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Loading ...Ugandan gays protest for rights
04.01.2009 2:22pm EDT
(Kampala) A small group of LGBT rights supporters braved government censure and public condemnation to denounce Uganda’s harsh laws against homosexuality in a first-ever demonstration.
Sex between two people of the same sex already is a criminal offense in Uganda – punishable by life imprisonment – although there are no records of any recent convictions.Last October the government announced it would expand the law to make it a criminal offense to be gay.
“We want it to become law in that if someone is a homosexual or confesses to being a gay or lesbian, then he is a criminal,” said Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo at a news conference announcing the bill.
Last week for several days hundreds of protestors staged anti-gay rallies, accusing gays of attempting to convert schoolchildren to homosexuality.
On Tuesday about 20 gays and lesbians staged a rally in the capital, Kampala.
One woman said she was publicly stripped naked and taunted by a pastor and his congregation as they attempted to exorcise her.
“That did not stop me from being a lesbian,” she said.
Uganda also has been criticized by international human rights groups for its abuse of gays and lesbians.
The government later said it had no intention of either repealing the sodomy law or dropping the bill to make any public display of being gay a crime.
“Uganda is a Christian country” Buturo told reporters, adding that the country ” loves gays and homosexuals” but hates their activities.
In 2007, Uganda’s leading Muslim cleric called for gays to be rounded up and marooned on an island in Lake Victoria until they die.
Sheikh Ramathan Shaban Mubajje told reporters of his plan following a much publicized meeting with President Yoweri Museveni.
“I asked President Museveni to get us an island on Lake Victoria and we take these homosexuals and they die out there,” Mubajje said. “If they die there then we shall have no more homosexuals in the country.”
Mubajje’s remarks followed similar threats by other Islamic leaders.
Muslim Tabliqh Youth announced a plan to form an ‘Anti-Gay Squad’ to fight homosexuality in Uganda.
Sheikh Multah Bukenya, a senior cleric in the Tabliqh Organization, was quoted during prayers at Noor Mosque in Kampala as saying that his followers are “ready to act swiftly and form this squad that will wipe out all abnormal practices like homosexuality in our society.”
Anti-gay attacks are commonplace in Uganda.
A coalition of Christian and Muslim religious groups filled a downtown stadium in 2007 demanding mass arrests of gays.
The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission following the rally said that it had uncovered evidence that the Bush administration had funded groups in Uganda that actively promote violence and discrimination against lesbians and gay men.
Among those receiving money, according to US government records, was Uganda Muslim Tabliqh, and the Makerere University Community Church,
The church’s leader, Pastor Martin Ssempa, was a leading organizer of the anti-gay rallies in Kampala.
Ssempa and his coalition, which includes Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, and Evangelicals, also have threatened the safety of Ugandan LGBT rights activists by posting their names, photos and addresses on a Web site.
All of this recent “anti-gay” activity started soon after a born-again christian “confessed” to being gay and converting school children. Does it matter that it does not make sense? no really… That how it is…
Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, in conjunction with pontifical nonsense are doing a great witch-hunting job, diverting resources and destroying successful HIV prevention. Such irresponsible and dangerous views are wiping out years, past and future, of HIV prevention.
MNBear, you seem to be having trouble balancing a pseudo-intellectual pose with sloppy pseudo-deconstruction.
Is that what you meant by “hipster cachet”? I’ll have to study up so I can match the presented standard. 
@ Drewski – The statement that “the shame rests on European colonialism” does not *automatically* carry the racist meaning “these people just can’t do any better”. It COULD be rooted in that odious mindset, but we can’t know with any certainty just from the surface of the statement.
For all we know, the statement could even carry a positive meaning – e.g. “Uganda has bought into a wrong-headed idea that someone else sold them, which is a pretty common human mistake; I trust that their natural selves are better than this and will clear up eventually”.
Or it might just be face-value: a straightforward factual assertion, with zero political motive or personal animus in any direction, that the speaker believes Ugandan homophobia to derive originally from 19th-century European ideas. (This doesn’t exactly strain credibility; remember Oscar Wilde?)
But I fully realize it carries a certain hipster cachet to automatically assume the worst and pop off with formulaic, possibly-unfounded accusations of racism… so I’ll stop here and let you carry on.
@ Bentham–sorry, but do you realize what a condescending (and ultimately racist) gesture it is to put Ugandan homophobia down to “European colonialism”? You’re saying that Ugandans simply don’t have the ability to do better. Uganda’s had 47 years of independence, and it has recovered (largely) from dictatorship and civil war. It hasn’t recovered from the impulse to let religion have its toxic way. Like many former colonies, Uganda is far more socially conservative than its former master (the UK). Ugandans are fully capable of choosing a better path–and please note that, across Africa, homosexuality is widely considered a Western (or European, or white) concept, alien to native culture. That didn’t come from the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the third Marquess of Thistletwat. So please stop looking for a bogeyman and let Ugandans be responsible for their bias. Otherwise, when you say “they can’t help it,” you’re arguing the same thing that a white supremacist would, and I don’t think that’s what you mean to say, is it?
@ Samantha–Hell yes!
How utterly sad, and the shame rests on European colonialism. The gays and lesbians who are now demonstrating and demanding their human rights will go down in history as heroes against gross injustice.
Just advice the government of Uganda to take the gay Ugandans to Migingo Island. That way they will be in the less hostile Kenya.
I’m amazed by the courage of those gay and lesbian people who rallied for their rights. They are very brave.
Friends in Kampala… will see if they know/heard anything of this.
The above mentioned Martin Ssempa, cheerleader for the anti-gay mobs in Uganda is the same man who is the buddy of Rev. Rich Warren, pal to Pres. Obama. “By their fruits ye shall know them”!