What makes Pastor Martin Ssempa (PhD) tick? 7

In full flow: Martin Ssempa (PhD)

Given a new lease on life recently, Martin Ssempa, the charismatic but provocative, prurient  and excessive proponent of gay hate Uganda has ever known, continues to try to stay relevant in the ongoing homosexuality debate.

He has a radio talk show, is on Twitter (@martinssempa) and seems to have walked away from a criminal conviction more emboldened, even if also chastened.

So, what makes Martin Ssempa tick? How come this middle-aged, balding man still manages to make such waves in Uganda?

In order to understand Martin Ssempa, it helps to look to another firebrand anti-gay crusader from a different continent and era:  America’s Jerry Falwell.

When the Reverend Jerry Falwell died on May 15, 2007, the evangelical Bible belt lost one of the most vocal anti-gay leaders it had ever had, and the gay movement lost one of the most vocal enemies it had ever been fortunate to have.

With the Moral Majority movement that he established in 1979, Falwell excoriated abortion, homosexuality and pornography with such venom and ferocity that America sat up and listened. The Moral Majority galvanized the religious right behind any political candidate that agreed with their message. But they also unwittingly did homosexuality (especially) a favor by bringing it into mainstream discussion, thereby enabling America to gradually realize that homosexuals were not the threat Falwell said they were.

As evidence of Falwell’s paranoia, he condemned a cartoon character in the BBC’s children’s program, the Teletubbies, as being gay. Then he famously blamed gays for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City. Even the remaining flag bearers who still believed in Falwell’s sanity hid away in embarrassment.

At the height of his fame Falwell (2nd from left) hobnobbed with the Reagans

Over the years, listeners had, rightly, wondered how preaching hate was compatible with the overwhelming Biblical message of love and inclusion. Others silently wondered what Falwell wanted them to do with their children, relatives and friends who were gay. So, thanks to Falwell’s fire and brimstone excoriation of homosexuals, prostitutes and single mothers, most sensible Americans resorted to education, common sense and their natural decency, and paid less attention to Falwell.

You could literally juxtapose Martin Ssempa’s anti-gay trajectory in Uganda onto Falwell’s almost to the dotted eye and crossed tee save for one element:

When the going got tough, Canyon Ridge distanced itself from Ssempa

Money.

Always able to rely on his followers for fundraising, Jerry Falwell wasn’t driven to rant and rave against prostitutes, gays and unwed mothers by money.

But, despite clearly being desperate for a lifetime paycheck, Martin Ssempa is all but broke. For the longest time, Ssempa relied on handouts from organizations such as the Canyon Ridge Christian Church of Las Vegas, but they all cut ties when Ssempa’s message degenerated into calling for the judicial execution of his fellow citizens.

Martin Ssempa’s continuing problem is twofold:

Kayanja (right) successfully sued and embarrassed Ssempa

Thanks to some spectacular advocacy, Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) and Freedom and Roam Uganda (FARUG) have repeatedly scored resounding successes, up to and including forcing President Museveni to admit in international interviews that homosexuality is not a Western import as many ignorant detractors love to argue. Led by Frank Mugisha (SMUG) and Kasha Nabagesera (FARUG), those two organizations have achieved phenomenal success in raising the profile of the gay movement in Uganda, and with their success has come endorsements from notables such as Hillary Clinton and the Robert Kennedy Human Rights Award.

In fact, for better or worse, gay activism has been the most successful minority rights movement in Uganda in recent memory.

Compare that to Ssempa’s achievements over the same period: he managed to alienate his erstwhile American evangelical friends with his vile, putrid dish showing of graphic pornographic videos even during church services. Then he got entangled in a stratagem to tar a fellow pastor, Robert Kayanja, with the brush of pedophile homo-sodomy for which he was sued and convicted in late 2012.

Ssempa is now a convicted felon who must have been relieved that well-wishers came to his rescue to pay the $400.00 the judge fined him for perverting the course of justice, coaching witnesses, and conniving with others to sully the reputation of his rival.

Ssempa drowned out by Generation Y excesses

The second frustration in Ssempa’s continuing attempt to convince Ugandans that he is still relevant is a generational one. He appeals to and preaches mainly to young, university-educated students. But growing evidence shows that it is precisely that generation (50% of Uganda’s population is under 25) in Uganda that is increasingly looking at sex and sexuality through a much more morally nuanced prism.

