On Feb 6, St Paul’s Anglican Church held a service to honour the life and legacy of David Kato, a prominent member of Uganda’s gay community who was found murdered in his Kampala home on Jan 26.
“I think there are a lot of people out there, be they gay or straight, who got really hurt by what happened in Uganda,” says Rev Markus Dünzkofer, who organized the event. “I think to have a forum for them to come and celebrate their solidarity and their common strife for justice, to provide a forum for that was really important to me.”
Rev Margaret Cornish hopes the service will shine light on what’s happening in Uganda.
“So, it’s important to me that David Kato’s work, that people know that this is happening in Africa, that people of sexual minorities are being persecuted,” she says.
Richard Van Delft, a warden at St Paul’s, feels the evening served as a reminder that gay and lesbian people in Vancouver enjoy liberties and freedoms that do not exist in places like Uganda. He describes Kato as a “modern-day martyr for all gay, lesbian and transgender people.”
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