Uganda: Bloggers discuss anti-gay bill

The Ugandan anti gay bill has been tabled in parliament and now it awaits the president Yoweri Museveni to sign and make homosexuality officially illegal. The previous code was not clear but now the bill called “The anti homosexuality Bill 2009” tabled by a member of parliament David Bahati which states that any homosexuality act or tendencies might face the death penalty or face life imprisonment. The Ugandan writes:

The multiple laws that I will be breaking as soon as the president signs this law. Well, our detractors had already said that we would be stiffed with a tougher law, but this goes way beyond that. If I attempt to commit the offense… (god, the number of times that I have made passes and they have been rejected!) Each of those times was worth 7 years in jail. Good heavens!!!! Before, we could be liable to life imprisonment. gug hereby declares that, when the President of the Republic signs this law, gug will be liable to the death penalty… because I and my lover are serial offenders, breaking this law.

The bill further prohibits adoption by gay couples; any person who aids, promotes counsels any acts of homosexuality in any way will face up to seven years imprisonment, or risk a fine of sh100m. It states the ill effects of homosexuality as:

Research indicates that the homosexuality has a variety of negative consequences including higher incidences of violence, sexually transmitted diseases, and use of drugs. The higher incidence of separation and break-up in homosexual relationships also creates a highly unstable environment for children raised by homosexuals through adoption or otherwise, and can have profound psychological consequences on those children. In addition, the promotion of homosexual behavior undermines our traditional family values.

Given Uganda’s historical, legal, cultural and religious values which maintain that the family, based on marriage between a man and a woman is the basic unit of society. This Bill aims at strengthening the nation’s capacity to deal with emerging internal and external threats to the traditional heterosexual family. These threats include: redefining human rights to elevate homosexual and transgender behavior as legally protected categories of people.
There is also need to protect our children and youths who are made vulnerable to sexual abuse and deviation as a result of cultural changes, uncensored information technologies, parentless child developmental settings and increasing attempts by homosexuals to raise children in homosexual relationships through adoption, foster care, or otherwise.

Producers, publishers and distributors of material containing homosexuality especially if a business, an NGO will have its certificate or registration canceled and the director will face seven years in prison. That includes gay blogs in Uganda:

Poor sympathizers. You are not left to love us. No, all lovers of gays, and gays in Uganda will suffer, and be punished by this law. Any press conferences? Not by gay Ugandans. You see, we are a pariah people that will never be like all other Ugandans. Ha ha ha ha ha!
Oh, the gayuganda blog is one of the things which are illegal, as per that bill. I am furiously promoting homosexuality on this blog, complaining about a law like this. So, 5 years in prison, and my (non existent) bank balance will be set back by 100M Uganda shillings…! And the people who dare to give us condoms and lubricant for sex… Or, if you dare to have an HIV prevention program for homosexuals in Uganda… or even try to teach safer sex. Well, the penalties are stiff. Very stiff. Jail, and jail and other things.

Here are the objective of the bill.

3.1. The objectives of the Bill

The objectives of the Bill are:

(a) To protect marriage as that only between a man and a woman in Uganda;

(b) To prohibit homosexual behavior and related practices in Uganda as they constitute a threat to the traditional family;

(c) To safeguard the health of Ugandan citizens from the negative effects of homosexuality and related practices;

(d) To establish progressive legislation protective of the traditional family that can serve as a model for other countries;

(e) To prohibit ratification of any international treaties, conventions, protocols and declarations which are contrary or inconsistent with the provisions of this Act;

(f) To ensure that no international instruments to which Uganda is already a party can be interpreted or applied in Uganda in a way that was never intended at the time the document was created;

(e) To withdraw from any international agreements to which Uganda already is a party, or file reservations to them, which are re-interpreted to include protection for homosexual behavior, or that promote same-sex marriage, or that call for the promotion or teaching about homosexuality as being healthy, normal, or an acceptable lifestyle choice, or that seek to establish sexual behavior, sexual orientation, or gender identity, or sexual minorities as legally protected categories of people; and

