You know what, Uganda? Uganda make me sick if I learn any more about your anti-homosexual ways. In addition to your so-called “kill-all-the-gays” bill that your government officials are considering passing, you currently have enacted laws which Uganda already punish the practice of homosexuality with life in prison. Uganda be kidding me, indeed.
What seems most ironic to me in all of this is that at one point, historical experts suggest, homosexuality was an everyday part of Ugandan life. It was only during the Victorian-era British colonization of Uganda, er…uh…of course I don’t mean colonization, because that didn’t happen; I mean during the time that Uganda was a British “Protectorate,” that the Ugandans took on Victorian-era morals courtesy of the British church. Go Anglicans, Catholics and Protestants. The Ugandans embraced these religions as their own, eschewing Ugandan belief systems, and seemingly took a left turn.
Terry Gross of NPR on her program Fresh Air interviewed Jeff Sharlet, journalist and author. Jeff Sharlet is the author of, among many others, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (Harper, 2008), and C Street (Little, Brown, 2010.) Sharlet is an expert on the topics of religion and politics, and traveled to Uganda to investigate the ties between the visit of the American evangelicals and the introduction of the Ugandan Anti-Homosexual bill.
In Ms. Gross’s interview of Sharlet immediately after the release of the proposed bill in Uganda, Mr. Sharlet said the following.
“The new legislation adds to this something called aggravated homosexuality. And this can include, for instance…the use of any drugs or any intoxicants in seeking gay sex – in other words, you go to a bar and you buy a guy a drink, you’re subject to the death penalty if you go home and sleep together after that. What it also does is it extends this outward, so that if you know a gay person and you don’t report it, that could mean – you don’t report your son or daughter, you can go to prison. And it goes further, to say that any kind of promotion of these ideas of homosexuality, including by foreigners, can result in prison terms. Talking about same sex-marriage positively can lead you to imprisonment for life.”
Sharlet recently traveled to Uganda to speak with Bahati, the author of Uganda’s proposed anti-homosexual bill. About that meeting Jeff Sharlet wrote a piece for Harpers entitled, “Straight Man’s Burden.” In that article, Sharlet recounts his meeting with Bahati.
“Bahati said that he wanted ‘to kill every last gay person.’ It was a very chilling moment, because I’m sitting there with this man who’s talking about his plans for genocide, and has demonstrated over the period of my relationship with him that he’s not some back bencher — he’s a real rising star in the movement. This was something that I hadn’t understood before I went to Uganda, that this was a guy with real potential and real sway and increasingly a following in Uganda.”
This is not an issue that only pertains to Uganda; this is a global issue. This law can not pass, and this kind of bias, hatred and condemnation can not stand.
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The thought of criminalizing the act of buying a drink for another and then having sex with them (which happens every minute of every day in every city in every country of every nation) is an absurdity. The worrisome thing is they’re proposing to make it law.
I agree. In addition to Jeff Sharlet who is great, Warren Throckmorton is also a weatlth of information and knowledge.
God. The things we take for granted. “Talking about samesex marriage positively can lead you to imprisonment for life”? We really have got it good even if samesex marriage isn’t legal in all states. I don’t typically think about the fact that we have the right to free speech even if it’s not samesex marriage, but today I’m giving thanks for that.
Life in prison for being gay? How lame. More than lame, sick, really. Gay is really just a part of life. Let’s revel in who and what we are. I almost feel sorry for them.
We are not only talking human rights: the right to be alive and live how you were meant to live. Human rights where, just because we are human, we have certain things that are to be afforded us. That is all we expect; that is all we long for. Not this group that feels that human rights are only for those that are like them.
The interview you report of and your article are amazing. This is such a breach of human rights that is happening in Uganda. To think that the ultra-conservatives are also ones that are causing such a lack of human rights for these people is amazing. What an attitude. Thank you for sharing in your article.
These guys that are involved with this Uganda mess are dealing with fire. They should be classified as terrorists.