO workers/senior gay people are abusing boys in organised way.They are able to get away with it because they have religious respect, money or political power.
Some members of the catholic church and western charities are using the battle for human liberties to disguise and multiply disgraceful activities. Uganda may easily be on its way to becoming another Westerner’s Thailand, if a sensitive contextualised ammendmendment is made to the law.
Some Ugandans are hateful towards homossexuals because the term is often used synomously with the word paedphile. This is because within the dominant language Luganda, there does not yet exist a distinct word for paedophile. In the Ugandan context, the gay scene is rife with child rape, particularly in boarding schools and other children-related institutions.
Some rich gay men in power, use their money to appeal to poor boys. Often when the poor boys are approached,their parents force them to accept the offers, because it will enable them to pay their school fees. I read an account where a child asked his mother to bring him vaseline and nappies upon her next visit to his boarding school because he was being raped so frequently. That is just one event but there are many more.
The point being made overall, is that outsiders cannot just parachute in and copy and paste solutions. For example, my uncle regularly holds parties in which underage boys attend and drugs are consumed in large quantities to alleviate the pain of sexual acts. In Uganda,the enforcecement of the law of no underage sex, is not implemented as reliably as it is in the UK. Things cannot be monitored in Uganda, and the law enforced as they can in the UK. Every country is different and contextualised solutions need to be made to problems. Based on what is going on in Uganda right now and its underdeveloped child protection issues, mainkg homosexuality legal will just create the first African Thailand/ Cambodia.
Priya Lynn
February 12th, 2011
S, you’re evil and you’re an idiot – no one here is going to buy your BS. Gayness has nothing to do with pedophilia. Making gayness illegal does nothing to stop pedophilia and stopping pedophilia in no way requires making gayness illegal.
Throbert McGee
February 12th, 2011
s — what you say doesn’t surprise me a bit, and in fact earlier today I was thinking about posting a response to Jim Burroway (on another thread) saying almost exactly what you did:
This is something that all Western LGBT activists need to get through their skulls: The ideal of a fully egalitarian and loving same-sex relationship between two adult men or women of approximately the same age and same social class is something of a modern novelty.
But through the course of history and across cultures, the predominant form of male/male sex has, in many cases, involved the exploitation of a young or socially inferior male for the sexual gratification of an older, more powerful man. The younger male in this scenario is not valued as apprentice, let alone as an equal partner; his anus is merely a substitute vagina that can’t get pregnant.
Jim Burroway
February 12th, 2011
Through the course of history and across cultures, the predominant form of male/female sex has, in many cases, involved the exploitation of a young or socially inferior female for the sexual gratification of an older, more powerful man. But that in no way means that it is representative of heterosexual sex or has been historically. So your point would be?
On what basis do you claim that for male/male sex, that consensual relationships between two relatively equal men is a modern invention? The fact that there is very little mention of it in the historical record when admitting to such a relationship would mean being burned at the stake? Or the fact that if there was mention of it in the historical record, it was because the law encouraged one partner to claim victimhood status in order to save his own life?
You’re going to have to do better than to repeat such slanderous canards.
Priya Lynn
February 13th, 2011
Throbert said “The ideal of a fully egalitarian and loving same-sex relationship between two adult men or women of approximately the same age and same social class is something of a modern novelty.”.
B.S.
“A Kiev art museum contains a curious icon from St. Catherine’s monastery on Mt. Sinai. It shows two robed Christian saints. Between them is a traditional Roman pronubus (best man) overseeing what in a standard Roman icon would be the wedding of a husband and wife. In the icon, Christ is the pronubus. Only one thing is unusual. The “husband and wife” are in fact two men.
Is the icon suggesting that a homosexual “marriage” is one sanctified by Christ? The very idea seems initially shocking. The full answer comes from other sources about the two men featured, St. Serge and St. Bacchus, two Roman soldiers who became Christian martyrs.
While the pairing of saints, particularly in the early church, was not unusual, the association of these two men was regarded as particularly close. Severus of Antioch in the sixth century explained that “we should not separate in speech [Serge and Bacchus] who were joined in life”. More bluntly, in the definitive 10th century Greek account of their lives, St. Serge is openly described as the “sweet companion and lover” of St. Bacchus.
In other words, it confirms what the earlier icon implies, that they were a homosexual couple. Their orientation and relationship was openly accepted by early Christian writers. Furthermore, in an image that to some modern Christian eyes might border on blasphemy, the icon has Christ himself as their pronubus, their best man overseeing their “marriage”.
The very idea of a Christian homosexual marriage seems incredible. Yet after a twelve year search of Catholic and Orthodox church archives Yale history professor John Boswell has discovered that a type of Christian homosexual “marriage” did exist as late as the 18th century.
Contrary to myth, Christianity’s concept of marriage has not been set in stone since the days of Christ, but has evolved as a concept and as a ritual.
Professor Boswell discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient church liturgical documents (and clearly separate from other types of non-marital blessings of adopted children or land) were ceremonies called, among other titles, the “Office of Same Sex Union” (10th and 11th century Greek) or the “Order for Uniting Two Men” (11th and 12th century).
These ceremonies had all the contemporary symbols of a marriage: a community gathered in a church, a blessing of the couple before the altar, their right hands joined as at heterosexual marriages, the participation of a priest, the taking of the Eucharist, a wedding banquet afterwards. All of which are shown in contemporary drawings of the same sex union of Byzantine Emperor Basil I (867-886) and his companion John. Such homosexual unions also took place in Ireland in the late 12th / early 13th century, as the chronicler Gerald of Wales (Geraldus Cambrensis) has recorded.
