But homosexuality was around in those parts before Christian missionaries went in and preached Bible literalism.
It’s Bible literalists who conveniently forget that the Bible condones all kinds of things they might frown on these days, slavery being one of them, cruel and unusual punishments another.
So it’s refreshing to read an African writer in Britain’s Guardian, Davis Mac-Iyalla, a Nigerian activist, whose article of a few days ago concludes:
Some conservative Christians are obsessed with reading the Bible literally, trying to reconcile conflicting texts which are against one another. They read Genesis, Leviticus and St Paul and claim that certain verses prove that God judges and condemns everyone who engages in any form of same-sex activity. On the basis of this reading, countries like Uganda propose introducing life imprisonment and the death penalty for gay people. Schism and heresy are nothing in comparison with somebody using the Good Book as such a terrifying weapon against us. That is the greatest blasphemy against God.
He’s a Christian, and a gay one to boot, so you would expect him to take this line. But it often takes someone from outside the closed bigoted mindset of the loopy end of Christianity to shine a light on the subject.
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