(f) To prohibit Uganda from becoming a party to any new international instruments that expressly include protection for homosexual behavior; promote same-sex marriage; call for the promotion or teaching about homosexuality or homosexual relations as being healthy, normal, or an acceptable lifestyle choice; and/or seek to establish sexual behavior, sexual orientation, gender identity or sexual minorities as legally protected categories of people

Gay Ugandan is urging you to take this cause with him and asks you if he deserves to die because of this:

If you are outside the country, why, that is very good. Your congregation can be made aware of all the good things that some Christians in Uganda wish some sinners called gay Ugandans. I am sure your outrage will help. A letter, a protest match, questions to leaders of Uganda, religious and otherwise traveling outside the country. This is a moral question, how can they justify killing me because I am gay, living in a gay relationship with another gay man?

# Ok, what of gay people in other countries. You are our friends. Yes, we dare to ask our gay brothers and sisters for help, especially when our countrymates believe we should be patriotic enough to ‘die’ in the name of their moral uprightness, for god and country.
Tell your local gay group about it.
Organise protests, big and small. Educate any who doesnt know about it.
Write letters of protest. Be courteous, (the framer of the bill says that we homosexuals want to kill him. He says we have already written him ‘threatening’ letters.)

Afrogay another Ugandan blogger compares the Ugandan to the government to the Nazis, he says the time to flag down the bill is now:

Again, as I have argued here and elsewhere, we are best advised to keep our powder dry for the real battle if the bill is ever passed and signed into law. So, I for one don't plan on saying too much about the nuts and bolts of what is wrong with it. And the reason is simple: if we point out what is wrong with it now, our detractors will use what we say to clean up the bill. Best then to shout foul as loud as we can on the discriminatory elements of the bill without guiding them around the glaring technical, legal, constitutional and human rights minefield they are sleep-walking towards with this bill.

A Nigerian blogger Anengiyefa thinks the bill is flawed and the panel who made the bill are ignorant about homosexuality, He says homosexuality cannot be an offense, you cannot punish someone for having sexual feelings for another person:

Mr Bahati goes on to demand the death penalty for what he calls “aggravated homosexuality”. I read this and I wondered if the said Mr Bahati has ever had the opportunity to sit inside a classroom in his life, given that unless he is starkly illiterate, he ought to know that there are no law books in any Common Law jurisdiction, (including Uganda), that refer to an offense known as ‘homosexuality’. Homosexuality cannot be an offense! You cannot make it an offense and punish a person for having feelings of sexual and emotional attraction towards others of the same gender. You cannot prove ‘homosexuality’ in a court of law to the standard of proof that is required in a criminal court.

Anengiyefa sees that Uganda has just seen hypocrisy of MPs who have unified and are ready to pass a law victimizing homosexuality in the name of morality: this beats the purpose why the system is so anxious to criminalize consensual sex amongst two adults of the same gender and omitting important issues like ethnic violence, tribalism, AIDS, child rape etc:

This outbreak of frenzied homophobia is the epitome of the hypocrisy that pervades political life in Africa. At a time when expensive legislative time should be judiciously expended on the issues that really matter to the people of the country; when Ugandan lawmakers and the Ugandan government should be concerned about the welfare of vulnerable Ugandans, (including those same-gender loving men and women in their society, who are susceptible to wanton physical abuse and discrimination); when the Ugandan authorities should be looking to protect those of the country's citizens whose welfare is their responsibility; when the challenges that face our continent in this 21st Century are enormous; what we hear of instead is an Anti-Homosexuality Bill being introduced to Parliament. This bill is deemed necessary according to the MP David Bahati who introduced it. He claims that the purpose of the bill is to protect children and the “traditional family”.

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  • JoeS

    Same Sex Marriage is vulnerable to fraud especially in the United States. Twenty years ago President Reagan gave amnesty to about 20 million illegal aliens. according to study, majority of these illegal alieans committed fraud before even had the right to live in America by fraud marriages, whereby they pay US citizens big amount of money to bring them legally in America. If same sex is legalized, it would be much much easier for people to petition their friends, love ones or even relatives.

