Uganda Abolishes Anti-Gay Law In Exchange For Financial Aid

Members of Uganda’s gay community and gay rights activists react as the constitutional court overturns anti-gay laws in Kampala on August 1, 2014. (AFP Photo)

Thankfully, Uganda appears to have come to its senses on the matter of (partially) decriminalizing homosexuality.  Yesterday, Uganda’s Constitutional Court abolished the intolerant and Draconian anti-homosexuality bill.   The law, signed by President Museveni in February, toughened up existing laws.  In June, the US imposed sanctions on Uganda, including travel restrictions on Ugandan officials involved in serious human rights abuses.  Laws were not always as oppressive as they were when they were a colony of the British Empire. Before it was a sovereign nation,  Uganda was much like most of the European-dominated continent.  Homosexuality is illegal in 38 African countries, where most sodomy laws were introduced during colonialism. In Uganda, homosexual acts were punishable by 14 years to life in prison even before the controversial bill was signed into law. But the laws established when Uganda was a British Colony didn’t go far enough.  The nation’s laws on homosexuality were:  

• Anyone who “purports to contract a marriage with another person of the same sex,” faces life imprisonment.
• Anyone who “conducts a marriage ceremony between persons of the same sex,” faces imprisonment for a maximum of seven years. Institutions conducting same-sex weddings will lose their licenses.
• Anyone who “attempts to promote or in anyway abets homosexuality and related practices,” can be imprisoned for seven years, with a lifetime sentence for repeated offenses.

What triggered the harsh laws against homosexuality?  Take a guess, as it reeks of the anti-gay movement in our very own country.  It’s easy to see this is the handiwork of Dominionist/Fundamentalist Christians,  those kind-hearted, pro-life homophobes that dominate the right wing of the USA have exported their intolerance to Africa.  Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself  is one of Jesus’ teachings that hasn’t seemed to make it across the Atlantic Ocean.

During the Bush administration, American officials praised Uganda’s family-values policies and steered millions of dollars into abstinence-only programs. Christian fundamentalist missionaries were dispatched to these African nations to help convert these pagans.  Pastors Scott Lively and Rick Warren have been called out for creating the conditions that led to Uganda’s infamous Anti-Homosexuality Act.  [Nigeria, however, has gone even further by imposing the death penalty for homosexuality in some cases]. That law imposes long jail sentences (up to life in prison) for being LGBTQ and criminalizes anyone who dares to speak out in defense of the human rights of sexual minorities. Homosexuality is still not tolerated and they are a long way from achieving equal rights of so many progressive-thinking nations like Luxembourg, France and The Netherlands.

Ugandan Pastor, Martin Ssempa partnered up with a popular church in my very own city of Las Vegas, NV.  In 2010, Canyon Ridge Church, which considers Ssempa a “mission partner,” helped pay for staff at his Kampala church, has dug in its heels.  After promising in early June of 2010 to review Ssempa’s involvement in Uganda’s anti-gay movement, pastors Mitch Harrison and Kevin Odor said last week that they “do not believe Martin Ssempa to be the man the media and others have portrayed him to be.”  Funny thing is, Ssempa immediately condemned yesterday’s ruling.  Ssempa, a vocal backer of the anti-homosexuality legislation, told the BBC his supporters would be asking parliament to investigate the impartiality of the judiciary.  This marks a temporary victory in a nation colonized and exploited by hateful Christians imposing their will upon the citizens of that desperately poor continent.  Only time will tell if and when Uganda values the hatred of homosexuality more highly than the eradication of poverty.

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