Nigeria’s Anglican Archbishop, Peter Akinola just got some anti-gay back up from Isaac Orama, Bishop of Uyo, Nigeria. Here’s what Orama had to say about gay people during a September 2nd interview: “Homosexuality and lesbianism are inhuman. Those who practice them are insane, satanic and are not fit to live because they are rebels to God’s purpose for man.”
Insane and satanic? No wonder we can’t get a date.
Read what Nigerian gay activist Davis Mac-Iyalla of Changing Attitudes Nigeria had to say in response, after the jump…
As the time draws close for the Nigerian bishops to vote whether or not they will attend the Lambeth Conference, Archbishop Peter Akinola is at work lobbying the bishops of Nigeria to support his personal ideas about the future of the Anglican Communion. Even if bishop Orama needs to reward Akinola and the other bishops who lobbied for him to become a bishop himself, he doesn’t need to step on the head of innocent Gay and Lesbian people.
Changing Attitude Nigeria is surprised that a bishop like Orama uses such language about homosexuality and calls people created in the likeness and image of God satanic. Bishop Orama is from the Niger Delta and knows very well that homosexuality existed in Nigeria even before the advent of western missionaries.
Changing Attitude Nigeria challenges his authority to use those words about us. We ask, as LGBT Anglicans in Nigeria, whether this is his contribution to the Listening Process to which the Communion is committed in the Windsor Report.
Bishop Orama has once more focussed the attention of church and society against an innocent and vulnerable minority of people in a hostile country like Nigeria.
Changing Attitude Nigeria calls on the facilitator for the listening process, Canon Phil Groves, to take note of Bishop Orama’s comments. The Church of Nigeria has been denying our existence and is now using every means and tactic to silence us.
zeami99
It would be helpful with announcements like this to include where we western gay men can either write ihn support of the activists, or send money, or the like. It is frustrating to hear such awful things, and then hear of our brothers courageously standing up, and not knowing how to help at all. many thanks. keep it up.
It would be great to know, too, where to write MSU about the ridiculous choice to include an ignorant unqualified student to gay bash.
Tallskin
Zeami99, the problem is that western gay activist involvement does not seem to be welcome. Our own dear Peter Tatchell here in the UK tried to get OutRage! involved in helping African gays but was told by african gay activists to go boil his arse, as they didn’t want his help.
Mutterings of neo-colonialism etc blah blah. They argued that noises abroad only make things worse for them.