Roger Ross Williams Quotes

Why so much interest in Uganda? Why are American conservatives lobbing for hate? The answer is that they feel they have lost the culture war here at home and are exporting their outdated ideas to the developing world.

Uganda can greatly benefit from American evangelicals if they separate the Scott Lively extremists from the Rick Warren-type of moderate evangelicals.

They embrace them because they represent everything that America represents: money, power, and freedom. Why else would you see an old Ugandan woman respectfully listen to a 22-year-old white girl from America telling her what she should or shouldn't believe?

After I read about Uganda's now famous "kill the gays" bill, I wanted to explore the religious forces behind it. As a gay man, I wanted to understand the folks who wanted to kill me and why.

Someone sent an email to Reverend Joanna Watson [an American missionary] saying that I'm gay, and she sent it to all the anti-gay pastors in Uganda. One of them said, "We're going to take care of this guy." When I was confronted by them I didn't know what they were going to do, but they decided to pray over me. They said they were going to cure me. That didn't work, of course.

I didn't know the extent of American obsession with Uganda until I got there and saw it. You ride in the plane and it's filled with American missionaries. Uganda is the No. 1 destination for American missionaries in the world.

Someone told me once that I'm worse than a dog, I'm the scum of the earth, so for me it was draining.

I saw footage of a well-known pastor holding a Bible and saying, "This book says homosexuals should be killed."

American missionaries have free rein in Uganda. They can go anywhere they please - schools, hospitals, parliament.

I grew up in a Southern Baptist-style church with a choir, a band, and music, but I've been asking myself my whole life, "Why is my own church, my own community, rejecting me because of my sexuality?".

I always compare young missioners to the kids who naively signed up to go to Iraq to fight terrorism. They are just the foot soldiers in the spiritual war that Mike Bickle and Lou Engle are waging against what they consider sin. They will say it is biblical truth, but the Bible says many things, and you don't see anyone saying that slavery is okay or that we should not eat shellfish. Why the fascination with sex?

As Mike Bickle said to me, there is a spiritual battle going on in the world, and he believes that in America marriage between a man and a woman will become illegal. He believes there will be a war. He believes it'll begin in schools and the Christian kids will rise up and slay the non-Christian kids. This was an on-camera interview!

The musicians are good and their music is catchy - it pulls the kids in in droves. Mike Bickle admitted to me that the music was a big part of their success at attracting young people.

I agree that Scott Lively is marginal, and that is exactly why evangelicals must not let him speak for them. But in Uganda, Scott Lively is allowed to address the parliament for five hours, and his hate-filled message led directly to the anti-homosexuality bill.