Wait Training’s statement abandoning Ssempa (Sebaspace)

So, Ssempa is trying to convert precisely those people who a) don’t have much money to pay for his sinking crusade and b) whose far more liberal socialization makes his outlandish anti-gay vituperation fall on barren ground.

Martin Ssempa also freely admits that in his heyday he spent a whole year at university having sex with any woman who could have him. Thus, at the very least Ssempa’s exhortation to the youth of today to abstain till they get married smacks of hypocrisy.

Martin Ssempa doesn’t care a hoot about whether homosexuality is eradicated from Uganda because, of course, he is educated enough to know that is impossible. He doesn’t care about the youth and, worst of all, he doesn’t care about HIV/Aids in Uganda because if he did, he wouldn’t have been doing his utmost to make sure that gay men and women continue to be excluded from HIV/Aids-related treatment programs.

Ssempa’s shrillness also belies a deep-seated problem for him. He tends to latch on to the argument about the majority of Ugandans being against homosexuality. But when you ask him if he would have joined the 73% of Americans who supported the miscegenation laws that barred blacks and whites intermarrying until the Supreme Court’s deeply unpopular 1967 intervention (Ssempa’ is married to a white woman), he ignores that question.

In a nutshell, Martin Ssempa is running a cynical, insincere campaign based on mendacity, demagoguery and sophism.

Martin Ssempa’s worst nightmare is for what happened to Jerry Falwell to happen to him: for Uganda to make an intelligent, considered, thoughtful  examination of the arguments.  That’s why his preferred mode of debate is showing graphic pornography in church services, waving sex toys on television, and raving like a lunatic. He hopes that if he makes as much empty noise as possible the sensible arguments for tolerance and common sense will be drowned out.

If, as the omens portend, the tide continues to ebb away from his type of mock-indignation, vitriolic, mindless hysteria, Martin Ssempa will follow Jerry Falwell into a slow but inexorable decline into total irrelevance.

Then,  like Jerry Falwell in his twilight years, Ssempa will cut a forlorn, aging figure echoing in the wilderness.

But without Jerry Falwell’s money …  or  legacy-building savvy.

Related articles:

• Heroic Ugandan Activist Makes Pastor Martin Ssempa Look like the Devil in TV Debate (oblogdeeoblogda.me)
• Questions the anti-gay brigade struggles to answer (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Another door shuts for Martin Ssempa
• Martin Ssempa – unwanted publicity
• Martin Ssempa loses another cash cow
• Martin Ssempa forced to resign from the Oral Roberts University Board of Reference

Martin Ssempa guilty! 8

The verdict is out!

Pastors Solomon Male of Arising for Christ Ministries, Martin Sempa of Makerere Community Church, and Michael Kyazze and Robert Kayiira of Omega Healing Centre have been found guilty of conspiring to tarnish Robert Kayanja’s reputation. They had claimed that Kayanja “sodomized” boys at his Rubaga-based church.

Ssempa (left) floored by Kayanja (right)

Each either must pay 1,000,000/=($408.00)  and 100 work hours of community service, or serve 6 months in Luzira Prison.

The sentence is derisory but the point has been made – the pastors will not be happy campers as they walk out of the courtroom.

Hip, hip, hurray!!

Related articles:

• Ugandan pastors in gay intrigue
• Police get Kayanja off the hook – charge pastors
• Pastor Martin Ssempa now targets Kayanja

 

SMUG sues Scott Lively 1

One is not sure what to make of the lawsuit filed by Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) against Scott Lively, and it wouldn’t be far-fetched to guess that it is meant to bog him down in lawsuits.

It even has the smack of mischief but one can see the bigger point it is trying to bring out. And that point is that (mostly white) evangelists making whistle-stop tours into Africa to propagate extreme far right messages camouflaged as religious ministering need to understand that their actions and words have far more import than merely reading Biblical superstition to the poor black natives.

“I don’t know that person at all.”Nsaba Buturo on Scott Lively

More interestingly for me is how Mr. James Nsaba Buturo, defeated member of Parliament, and dismissed Minister of Ethics and Integrity (Lokodo, his successor, has proved to be a similar bull in a China store) runs for the hills when asked about Scott Lively. I would have done the same, too, if I had so little to show for it after crusading against gay sex for a decade. One has to know when it is time to move on.

