Acts 8 is a short scene doing several jobs. The official is a court treasurer of the Kandake — a dynastic title of the queens of Kush, in what is now Sudan, not a personal name and not Ethiopia in the modern sense. He is a eunuch, which under Deuteronomy 23 barred him from the assembly, and he is reading Isaiah, which promises eunuchs a name better than sons. His question, what is to prevent me from being baptised, is the first time in Acts the barrier comes down for someone outside the categories, and it is answered before the church has held any council about it. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church reads the passage as the beginning of African Christianity and of its own line, though the historical church of Aksum dates to Frumentius and King Ezana around 330. The scene is also used, increasingly and pointedly, in the current argument about who may be included: it is a sexual minority by the law's own definition asking whether the rule applies, and being baptised on the spot.