"Christianity Today reports that David Zac Niringiye, the Church of Uganda’s assistant bishop of Kampala, says that American Christians should ***cultivate relationships*** before condemning the proposed legislation."

They just better NOT be same-sex (spousal) relationships! >:-/

This section blew my mind:

My considered reading of Scripture and my considered understanding of today's culture is that the application of the Scripture, the application of the spirit of the Scripture in today's time would seem to disallow death as a legitimate penalty for any offense. We will not deny that the Scriptures seem to allow the death penalty. In the culture in which the Scriptures were written it seems that there was an allowance. I would say that in applying the same Scripture today, it seems that the culture is so different from then that we would say [we need] the application of the principle of grace. My view is that the death penalty is not a legitimate sentence

Isn't that the argument that gets ignored or derided when we talk about homosexuality?!?

“Christians, Muslims, and Roman Catholics”? That's odd. I thought Roman Catholics "were" Christians.
Equating all forms of homosexual activity, including consensual acts between rational adults, with rape, murder and other crimes is loathsome.
I see Uganda and the People's Republic of China are using the same talking points coach. When faced with harsh criticism about their treatment of GLBT people (Uganda) or Tibetans (China) they say that Western societies don't understand their culture. I say there are universal norms that even Exodus and Charles Colson agree with.
And the repeated plea that people act behind the scenes? While I appreciate the fact that Western reproach can backfire and carries historical baggage, good-old-boy backroom “tsk, tsking” has the convenient advantage that each side can pretend something has been done, when nothing need have taken place at all. Backroom chats have the further advantage that they can be ignored with impunity.
Lastly, quit interfering with internal matters of the Episcopal Church and I'll (depending on the action) not interfere with Ugandan politics.

Simon, the European Parliament link is flawed. It needs an "h" in front of "ttp".

Sorry, now fixed.
S.

"You must go beyond laws. Laws simply reflect where societies are at. For me, this is the debate. It is not right that Western societies should impose cultural norms and values upon us.
- Assistant Bp. of Kampala (A.C. of Uganda) -

Laws simply reflect where societies are at - this is true, and Uganda is still behind the times. It could be said that not just culture but justice and common human rights are at issue here.

It is true, also, that Uganda has absolutely no right to impose it's own cultural norms and values on Western societies.

This seems to spell out the necessity of the need for a contextual understanding of 'Church'. This is also a reason why the Covenant will not work!

I havent seen Pastor Martin Ssempa's response to Rick Warren's pastoral letter here.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/special/pdf/1217ssempaletter.pdf

BBC World Service had a package about the Uganda Legislation with an interview with David Bahati, the sponsor of the bill.

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/globalnews/globalnews_20091218-0500a.mp3

About 6:00 in.

"Christianity Today reports that David Zac Niringiye, the Church of Uganda’s assistant bishop of Kampala, says that American Christians should ***cultivate relationships*** before condemning the proposed legislation."

Absolutely, that's the principle behind the listening process. Uganda should try it out some time instead of just condemning their own lgbt people to death.

should cultivate relationships

Well, they knew when and what Lambeth was, but they took themselves off to GAFCON instead, so don't give us it.

I, too, noted that the general form of the argument for reconsidering whether an automatic death penalty proclaims God in our modern era and cultures is quite parallel to the typical form of the typical Anglican argument for change in our views of queer folks, sexuality in general, and human embodiment overall - given the fast changing science that affects and grounds all three domains of believers weighing what a faithful yet intelligent Anglican view might be.

So, Africans can no longer just get away with preaching: Your western queer stuff just doesn't compute. If you can follow the typical Anglican change methods that combine scripture, tradition, and reason as regards death penalty controversies; you can darn well follow it well enough to at least understand how western Anglican believers can differ so significantly from you about queer folks and such.

This antigay cat is now out of the African homophobic bag that has repeatedly told us, Queer stuff is simply unthinkable to all Africans.

So far as relational links and implications preceeding mutual discernments, the new Uganda law now reaches us all who live in the west simply because it proposes to punish queer folks and straight allies for any occasion wherein somebody happens to Come Out and pair bond, anywhere on the planet. That little item in particular reeks of USA religious right Domininist over-reach; in fact the whole proposed African antigay stuff is innately anti-human-rights, just as the bishop suspects when he hints that given African basics, human rights is not a set of concepts that can even apply to queer folks. As the new pending law makes clear, human rights does not by this definition, apply, to any straight folks who are related to such queer folks, either. A bad business.

Simon, my source for the Church of Scotland statement was,
http://www.truthwinsout.org/blog/2009/12/5435/