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US conservatives are rallying around Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” bill

Matt Walsh
Photo: Screenshot

A remarkable collection of well-known U.S. conservatives is openly supporting Uganda’s latest “Kill the Gays” law, claiming LGBTQ+ rights in Africa are just another form of “neo-colonialism.”

Media Matters reports the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh mocked those condemning the draconian legislation passed by Uganda’s Assembly in March as “cultural colonialists” whining over “protecting so-called LGBTQ rights” and claimed opponents of the bill “don’t think that Uganda has any particular right to govern itself and have its own culture and its own way of life.” 

If signed into law by Uganda President Yoweri Museveni, the Anti-Homosexuality Act would enforce life in prison for anyone found to identify as gay or bi and impose lengthy prison terms for individuals or institutions found to be supporting, advocating, or facilitating LGBTQ+ rights.

“Aggravated homosexuality” would be punishable by death.

Museveni has indicated he’ll sign the bill into law.

Walsh is just one “Kill the Gays” advocate among a toxic group working from the same set of talking points.

Right-wing Heritage Foundation fellow Delano Squires found fault in media coverage which he said was trying to force Uganda and Kenya, which similarly criminalizes homosexuality, to “bend the knee to ‘Pride.’”

“Perhaps Uganda doesn’t want its culture colonized by the West again,” Squires quote-tweeted White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “Maybe the people there would rather fly their own flag than yours.”

Another Daily Wire bomb-thrower, Michael Knowles, parroted Walsh, claiming “liberals paradoxically are the most inclined to impose their values on the world.” Knowles accused Americans who speak against the bill of exporting “the LGBTQ flag and condoms and abortion and all the trappings of liberalism.”

Equity, safe sex, and freedom of choice are “the new kind of colonialism,” by Knowles’ logic.

Knowles recently made headlines for saying, “Transgenderism must be eradicated.”

At far-right Breitbart, the conservative mouthpiece lauded Uganda for “resisting international pro-gay propaganda by putting forward new legislation to protect its ‘cherished values and culture,'” quoting Parliament Speaker Annet Anita Among, a rabidly anti-LGBTQ+ legislator and sponsor of the bill.

According to the site, “The United States has played a central role in pushing a pro-gay agenda contrary to Ugandan values.” U.S. evangelicals have been pushing homophobia in Uganda and have had a role in the current Kill the Gays bill.

In Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, columnist Miranda Devine criticized official U.S. condemnation of the bill and excused countries like Uganda, Hungary, and Russia for their virulently anti-LGBTQ+ government policies.

“Wokery is unpopular in a lot of foreign societies,” wrote Devine, and countries including Uganda “regard gender ideology and the LGBTQ agenda as cultural imperialism that undermines their religious and family values.”

“Who are we to tell them otherwise?” Devine added, dismissing LGBTQ+ rights abroad as “boutique concerns.”

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