The Root, the Washington Post’s African-American news website, recently interviewed Frank Mugisha, a gay activist in Uganda. He describes what it’s like to be gay in his country, whether as an out activist calculating which streets to avoid or as a closeted gay person terrified of being outed in the media. It also includes this telling exchange:
FM: …When I was growing up, I knew people who lived together, man and man, as if they were married, and no one harassed them, no one arrested them. But today we are seeing this kind of new wave of religion that has come in and said the homosexuals you know are bad people.
TR: What role have U.S. evangelicals played in that new wave of religion?
FM: They talk about abortion; they talk about family values and all that. But in Uganda they’ve identified homosexuality as the issue they can pick on. They pick on so many issues, but they came to Uganda because Uganda is so Christian, and Ugandans are going to listen when they say homosexuality is a sin.
