He’s right: it’s a shame that Rowan so often employs words to obscure what he is thinking rather than clarify it, though.

Rowan Williams places the blame for David Kato’s murder squarely on those in Uganda who routinely vilify homosexuals with – words.

From here:

Dr Williams said Mr Kato’s murder illustrated the fact “words have results”.

“You cannot go around sharing information about the identity of proposed lesbian and gay persons and urging people to ostracise them or worse ‘Hang Them’ as in the headlines of one of the Ugandan newspapers,” he said, speaking to the media at the Emmaus retreat centre in Swords, Co Dublin.

“You cannot do that without taking responsibility for the consequences. Language which demonises gays and lesbians has consequences.”

As it turns out, it is quite probable that Kato’s murder had less to do with inflammatory anti-homosexual newspaper articles than it did with a criminal whom Kato paid – not enough apparently – to have sex with him.

From here:

“We have taken him to Mukono Magistrate’s Court to record an extrajudicial statement,” the source said. “He told us that he killed Kato after he failed to give him a car, a house and money he promised as rewards for having sex with him,” the source said.

Kato is alleged to have bailed the suspect out of Kawuga Prison on January 24, where he been remanded on charges of theft of a mobile phone. The suspect told police that he stayed with Kato for two days. He accused the deceased of having sex with him and promising to pay him during the period.

The suspect allegedly told the police he got tired of having sex with Kato but the latter would not have any of his excuses. “The suspect said he left the bedroom, went to a store and picked a hammer which he used to hit him [Kato] while he was still in bed,” the source said.

Rowan’s statements aren’t particularly surprising: at the Dublin Primates’ meeting no-one was allowed to talk about homosexuality at all, so the subject had to be introduced somehow.

Katharine Jefferts-Schori laments:

His murder deprives his people of a significant and effective voice, and we pray that the world may learn from his gentle and quiet witness, and begin to receive a heart of flesh in place of a heart of stone.

Not only that, of course: those imprisoned for stealing mobile phones have one less person to bail them out as a gentle and quiet witness – or for sex.

The Ugandan murder rate is around nine people per day which means that on the day Kato was killed, eight other people were too. There were no denunciations from prominent Anglicans for the other eight murders; so much for inclusion.