For God and My Moral Compass

Two men in the Christian nation of Uganda are scheduled for trial next month; one is charged with "having sexual knowledge of a person against the order of nature", and the other with being a consenting adult. Uganda's president is an Anglican, and hence the sort of Christian whom the moral contortions of Rowan Williams and Justin Welby are designed to appease; in February he signed the latest anti-gay legislation, which imposes a fourteen-year prison term for first-time offenders against the order of nature and a life sentence for "aggravated homosexuality". Perhaps it will reassure some that the present suspects have not been charged under the new legislation but under the 1950 penal code, which also prescribes life imprisonment for homosexuality and which originated with the same civilising influence that hounded Alan Turing to death eight years before Uganda gained independence.