Also named in the lawsuit are Martin Ssempa, Stephen Langa and David Bahati. Ssempa is mired knee-deep in a gay related conspiracy-to-defame lawsuit that was about to be decided against him two months ago when, in a cruel twist of [calculated?] timing, the presiding judge was transferred. The lurid details of the case sounded like a soap opera, with tales of witnesses being smuggled into co-conspirators’ private offices, coached and cajoled – on tape.

Of course poor Stephen Langa had his 15 minutes of fame and went back to … whatever he was doing before the 15 minutes. And as for David Bahati, he continues to hog the limelight with yet another attempt to have his Nazi anti-gay bill debated in Parliament. If passed and signed into law by President Museveni, it will have parents, priests, counselors and teachers serving three years in jail for not informing the police should they find out that someone is gay.

Related articles

• Scott Lively Says Gay Rainbow Flag a Sign of the End Times: VIDEO (towleroad.com)
• Museveni again rubbishes the notion that gays are a Western import
• Martin Ssempa retreats – sort of

Museveni again rubbishes the notion that gays are a Western import 10

"Homosexuals have always been there in our society" Museveni

Uganda’s president must be wondering what he can do to make the subject of homosexuality in Uganda go away. Here he is again, on the BBC, forced to slap the wrists of those in Uganda calling for the annihilation of homosexuals on the grounds that homosexuality is a western import:

“Homosexuals have existed in our part of Africa, they were never persecuted, they were never discriminated … they were also never promoted. So the problem is on the promotion of homosexuality. … In our traditional society, the homosexuals would be known, it would not be approved but would be ignored” Musseveni

But David Bahati and the mob of parliamentarians and religious leaders egging him on have made exactly the contrary argument.

Museveni doesn’t want or support the Bahati Nazi anti-gay bill but it is clear from this BBC interview that he doesn’t really know what to do about it either. So, he chooses to obfuscate by focusing on ‘promotion of homosexuality’ and ‘recruiting children’ when he must know that no one is advocating for that.

Museveni is effectively saying that the problem is that, unlike in the past, homosexuality is being discussed and that is what he finds problematic. By extension, he also seems to be saying that if discussion of the subject was somehow quashed then there would be no problem. But the bill supporters are not saying that at all. In fact they are the ones ratcheting up the public discussion of homosexuality up to and including showing x-rated videos in public in order to further their agendas.

So the battle lines are drawn. The detractors’ position is that homosexuality is a foreign, immoral, import. Never mind that this is patently absurd; that is their position and they are willing to pass legislation to underpin it. Museveni’s position is that this entire discussion should go away, no legislation is needed because homosexuality is NOT a foreign import. But he is also tacitly admitting that he doesn’t know what he will do about it if the anti-gay bill is passed by Parliament.

It should be interesting times ahead.

Related articles

• Sodomites, prostitutes should not be equated to teachers and doctors (Martin Ssempa)
• Bahati anti-gay bill revived to teach Museveni a lesson (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• It’s open warfare in Uganda’s corridors of power (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Uganda’s Minister shuts down Gay Conference (sebaspace.wordpress.com)
• Uganda Gov’t Distances Itself From Anti-Gay Bill (abcnews.go.com)
• Uganda government: We don’t support reintroduction of anti-gay bill (telegraph.co.uk)
• Uganda’s government gifts gays a PR triumph! (sebaspace.wordpress.com)

Ugandan Pastors in Gay Intrigue 3

Brian Ntwatwa: recorded lurid gay details

You couldn’t make this up if you were a writer for a Nigerian television soap opera, what Ugandans call “Ekinigeria.” According to the New Vision report on the court testimony, Brian Ntwatwa recorded audio tape evidence implicating Pastor Robert Kayanja in homo-sodomy. Kayanja is a prominent pastor with connections to Uganda’s First Lady, Janet Museveni, and very deep pockets that he has used in the past to offer to renovate entire police precincts in Kampala, Uganda’s capital city.

Brian Ntwatwa is supposed to be one of the victims of the [attempted] pedophile homo-sodomy by Robert Kayanja. In unclear circumstances, Ntwatwa ended up in Pastor Solomon Male‘s office where he recorded lurid details that are now the focus in a defamation law suit brought by Kayanja against Solomon Male and others.

