Uganda's New Undeground Railroad is for Gays Escaping Christian Extremists

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS NEWS
By TAHLIB

"The Underground Railroad" (1893) by Charles Weber features Quaker abolitionist Levi Coffin and his wife Catherine who helped more than 2,000 slaves escape to freedom. Courtesy of the Cincinnati Art Museum.

UGANDA---During America's Underground Railroad movement of the 1800s, the Quakers are most often credited as the most organized Christian denomination in the effort to bring slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad, and they are doing it again in Africa. This time however, the Quakers are helping to transport Gay Ugandans from persecution, including execution from extremist Christians along a new Underground Railroad. Over the past month, Ugandan activists have reported the horrific murders of LGBT individuals in a rural zone of the country: gay men, lesbians and a transperson. “They were killed by stoning. One who survived (still breathing after stoning) was burnt alive using kerosene/paraffin and a match box,” stated a witness and source to the Friends New Underground Railroad (FNUR), a Quaker solidarity initiative helping LGBT people in Uganda. [link]