WHY ARE THE CHURCHES SILENT AMIDST LGBT OPPRESSION IN UGANDA AND ELSEWHERE?

The Ugandan embassies of France and the United States publicly condemned Uganda's proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill on Monday, but officials in the African nation plan to move forward with the discriminatory legislation....

The bill would amplify the country's antigay laws, including criminalizing any public discussion of homosexuality and penalizing individuals who knowingly rented property to a homosexual.

[For the full article, see here.]

I'm afraid that to ask the question posed by the title of this post is to answer it!

Most all of the institutional Church is patriarchal, heterosexist, bureaucratic, cowardly, and supports the status quo from which it profits by receiving its members' contributions in the collection plates that keep ministerial careers afloat!

There is nothing in Christian theology that supports discrimination of any kind, and to keep silent in the face of such discrimination, of such oppression, whether in Uganda, Jamaica, or anywhere else, is to support that discrimination and oppression, and makes those who remain silent just as culpable in the oppression, assaults, imprisonment, and murders of LGBT people than those who actively support these egregious acts!

And no disciple of Christ can either advocate discrimination, actually discriminate, or remain silent in the face of discrimination against LGBT people or against any other minority group!

So much of what passes for "Christianity" has been mere thuggery often couched in sanitized terms designed by many professing Christian clergy and their followers to seduce gullible people into buying into their homophobic prejudices by falsely appealing to such terms as "tradition," "traditional family values," "for the good of the children," "morality and decency," and "it's in the Bible."

And, sometimes the terms are not at all sanitized! For example, hear Bishop Isaac Orama’s getting caught saying that LGBT people are “inhuman, insane, satanic and not fit to live.” [See here.]

And hear Archbishop Peter Akinola:

Homosexuality and lesbianism, like divorce, breed a society of single parents which gives rise to a generation of bastards. And in the context of much poverty and lack of education, this further produces an ill-bred generation of hooligans, portending much terror to the peace and stability of the society. [See here.]

And hear our homegrown "religious" demogagues, the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, with Pat Robertson concurring, opining on why 9/11 happened:

Rev. Jerry Falwell: I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America...I point the finger in their face and say you helped this happen." [See here.]

And most all churches within the institutionalized Church remain silent amidst this oppression because their congregants are quite comfortable with their incestuous socialization, spending their time discussing building beautification programs, attending church regularly, and singing their pious hymns.

Indeed, most clergy within the institutional Church, by their homophobic rhetoric and frequently warped doctrines and dogmas that make that rhetoric sound "godly" to their gullible followers, have encouraged rank discrimination against LGBT people both in the U.S. and in places like Jamaica and Uganda.

Is it any wonder that the moral high ground in the struggle for LGBT rights is not taken by most within the institutional Church, but is taken by most who are outside that structure, many of whom are not even Christians? And this fact is a profound embarrassment to all Christians worthy of the name!

It is a tragedy when secular forces lead the way in condemning the oppression of LGBT people, and when professing Christians encourage discrimination and oppression of others by their rhetoric, by their actions, and by their silence!

In this most significant and crucial civil rights movement of our time, full civil and sacramental equality for LGBT people, Jesus tells all who claim to be His disciples, and who persist in remaining silent amidst the oppression of LGBT people, what Mordecai told his cousin (whom he raised when her parents died) Esther, when the Jewish people in Shushan, which was in Persia, were slated to be murdered:

For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this? (Esther 4:14)

All Christians should meditate on Mordecai's admonition to Esther!

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