There are a number of legal problems for the defense where this audio recording is concerned. The first one is that it was recorded by one of Robert Kayanja’s enemies, Pastor Solomon Male [pronounced ma-le], in his office. It is not clear whether Male read Ntwatwa his Miranda rights (you have the right to remain silent, anything you say may be used against you as evidence in court …) or whether Male indeed had the authority to record this “confession.” As the case currently stands, the audio tape is helping the prosecution side far more than the defense which of course wasn’t the intention of making the recording.

In any case, Solomon Male apparently took it upon himself to ferret out the homo-sodomy evidence against his rival and enemy-in-Christ, Robert Kayanja, He set up the audio recording and, voila, Brian Ntwatwa sang like a canary into the Dictaphone. Why, one must wonder, didn’t Solomon Male simply ask that Ntwatwa accompany him to the police station or to a lawyers’ office where the “confession” would be taken in a legal environment?

“Male edited things according to his version. These were concocted lies. Recording with Male was a lie to tarnish Pastor Kayanja’s reputation. He never attempted to sodomise me,” Ntwatwa said.

The second problem with the audio recording is that shortly after he recorded it, Ntwatwa was taken to the police where he recanted everything he said on it, claiming instead that Solomon Male, Michael Kyazze, Martin Ssempa, and the other accomplices (for they must now be looked at as such) promised him a visa to the United States and $20,000 which is why he agreed to go along with the “lies” on the 45-minute audio tape.

Homo-accomplices? Michael Kyazze & Martin Ssempa (inset)

Had this been any other country other than Uganda, one would have thought that the recording would have been inadmissible as evidence given the manner in which it was procured. If it passed that test, it beggars belief that the defense is still being given a chance to take ‘a second bite at the cherry’ when Ntwatwa has already testified in court that what he said on the tape was a tissue of lies force-fed to him like a foie gras duck by the men who now stand accused of tarnishing Kayanja’s pristine reputation.

So, we now have the ludicrous spectacle of defense lawyers trying to badger what should have been their star (now hostile) witness into admitting that he is telling lies in court but wasn’t telling lies when the recording was made!! Can it get any more bizarre than this?

It is because of dramatic cases like this that AfroGay regrets that he is not a legal eagle. Imagine all that entertainment in the course of one’s work day, day after day. Ha, Ha, Ha.

Related reading:

1. State ordered to produce Kayanja in court
2. Kayanja shows up in court over sodomy case
3. Anti-Kayanja plot was hatched at prayer meet
4. Martin Ssempa – the ball is in your court
5. Police get Kayanja off the hook – charge pastors

Related articles

• David Kato – one year on (sebaspace.wordpress.com)

Another door shuts for Martin Ssempa 1

Barred from the US: Ssempa

Barack Obama has just thrown another fireball into embattled Martin Ssempa’s lap. Last week, the American president signed a proclamation that bars entry to the USA by “persons who organize or participate in war crimes, crimes against humanity and serious violations of human rights” (from Rodonline).

Yes, for all intents and purposes that means that, if he still has one, Ssempa’s US visa should be revoked. Talk about being hit from all sides when you are down. Martin Ssempa is in the dock in the Ugandan courts, charged with malicious intent towards “Pastor” Robert Kayanja who, it is alleged, Martin Ssempa fabricated evidence against in a bid to tar him with the brush of pedophile homo-sodomy. Ssempa’s ‘witnesses’ have since recanted their testimonies and poor Ssempa stands forlorn in a Ugandan courtroom, deserted by his friends from America and ignored by sensible Ugandans. Talk about being in the dog’s house.

Oh dear! It surely can’t get any worse for this virulently homophobic, hatred-inciting, ignorance-exploiting man, can it?

George Rekers’ Handiwork profiled by CNN

It’s too heart rending to dwell on too much, but check out CNN’s profile of George Rekers’ tragic handiwork.

Rekers led Andrew Kirk Murphy down the path of ‘gay cures’ while he himself was all the while secretly living a gay life. Murphy committed suicide in 2003, clearly due to the trauma Rekers’ gay therapy wreaked on him. Rekers carried on regardless until 2010 when he was photographed sashaying through an airport on the arm of a young male prostitute that he had just taken on a trip to Europe to, as Rekers claimed, help him carry his luggage.

Martin Ssempa, Stephen Langa and your friends: there is no cure for homosexuality! Indeed there is no need to try to cure anyone from it because gay men and women have also been created in the image of God. If there was a cure for homosexuality, why would Rekers continue to be gay to this day when he has spent so much of his life ‘treating’ others not to be gay, in Murphy’s case with such tragic consequences?

