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crossposted on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters
Christmas came early for lgbt Ugandans last week.
Martin Ssempa, a pastor in Uganda infamous for being a chief pusher of the country's “Kill the Gays” bill and also for his penchant for showing “scat porn” in church is among eight people who was either detained or sought after an “alleged conspiracy to injure the reputation of Pastor Robert Kayanja of Rubaga Miracle Centre Cathedral, Kampala.”
According to the site Box Turtle Bulletin:
The eight are being charged with filing false accusations against Kayanja, in a bizarre conspiracy to accuse Kayanja of sodomy. As we reported last year, the conspiracy unfolded this way:
Other pastors are jumping onto the “outing” bandwagon to settle scores as well, and the rivalries are so complex that it takes some diagramming to keep it all straight. Here goes: Pastor Solomon Male of Arise for Christ Ministry accused Pastor Robert Kayanja of the Rubaga Miracle Center Cathedral of being a homosexual, along with “a group of other pastors.” Kayanja’s Rubaga Miracle Center is a very large and prosperous megachurch in Kampala. But an apparent friend of Kayanjka, Pastor Joseph Serwadda of the Victory Christian Centre, another megachurch in the Ndeeba section of Kampala which operates two FM stations, accused Male of of being an impostor, saying that he doesn’t even have a church. Kayanja’s personal aide, Chris Muwonge, was allegedly kidnapped and tortured by armed men and held for five days. His captors allegedly wanted him to make a video statement accusing Kayanja of molesting young boys. Kayanja accused his rival, Pastor Michael Kyazze of the Omega Healing Center of being behind the plot. Kyazze’s assistant, Pastor Robert Kayiira was arrested earlier for trying to sneak a laptop computer into Kayanja’s Miracle Center. His close friend? Pastor Solomon Male. Kayanja reportedly believes that Martin Ssempa is involved in the allegations against him as well.
Regarding Ssempa, the Daily Monitor said he is:
accused of hiring Robson Matovu to blackmail Pastor Kayanja. Court heard that Pastor Male reportedly gave Mr Matovu a signed and stamped affidavit implicating Pastor Kayanja while Samson Mukisa was reportedly promised necessities on condition that he would speak publicly on how Pastor Kayanja had sodomised him.
A police report indicates that complaints of sodomy against Pastor Kayanja did not reveal any evidence the offences. “In retracting their statements, the complainants said they had been mobilised to make false accusations against Pastor Kayanja in order to tarnish his name,” reads a report.
The controversy definitely throws a monkey wrench into the claim of those who support the anti-gay Ugandan bill. Supporters, such as Ssempa, have said that the bill was created to protect Ugandans, particularly children, from “gay recruitment.”
However, Box Turtle Bulletin said the following:
Public charges of sodomy are a common way to settle political and other scores in Uganda. Should the proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill become law with its death penalty and other heightened penalties for advocacy on behalf of LGBT people or failure to report gay people to police, such conspiracies will increase and carry far greater dangers.
Besides Ssempa, the others who have been detained or sought after are city advocate Henry Ddungu, pastor Moses Solomon Male, Bob Robert Kayiira, Michael Kyazze, lawyer David Kaggwa, Deborah Kyomuhendo, and David Mukalazi.
UPDATE - According to the Ugandan newspaper New Vision, the police are now looking for Ssempa, but so far, he has eluded them.
Related posts:
Martin Ssempa claims to be misunderstood
Martin Ssempa celebrates his homophobia via a blog
'Kill the gays' bill supporter reduced to showing gay porn in church
5 Comments
I can’t wait for the next exciting episode of As Uganda Turns… maybe they’ll make a mini-series out of this.
Hopefully, some sanity arises in the confusion.
You clearly don’t understand, Alvin.Christians, especially Christian ministers of whatever stripe, are allowed to do anything, anything at all–break any law, commit any crime–as long as they do it in the name of the Lord(TM). Fraud, money laundering, sexual abuse, child molestation, attempted murder…they all get a pass. How dare you criticize a Man of God(TM)?
Presumeably, when Martin needs his scat-porn……to show to his horrified parishioners and to plant on other peoples’ computer systems, he has to go look for them on the net, then download them. And there’s no way of telling that the little creep doesn’t have a few wanks over them before spreading them about. So he’s at all times breaking the laws that he’s vaunting about the place. What a horrible man he is. What a power-hungry, hypocritical, amoral little jerk. Hopefully, this will put a large nail in the coffin of anything he’s ever been associated with.
And they wonder why we call them christians…Religion is the enemy.
Cult leaders like der papenfuehrer, the grand ayatollahs, mormon presidents, religious zionists, Pat Robertson, Ssempa and Rick Warren are the enemies of democracy, science and ethics. So are political misleaders who pander to cultists like Palin, the Clintons, the Bushes, and Obama on the question of same sex marriage.
Religion is a form of insanity composed of equal parts of greed, superstition and ignorance that comes howling straight out of the Dark Ages and prehistory.
The criminal intent of islamists, christers and judaists towards women, GLBT folks, trade unionists and youth is only limited by what they can do to us, not what they want to do to us.
Big cults and the political right have always been the twin pillars of exploitative social systems.
Religion is humankinds greatest tragedy.
When I read that on the 24thI counted that news amongst my Christman presents.