Unions in Pre-Modern Europe lists in detail some same sex union ceremonies found in ancient church liturgical documents. One Greek 13th century “Order for Solemnisation of Same Sex Union”, having invoked St. Serge and St. Bacchus, called on God to “vouchsafe unto these Thy servants [N and N] grace to love another and to abide unhated and not cause of scandal all the days of their lives, with the help of the Holy Mother of God and all Thy saints”. The ceremony concludes: “And they shall kiss the Holy Gospel and each other, and it shall be concluded”.”.
http://www.libchrist.com/other/homosexual/gaymarriagerite.html
You’re as much of an idiot as S is.
Throbert McGee
February 14th, 2011
You’re correct, of course. I should have written something more like “The ideal of egalitarian homosex has rarely been widely promulgated until modern times.” Or I could have written, “The heterosexual majority’s erroneous assumption that homosexual relationships tend to be hierarchal and exploitative has seldom been challenged until modern times.”
That’s the main point I’m trying to get across, and that I think “s” was trying to make: to the average heterosexual Ugandan, the concept of “homosexual” is deeply intertwined with pedophilia, pederasty, and prison rape; the notion of “egalitarian homosexuality” is a conceptual novelty, and maybe a bit of an oxymoron.
Throbert McGee
February 14th, 2011
And as “s” very explicitly wrote:
What I understand “s” to be arguing is this: In the Ugandan context, the Venn diagram of “gay-identified men” and “pedophiles” overlaps more than it would in a US or Canadian or German context, because of factors peculiar to Ugandan culture.
Hopefully, “s” or some other Ugandan will return to clear things up.
P.S. While Jim was totally correct to edit out the actual name of the Catholic priest whom “s” accused of being a pedophile, I would note that “some Catholic priests molest boys” is not one of those “Aliens took me into their flying saucer” claims that requires extraordinary evidence.
Throbert McGee
February 14th, 2011
P.S. Unless and until “s” or another Ugandan weighs in on what I’ve said, I don’t see any point in arguing about this further with Jim or Priya or anyone else here, because I’m only speculating about what “s” may have intended to say.
But I do think that whenever Ugandans pop up on future BTB threads, it’s important to ask them very directly, “Wait, are you aware that some homosexuals are only interested in having sex with persons of their own age and social class? And wouldn’t you admit that this is very different from a 30-year-old man having sex with a 12-year-old boy, or a rich man paying a poor male prostitute for sex?”
In other words, just because they’re writing in English doesn’t mean they conceptualize “gay” and “homosexual” in exactly the same way we do.
P.P.S. I’m reminded that in Russian, the most common equivalents for “f*g(got)” are pidor and pedik — both deriving from pederast. There’s also a slur gomik, deriving from gomosexualnost (“homosexuality”), but it’s not as frequently used as the terms that refer to pederasty. And “s” indicates that something similar may be going on in Luganda, one of the major non-English languages of Uganda.
Fr Musaala
February 15th, 2011
“homosexuality when practiced in a developing country is very different when practiced in a developed country”
First of all homosexuality when viewed as a “practice” rather than as an orientation tends and intends to portray homosexuality as deviant behaviour.This kind of prejudiced spin might go unnoticed by the unwary.
If Im not mistaken,what I think ‘s’ wants to have us believe, is that economic and social inequalities in Uganda make it is easy for homosexuals to exploit the poor and the vulnerable, including children, who might otherwise not be interested in matters gay, which no doubt would be impossible in he developed country in which ‘s’ lives.
I am reminded of certain autocratic African leaders who explain that democracy “western style” may not quite be possible in Africa, because of poverty.They then they confirm it by buying the votes of the poor, or by just intimidating them to vote them in.
‘s’ believes that as a heterosexual who lives in a developed country s/he can offer Ugandans and the world this patronizing nonsense. ‘s’ is also aware that slandering homosexuals in Uganda, leads to hate-crimes, such as the recent killing of David Kato. That is the aim.
No real evidence for ‘s’s claims has ever been adduced, by anyone competent, but that is of no import to ‘s’
This is what ‘s’ would have us believe
a) That homosexuals in Uganda are unable to have consensual relations with each other because of economic and social hardship.Ok but then the same must be true for heterosexuals, no?
b) That Ugandan homosexuals would desperately like to have sex with any heterosexuals and or their children, and by force and or manipulation if necessary.
In other words, that homosexuals are uncontrollably driven by lust, to corrupt and abuse the “pure” heterosexual population of Uganda.
Perhaps ‘s’ needs to engage a research assistant to determine the facts on the ground.His or her inane hypotheses about gay Ugandans could not be more ridiculous.The cases of child rape and molestation which I read about in the press in Uganda, in and out of boarding schools, have not been homosexual ones.
The hate-agenda behind ‘s’ and cohorts, is now something we must deal with urgently and decisively since it is becoming a matter of life and death to many of us.I have already been a victim of this hate-campaign in Uganda and elsewhere,including media outing and accusations of paedophilia, by the likes of ‘s’.
I am more than determined to do whatever is morally possible and necessary to defend my life and the rights of LGBTs in Uganda. Any assistance and support is welcome.
fathermusaala@ymail.com
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