Related reading

1. George Rekers

The Bahati Nazi Anti-Gay Bill Dies in Committee 1

My money is on the bill not reaching the floor of the house. It will do its rounds in committee and the Speaker of the House will keep on finding reasons to postpone it until time runs out on it in the current Parliament. (AfroGay, November 24, 2009)

 I told you so! The Bahati Nazi Anti-Gay bill has run out of time and has not been debated on the floor of the house where it was guaranteed to pass.

 If David Bahati, Martin Ssempa and their Nazi anti-gay friends have any sense, they’d better start reading AfroGay’s analysis and what he writes about them carefully.

Gloating is never nice but as you can see from the quotation above, I predicted two years ago what the fate of the Bahati Nazi anti-gay bill would be. Unfortunately for Bahati, and fortunately for the gay community in Uganda, Bahati was not paying attention.

Parliamentary time has run out on the bill and it now has to be re-presented in the next Parliament. That will take some doing at a time when the president, who is not interested in the bill for reasons I highlighted in 2009, is also having to confront an opposition whose fortunes have ironically been rejuvenated by his own government.

Disappointed: David Bahati

What next for the Bahati Bill? As long as Museveni remains in power, forget this bill. In fact, I am ready to predict that the bill will not return in any shape or form as long as Museveni remains president of Uganda.

Some have suggested that he was behind it but I believe, and I have said this before, that this bill caught him flat footed. But, once bitten, twice shy. Uganda’s Museveni will not allow the anti-gay bill to again return and create the embarrassment he had to endure at the hands of Uganda’s donors. Anyone who hopes to see it again in Parliament must wait for the current president of Uganda to vacate that office.

So, is this the absolute end of the anti gay bill? Oh, by no means. Our enemies are determined people and this bloody nose will only make them more emboldened to return. Their tactics will be markedly different next time round but return they will. They now know, however, that they have a formidable opponent, ironically (there is that word again) in the person of  the president of the Uganda without whom the bill would have sailed through Parliament at least a year ago.

David Bahati dare not say it but, as far as his Nazi anti-gay bill is concerned, he is one Parliamentarian who is very, very unhappy that Yoweri Museveni is the president of Uganda.

There are people who AfroGay has to thank for their help, some of it rendered without their realizing it. Since the help was rendered privately, the thanks will be given privately. Suffice it to say that the eventual failure of the bill was down to people who had nothing to gain from it not passing. Such selflessness in the face of a heinous but popular bill makes these people’s help incalculable. We indeed owe them a deep debt of gratitude.

Good night Bahati dear. See you in the next Parliament. No doubt you will return. Just be sure that we shall be waiting for you. And that’s not a threat – it is a promise.

Now, time to do what AfroGay does best when he is in good spirits – party.

Martin Ssempa retreats – sort of 2

Martin Ssempa

Tactically, it would be astute if it weren’t so transparent. After receiving a series of bloody noses for his homophobia, Martin Ssempa has been forced to retreat and reconsider his tactics.

A few weeks ago, he donned priestly vestments to make himself look like a persecuted man of God in  the eyes of the masses. At the Parliamentary committee hearings this week, he has made a u-turn and asked that instead of the death penalty, gay men and women should be jailed for seven years. The reason for the retreat is fairly apparent. With friends having abandoned him on account of the Bahati Nazi bill, Martin Ssempa desperately needs to redeem himself in their eyes because, since their checks stopped coming in, his livelihood depends on it.

So, what does Ssempa do? He heads to Parliament and tries to paint himself as the voice of reason, someone who has seen the error of his erstwhile extreme views, and who is now ready to show a degree of contrition for wishing people dead due to nothing other than who they are. Make no mistake about it, the retreat is only a tactical one, forced upon Ssempa by the pinch he feels in his pocket since his major sponsors abandoned him. Ssempa has read the tea leaves and realized that advocating publicly for the death of anyone in the manner that he has in the past (“I am in total support of the bill and would be most grateful if it did pass.” he pronounced only less than eighteen months ago) will not put food on the table or earn him lucrative speaking engagements abroad.

What a difference it makes when the dollars stop coming in!

