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	Wang Wangamba; Which Pastor Is a Bummer? By Wang w'Angamba The Observer June 3, 2009 http://www.observer.ug/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3627:wang-wangamba-which-pastor-is-a-bummer&catid=46:wang&Itemid=78 A prominent American evangelical preacher was once accused by his wife of sodomising her. She narrated that on the fateful day, she went to bed with her husband as usual. She soon fell asleep, only to be woken up by her husband humping away in the “wrong” place. In his defence, the man of God said that he had sodomised her “by mistake”. He pleaded that since the two “possibilities” were close to each other, he ended up with, or rather in, the wrong one! No one, least of all his wife, bought the silly explanation. The fact that he waited for his wife to fall asleep before “unleashing the dragon” speaks volumes. I was reminded of the story after reading the accusations of sodomy against a leading pastor in Kampala. I, of course, have no problem with sodomy, which is really nothing more than anal and, by some definitions, oral sex. Contrary to what self-styled sex policemen Martin Sempa and Solomon Male would have you believe, sodomy is not the same thing as homosexuality, which I don’t have a problem with either. Preoccupation with who sleeps with whom, when and how is really a matter for voyeurs. The only time it should concern us is when the parties involved are not consenting adults. Which is where, I think, Sempa and Male have completely missed the point. If the alleged victims were forcibly sodomised, we should be talking about rape. If they were underage, we should be talking about child sex-abuse or, in the Ugandan context, defilement. If the good pastor was in the habit of pinching their unwilling bums, we might talk of sexual harassment. The question of the manner in which he wanted to “seal the covenant” is otherwise irrelevant. By putting emphasis on the claim that the alleged victims were “sodomised” and (wrongly) linking that to homosexuality, pastors Sempa and Male seem to suggest that it would have been okay if the victims were girls and the pastor was having vaginal sex with them. In short, the sodomy allegation is not so much against rogue pastors as it is against homosexuals. It is the latest weapon in their fundamentalist war against the “sin” of homosexuality, as they perceive it. Which makes me wonder who the real bummer is. As for the accused pastor, he could always borrow a leaf from his American counterpart and claim, for example, that he only sleepwalked into the beds of his unsuspecting followers. Contact: wang@observer.ug
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