The Bishop of Washington, the Rt. Rev. John B. Chane, has lambasted the Primate of the Anglican Church of Nigeria for endorsing a revision to Nigeria’s sodomy laws which Bishop Chane said will deny “gay citizens the freedoms to assemble and petition their government.”

Writing in the Washington Post on Feb. 26, Bishop Chane also called on conservative Episcopalians to disassociate publicly from the Most Rev. Peter J. Akinola’s “attack on the human rights of a vulnerable population.”

The “Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act” before the Nigerian Federal Assembly would bar “marriage between persons of the same sex” and the “adoption of children” by same-sex couples. The act forbids churches and other ecclesial communities from performing same-sex marriages or blessings and would also ban “gay clubs” in schools and in government-affiliated institutions.

The “publicity, procession or public show of same-sex amorous”, or erotic homosexual literature would also be banned under the proposed law. If enacted, violators could face penalties which include a term of imprisonment of up to five years.

Bishop Chane said Archbishop Akinola’s support for this proposed law breached the primates' February 2005 communiqué that condemned the “victimization or diminishment of human beings whose affections happen to be ordered towards people of the same sex.”

Calling Archbishop Akinola perhaps the most powerful member of a global alliance of Church leaders opposed to the normalization of homosexuality for Christians, Bishop Chane said “civil libertarians” and others in the U.S. should be aware of and opposed to “the archbishop and his movement.”

The proposed Nigerian law “prohibits essentially any public or private activity in any way related to homosexuality” Bishop Chane alleged, and Archbishop Akinola’s “support for this law violates numerous Anglican Communion documents that call for a “listening process” involving gay Christians and their leaders as well as the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights

Bishop Chane challenged conservatives in the United States to repudiate Archbishop Akinola over the proposed legislation. Failure to do so, he said, “as a matter of logic” could be explained by one of only two theories: “[either] because they support this sort of legislation, or because the rights of gay men and women are not worth the risk of tangling with an important alliance.”

A spokesman for the Church of Nigeria, Canon Akintunde Popoola, disputed this characterization, arguing Bishop Chane misconstrued the text of the bill and Archbishop Akinola’s role in the legislative process. “Archbishop Peter to my knowledge is yet to comment [publicly] on the bill. I have said we welcome it because we view homosexuality as ‘against the norm’.”

While banning ‘gay clubs’ in “institutions from secondary to the tertiary level or other institutions in particular” and “generally, by government agencies,” the proposed law is silent as to the status of private gay clubs.

The proposed law should also be seen in light of the wider conflict between civil law and Shariah law in Nigeria, Canon Popoola said. Under existing “Islamic law” in effect in “some parts of the country,” the acts covered by the proposed law currently “stipulate the death penalty,” he said.

Speaking to delegates at the World Council of Churches on Feb. 17, the Archbishop of Canterbury declined to defend or condemn the proposed Nigerian legislation, saying “there is a difference between what might be said theologically about patterns [of behavior] and what is said about human and civil rights.”

It is a “real challenge” to “give effect to the listening process in situations where gay people are actively persecuted,” the Most Rev. Rowan Williams said. However, “the primates have said, more than once, that they deplore such activities, corporately.”

The “question is whether their churches” can find “ways of acting on that recognition on the wrongness of persecution,” he said.

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