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	On Pastor Kayanja, the Gays and the Church By Gawaya Tegulle Daily Monitor May 23, 2009 http://www.monitor.co.ug/artman/publish/opinions/On_Pastor_Kayanja_the_gays_and_the_church_85248.shtml A few weeks ago I was browsing the web when I came across a man-bite-dog kind of thing. There was this blog - one of hundreds run by homosexuals. And they were up in arms with those accusing Miracle Centre Cathedral’s Pastor Robert Kayanja of being a homosexual and for good measure, was abusing young men. The gays were raving mad for two reasons. First, that Pastor Kayanja had been declared a homosexual whereas to the best of their knowledge he has never been gay. Second, that the fight against Pastor Kayanja was an insult to the homosexual community for the simple reason that there is now a new trend in town: if you want to bring down somebody, just label him a homosexual. In short while the true homosexuals are not afraid to be publicised, they take offence by spades and shovels when their thing is passed around as a big joke, the way it has been done in the Kayanja saga. For the record Pastor Kayanja ain’t no homosexual. Stable family men who are busy in the mission field all the time and move with their wives and children almost every place they go simply cannot be gay. The problem with Kayanja is simple: he just is too successful for many people’s liking and they will look for every excuse imaginable to bring him down. He began small: a young man with not too much formal education who opted to go into ministry instead of pursuing mainstream academics. But within no time he had risen from a literally kiwempe (papyrus reed) shack of a church to an ultra-modern complex called Miracle Centre Cathedral. He spends most of his time globe-trotting, schmoozing with the high and mighty of the world and reaching places few Ugandan pastors even dream of. I am reliably informed he caught up with university education in the United States – where he sells like hot cake as one of Africa’s best preachers. He is close to the First Family, something many ‘wanna-be, Gad bless you’ pastors try their best to achieve…and consistently fall by the wayside. He is one of few people who will access State House without invitation and get ushered in without any trouble and having skipped all formalities. And this is one of his weakest spots as any attack on Kayanja is in many ways a stain on the First Family; so sometimes it is hard to tell whether those who attack him are looking for Kayanja or the First Family. I don’t know about the other Kayanja antagonists, but I can with authority say that Pastor Martin Ssempa, a close friend of mine is not the kind of man who would try to set up Pastor Kayanja. I believe Martin’s involvement in this saga is not because he loves Kayanja less, but that he loves the church more. And herein lies the big question: how should the church have approached this problem. Certainly not in this fashion, as an attack against Kayanja – the poster boy of Uganda’s Pentecostal churches – is a denigration of all born again churches. It brings the gospel of Christ into disrepute and sows discouragement among the flock. The Biblical stipulation is clear in such a matter. The pastors with the first information should have approached Kayanja in confidence and queried him for his side of the story. If Kayanja had proved uncooperative, then they could have involved a bigger committee of pastors from the various born again associations. If this had failed, then in the broader interest of the Church of Christ, these associations could have gone ahead to disassociate themselves from any dealings with Pastor Kayanja. Pastor Kayanja has never been perfect; but then who is? Sometimes he gets excited easily and makes errors of judgment. But he is a man good and Godly…and certainly not gay. Contact: gtegulle@gmail.com
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