Kill the Gays Bill

As a communications person myself, I can really appreciate a good PR campaign, and the best I’ve seen in a long time is the new effort by U.S. right-wing evangelicals to completely whitewash their own history of involvement with Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality law. For the last five years, human rights advocates around the world been discussing how U.S. conservative figures were integrally involved in the creation of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill (originally called the “Kill the Gays Bill”).

KAMPALA, Uganda — Uganda’s government on Tuesday dismissed calls by U.S. President Barack Obama not to sign an anti-homosexuality law, saying it was determined to protect the country’s “morals” even if that meant losing international aid.

KAMPALA, Uganda — Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said Friday he would sign the country’s controversial Anti-Homosexuality Bill only on the condition that he receives scientific proof that gays are made and not born.

KAMPALA, Uganda — Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has blocked the controversial Anti-Homosexuality Bill and has rebuked Parliament Speaker Rebecca Kadaga for failure to follow parliamentary procedures by passing the law without a quorum, reports the Daily Monitor, the leading Ugandan newspaper.

KAMPALA, Uganda — Archbishop Stanley Ntagali, the head Uganda’s Anglican Church of Uganda, said that gay bishops are a “spiritual cancer” and do not belong in the Church.

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — In a first-of-its kind case brought by a Ugandan LGBTI advocacy organization against a prominent U.S. anti-gay extremist, a federal judge on Wednesday ruled that persecution on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is a crime against humanity and that the fundamental human rights of LGBTI people are protected under international law.

OTTAWA, Ontario, Canada — A Canadian foreign affairs official acknowledged Friday that there are ongoing efforts to fund grassroots Ugandan LGBTQ advocacy organizations who are battling efforts by the Ugandan Parliament to pass that country’s proposed anti-homosexuality bill.

KAMPALA, Uganda — Police in Uganda on Monday arrested and LGBT youth counselor under laws which prohibit unnatural carnal acts — a definition which is widely understood to include homosexuality and “recruiting youth into homosexuality.”

Business will resume as normal in Uganda in February, as it has at the start of every parliamentary session since the “Kill the Gays” bill was proposed in 2009, with the possibility of the bill still existing on the agenda. We have been fighting this same bill for three years now, and it continues to come back. To claim that we “killed” the bill isn’t really honest with ourselves and with others that we want to get involved in protecting LGBT Ugandan people.

The Ugandan Parliament adjourned for the holidays on Friday, and again avoided taking any action on the controversial “Anti-Homosexuality Bill” that Speaker Rebecca Kadaga had promised would be approved as a “Christmas gift” to the nation.