Christian leaders from both sides of the human sexuality debate are converging in their opposition to Uganda’s “Anti-Homosexuality” Bill. The bill, which has drawn widespread international concern, is about to be debated by Uganda’s parliament.

It seeks to toughen the country’s already drastic laws against homosexuality by:

• Reaffirming the life sentence that’s already on the books for conviction of homosexuality – and extending the definition of sexual activity to include “touching another person with the intention of committing the act of homosexuality.”

• Criminalising all advocacy on behalf of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people with fines and imprisonment – and making it a crime for any MP to seek to overturn such legislation in the future.

• Criminalising the act of entering a same-sex marriage abroad with lifetime imprisonment.

• Forcing friends or family members to immediately report Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people to police or face fines or imprisonment themselves.

Anglican leaders in these islands last month drew the Ugandan legislation to churchgoers' attention and invited them to pray about it.

And that same concern is evident in the wider Anglican world. After a period in which the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams attempted to work beneath the radar against the proposed law, he has spoken publically of his concern to the Daily Telegraph:

“Overall, the proposed legislation is of shocking severity and I can’t see how it could be supported by any Anglican who is committed to what the Communion has said in recent decades,” says Dr Williams.

“Apart from invoking the death penalty, it makes pastoral care impossible – it seeks to turn pastors into informers.”

Which makes the public stand taken by Canon Gideon Byamugisha, of Uganda, all the more noteworthy.

Canon Byamugisha told Britain’s Guardian newspaper that if the anti-homosexuality bill became law, it would amount to “state-legislated genocide against a specific community of Ugandans.” He said Ugandan politicians were using gay people as scapegoats for Uganda’s social problems.

"They [politicians] are exploiting the traditional and cultural abhorrence to same-sex relationships to their advantage.

“They know that if they criminalise homosexuals, homosexual tendencies and homosexual acts, they stand a better chance of winning votes from the majority of religious followers and leaders, because most of us may not be able to distinguish what may be considered 'unacceptable' – from the point of view of religious and cultural belief and opinion – from what is 'criminal'…".

Meanwhile, one of the Anglican Communion’s best known liberal voices, The Rev Dr Giles Fraser – Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral in London – has, in the course of a Church Times editorial urging church leaders to denounce the Ugandan legislation, publicly tipped his hat to the conservative Bishop of Bristol, the Rt Rev Mike Hill, for so doing.

Bishop Hill, whose diocese has a link with Uganda, spoke up about the bill at his recent diocesan synod: “Whatever view we take of the issues on the human-sexuality debate,” said Bishop Hill, “this piece of legislation is so pernicious and so unpleasant, that I hope that Christians on both sides of the debate would stand as one and say that this is unacceptable.’

Bishop Hill told his synod that he thought the application of capital punishment to gay and lesbian people is “wholly, totally and bizarrely unacceptable”.

Expressions of concern about the proposed legislation have come from international leaders of other conservative churches, too.

Pastor Rick Warren, for example, of Saddleback Church in Southern California, who was chosen to take part in President Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony, and who has become an influential figure in many African countries, has also condemned what he calls “this terrible bill” in a video statement to Ugandan pastors.

“As an American pastor,” said Warren, “it is not my role to interfere with the politics of other nations. But it is my role to speak out on moral issues.” He told the Ugandan pastors that the bill was “unjust, extreme and un-Christian towards homosexuals.”