Thoughts on Uganda's Anti-LGBTI Laws

A few weeks ago, the east African country of Uganda passed new anti-LGBTI laws.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed the Anti-Homosexuality Bill into law after parliament amended it so that it doesn’t criminalize those who merely identify as LGBTQ. Homosexual acts were already illegal in Uganda but now anyone convicted of homosexual acts faces life imprisonment and potentially even the death penalty if they have sexual relations with a minor or knowingly infect someone with HIV. Consequently, Uganda now has some of the harshest anti-LGBTIQ laws in the world.

I should note too that the Anglican fellowship of confessional provinces and diocese known as GAFCON has rebuked the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby for expressing “grief” and “sorrow” at the Anglican Church of Uganda’s support for these anti-LGBTIQ laws. I understand critiquing Welby for departing from the Church of England’s norms of marriage and sexuality, but I don’t understand not supporting his opposition to Uganda’s new anti-homosexual allows.

Some Christians in the West have celebrated Uganda’s new laws as a return to biblical norms such as those found in Leviticus:

If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads. (Leviticus 20:13).

But not everyone is thrilled, even US Senator Ted Cruz expressed dismay at these laws. Cruz tweeted:

This Uganda law is horrific & wrong.
Any law criminalizing homosexuality or imposing the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” is grotesque & an abomination.
ALL civilized nations should join together in condemning this human rights abuse.

Ted Cruz defending gay Africans was not on my 2023 bingo card.

So what do we think about this?