[Typical of African jails]: A prisoner with protruding ribs and wearing rags is washed by an inmate at a Zimbabwean jail in footage filmed by cameras that were smuggled in

Should you, however be patting yourself on the back for a job well done, consider the alternative Ssempa now wishes upon anyone gay. African jails, as the Zimbabwean one (above shows), are no picnic in the park. It would be to give the man too much credit to suggest that he has thought that far, but what Ssempa is effectively advocating for now, in order to get the funding from his friends back, is for gays to die slowly over seven years rather than swiftly by firing squad or a hangman’s noose.

I don’t know about you but it seems to me that Ssempa still offers us the choice between the devil and the deep blue sea.

I predicted two years ago that the Bahati Bill will not become law in Uganda this side of the (now) fast fading Parliamentary session. I believe I have largely been proved right thus far. In fact, it is unlikely to ever become law while Yoweri Museveni is still president of Uganda. Ssempa sensed that his eat da poo poo clarion call for Ugandans to rise up and kill they gays backfired on him spectacularly. So, he is retreating in order to regroup and plan a different strategy. He will live to fight another day but he, too, knows that this current kill the gays skirmish has also been lost thus the tactical about face you saw in Parliament this week. In that sense you have to give the man credit for reading the situation and trying to make sure that the receding tide doesn’t leave him high and dry.

Ssempa will be back. In what form remains to be seen, but be back he will. We take our attention off this man and his machinations at our own peril.

Martin Ssempa – Unwanted Publicity 1

You have heard the saying that ‘no publicity is bad publicity’, right? Well, that is mostly true when the entity receiving the publicity is disadvantaged or is in some form of struggle for attention. Fading actors, mediocre sports stars and untalented musicians need all the publicity they can get which is why nowadays they take their clothes off and show us their dicks. You will be hard pressed to find a nude picture of the stupendously talented Meryl Streep anywhere on this earth since she has been a phenomenally successful actress for more than 30 years and counting.Her body of work speaks for itself so she has no need to take her clothes off for attention.

Attempting the pious look; Martin Ssempa

Unfortunately, for the gay rights struggle in Uganda, Martin Ssempa is getting much needed publicity. It has not been an easy two years for our arch nemesis, what with court cases lost, charges of blackmail brought against him, loss of allies, and the welcome (but predicted) conking out of the Nazi anti-gay bill in Uganda’s Parliament. Indeed it has not been a an easy ten years for the anti gay movement but the last two have especially put them in the dogs’ house, with Martin Ssempa in charge of the messy task of carrying da poo poo. 

So what does an embattled little man whose erstwhile friends have publicly denounced him, who has lost thousands of dollars in funding and who hasn’t graced the airwaves or the front pages in months do? No, possums, he doesn’t take his clothes off because, ahem, though he was once a handsome albeit pint-sized man, the days when he was something to look at naked are way behind him. Besides, in Uganda taking one’s clothes off  for the cameras will have the men in white coats summoned faster than you can say “Oh my God” so that would backfire spectacularly. Martin Ssempa has opted for perhaps his last card – playing the downtrodden man of God.

It is not a coincidence that Ssempa has shown up outside Parliament in priestly robes adorned with a cross. That is an image that is very powerful in a country where priests are still believed to be God’s ambassadors on earth and their every word is lapped up by thousands, sometimes millions. Martin Ssempa is now donning a black chasuble with large purple crosses to make himself look like Jesus the persecuted. In other words, Ssempa is now playing the victim card! In Uganda, the picture (above) will go a long way towards helping him establish the image of the pious, holy man who has been ignored like John the Baptist by sinners, “homosexualitsts” and a cowardly Parliament.

The other people in the picture are but a diversion. The show is about Ssempa and no one else. And so it should be. After all, isn’t he the one who has suffered terrible harm by losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from fundamentalist America for speaking out against homosexuals? Isn’t he the one who is being persecuted by the police for coaching the testimony of young men who accused his rival, Robert Kayanja, of homo-sodomy? Isn’t he the one now standing outside Parliament in black vestments while the rest of Uganda burns because Parliament has refused to pass the Nazi anti-gay bill without which the entire population of Uganda will perish? Isn’t he the one left holding the cross of Jesus, echoing in the wilderness, a la the Rev. John Smallwood in Heavens Above, while everyone else has moved on?

Amen. Amen. Amen.

Do you now see why, if you are a gay Ugandan, this is not exactly great publicity?