Uganda Primate says Barack Obama is ‘unAfrican’

Jerusalem: US Presidential hopeful Barak Obama is un-African, the primate of Uganda said, and advocates moral positions at odds with the religious and cultural values of the continent.Speaking in response to statements made by the candidate’s wife last week that posited a moral equivalency between the push for gay marriage and the civil rights movement, Archbishop Henry Orombi said: “It is distressing that Barack Obama, a fellow African, would promote racial civil rights as morally equivalent to immoral civil behaviour.”

On June 26, Michelle Obama told the Democratic National Committee’s Gay and Lesbian Leadership Council the gay rights movement was the natural successor of the civil rights movements of the 1960s. “We are all only here because of those who marched and bled and died, from Selma to Stonewall, in the pursuit of a more perfect union,” she said.

However, Archbishop Orombi said: “We are Africans and know the difference between moral behaviour and responsibility as opposed to civil rights being compared to homosexuality.” On June 29 he told ReligiousIntelligence.com during the close of the Gafcon Conference in Jerusalem that Anglican Africans were firm in stating that the “unchangeable standard of Christian marriage” was between one man and one woman and that homosexual practices were immoral.

African women saw the push for gay marriage in the US as an assault on the family and the sanctity of marriage, Mrs Gloria Kwashi said. It was simplistic to equate opposition to the American gay agenda with homophobia. “If we say Nigeria is homophobic, it would not be right,” the wife of the Archbishop of Jos, Nigeria said as our “stance is founded upon the Bible.”

While there was considerable pride amongst the African pilgrims to Gafcon over the accomplishments of Barak Obama and his candidacy, it would be a mistake to suppose his social and moral views were supported by all Africans, as homosexuality was a “taboo” in almost all African cultures, Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria explained, and was incompatible with its religious beliefs and cultural mores.