A file photo taken on November 2, 2010 shows a Ugandan street newspaper vendor holding a copy of The Rolling Stone newspaper, which has no relation to the US magazine, in the center of Kampala. The newspaper on November 1 published the names and photos of 14 men it identified as gay in a country where homosexuality can lead to lengthy jail terms and has even prompted calls for the death sentence. David Kato, 43, was an activist with Sexual Minorities Uganda who was pictured and named by Rolling Stone, was murdered on January 26, 2011 at his home outside Kampala.MARC HOFER/AFP / Getty Images
David Kato, a founder of Uganda's gay rights movement, died because the institutions that people expect to do good didn't care whether he lived or died, or how he died. In light of the near-universal endorsement in Uganda of a rights-free existence for gays, the police investigation this week that found Mr. Kato's death was not a hate crime should be treated with extreme skepticism.
Newspapers should be a force for good. But sometimes they do evil, recklessly. Rolling Stone, a Ugandan tabloid not connected to the U.S. magazine, published photographs of Mr. Kato, and other gay Ugandans, with their addresses, and an inciting headline, "Hang them." Another headline read, "We Shall Recruit 1,000,000 Innocent Kids by 2012: Homos."
Not our fault, said the editor, Giles Muhame, when Mr. Kato was beaten to death with a hammer in his home on January 26. "We want the government to hang people who promote homosexuality, not for the public to attack them."
Christian evangelical groups also seemed content to whip up a fury against homosexuals. In particular, U.S. evangelicals held workshops in Uganda in 2009, saying gays aimed to sodomize teenagers and undermine African families. Not our fault, they said, when, soon after, a Ugandan politician introduced an Anti-Homosexual Bill that includes the death penalty for homosexuals. And the Minister of Ethics and Integrity once said, "Homosexuals can forget about human rights."
Evangelicals need to recognize the dangers of throwing matches of ignorance on a tinderbox of hate.
David Kato knew he might die, but bravely continued fighting for his beliefs. If his death was not the fault of the newspaper that called for him to be hung, or the government that discussed the death penalty for homosexuals, or the evangelicals, who spread word of the "evil" of the gay-rights movement, perhaps it was Mr. Kato's fault, for being born into a world that would not accept him.