The Human Rights Campaign joined forces with Soulforce, a civil rights group seeking freedom from religious and political oppression for the LGBT community, and held a vigil on Sunday to protest fundamentalist pastor Lou Engle’s anti-gay rhetoric and the resultant persecution of LGBT Ugandans.
Activists gathered outside the pastor’s International House of Prayer in Kansas City Sunday to demonstrate unification against Engle’s anti-LGBT message. Over 70,000 individuals signed a petition asking Engle to immediately cease his attacks on the LGBT community and make amends for the violence his words have inspired in Uganda by personally denouncing the country’s current criminalization of homosexuality. Rev. Dr. Cindi Love of Soulforce, gay Ugandanan asylum-seeker Moses Kushaba and others delivered the petition to Engle’s staff immediately following Sunday’s vigil, and received an agreement on Engle’s part to meet at a date to be determined.
Kushaba, forced to leave Uganda because of his sexual orientation, explained his firsthand knowledge of Engle’s impact in his homeland.
“Engle’s The Call and the other American evangelical groups have been exporting homophobia, misinformation and lies about LGBT people for far too long,” Kushaba said. “Their propaganda campaign is part of the reason LGBT Ugandans not only continue to be public targets for violence including mob justice, but could be subjected to the criminalization of their very existence and the sanctioning of unimaginable human rights violations that include the death penalty, or the anti-homosexuality bill that renders every Ugandan a potential criminal.”
Kushaba explained that “mob justice is real in Uganda, and Pastor Lou Engle is one of the people who has played the largest roles in creating that climate. I hope and pray we can convince him to stop perpetuating the harm he has caused and the lives being ruined because of it.”
Human Rights Campaign Religion and Faith Program director Dr. Sharon Groves spoke in concurrence with Kushaba. “We have seen far too much brutality and harm perpetuated against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the name of religion. Now is the time for religious leaders in the US to say no more.”
“We call on all people of faith to claim loudly that it is morally unworthy of us as people to criminalize anyone for who they are,” Groves continued. “We demand that those who have built empires perpetuating a message of hate and terror recognize the damage they have caused and stop using religion to justify bigotry. We must do better. Our faith demands it of us.”
Rev. Dr. Cindi Love of Soulforce joined her allies in demanding an end to Engle’s destructive message. “…. if people of faith are exporting anything to other nations, it ought to be hope, not hate,” Love said.