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  • UGANDA MY HEART WEEPS FOR YOU!
    Uganda, Uganda, my heart weeps for you! For you kill, murder, and imprison the innocent (those who express love differently) in the name of The Righteous One, but it is clear that you do not know Him!

    Like America, you label them pedophiles and child molesters, yet continue to close your eyes to the true heterosexual offenders, allowing them to continually rape your children and infect them with AIDS, foolishly believing that this will cure them from the pandemic.

    It has been said that you freed yourself from the tyranny and oppression of a king (Mwanga) who was demented, greedy, self-serving and who defiled the people and if these things be true, then this is good! But you forgot that even though he was said to be corrupt and accused of raping the people both physically and emotionally for years, still we must judge each human being by their own conduct, character, and deeds, and not punish the innocent for another’s sins.

    Uganda, Uganda, my heart weeps for you because even though the rain falls frequently upon your land in the south and beautiful lakes run through your northern region, they have not cleansed you from your transgressions for you are still blinded by hatred, fear, and intolerance, and cannot see that the sun rises upon the just and the unjust, so that all men may be wooed to the Creator by love and mercy and not by hatred and discrimination!

    For hundreds of years other nations robbed you of your wealth, stole your children and carried them away to foreign lands and enslaved them. Even today, in many regions of your country you suffer from extreme poverty because of usury and exploitation from men who lusted after your riches, saw you could not defend yourself, and carried them away to distant lands.

    You must be very careful lest the handwriting of God also appear in judgment for your offenses and likewise be written upon your walls and inscribed in your Constitution now laced with fear and intolerance, having been saturated by the influence of misguided, self-seeking American Evangelists, these words spoken by the prophet Daniel: “MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN” The interpretation:

    “God has numbered your kingdom, and finished it; TEKEK: You have been weighed in the balances, and found wanting; PERES: Your kingdom has been divided, and given to another!”

    Thousands of you marched in your city streets to rid yourself of a sin that you say will most certainly bring the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah upon your land; but like the Scribes and the Pharisees of Jesus’ day, legalism and an incorrect interpretation of the Holy Scriptures have blinded you.

    Because of your hatred for what you do not understand, The Prince of Darkness deceives you yet again; prostituting you like the demented king you managed to free yourself from decades ago; have you still not heard the words of Jesus who said, “He was a murderer from the beginning?”

    Uganda, Uganda, my heart weeps for you! Don’t you know that you cannot kill the innocent, batter and abuse your children, and lock them away in dungeons of cruelty for life simply because you refuse to accept who they really are without the very King of the Universe (whom you claim you worship), championing their cause, and lifting his righteous hand of justice and judgment against you?

    He has heard the voice of the children devastated by earthquakes and disaster in Haiti and He has freed the oppressed in America from hundreds of years of discrimination. He has even delivered the Jews from the oppression of a mighty pharaoh (once thought invincible) in Egypt. Surely, He will not turn a deaf ear to innocent same-gender-loving people in your country, nor allow you to murder them without cause and your land and your people not be judged for doing so!

    Uganda, Uganda, I alone do not weep, “FOR A VOICE WAS HEARD IN RAMAH, WEEPING AND GREAT MOURNING, RACHEL WEEPING FOR HER CHILDREN; AND SHE REFUSED TO BE COMFORTED, BECAUSE THEY WERE NO MORE!” (Matthew 2:18)

    By Terry Angel Mason, Global Author
    Excerpt from Mason’s New Book: Love Won’t Let Me Be Silent — Pride Edition

    Mason is an extraordinary poet and writer who is known for his breakthrough revolutionary book, Love Won’t Let Me Be Silent, that is becoming a testament for many gays and lesbians struggling with their sexuality and the need to come out to their family and friends. What started out as a self-published nonfiction book has now become a literary phenomenon consistently earning him numerous literary nominations; while at the same time, gaining a place of reverence in the hearts and minds of millions of readers — both men and women worldwide.

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