Uganda’s LGBT Activists Get a Temporary Victory

The reprehensible “anti-gay” bill in Uganda has been dealt a blow by that country’s brave LGBT activists and the world human rights community. In a nation where homosexuality was already illegal, and punishable by 14 years in prison, this law would have made things even worse, establishing the death penalty, among other things, for having gay sex while HIV positive.

The bill is not dead, but it won’t be considered in this legislative session. As the petition site Avaaz.org (which got 1.6 million people to sign a petition against the bill) put it in a piece dated Friday the 13th:

Today, under intense global pressure, the Speaker of the Ugandan Parliament blocked the anti-gay bill from coming to a vote in the emergency session. Now Parliament has closed and the bill has been wiped from the books. It’s not necessarily gone for good, but to be considered again, it would have to be reintroduced as a new bill and go through the whole Parliamentary process — which took 18 months last time.

Our global outcry made it clear that the world is watching, and demanding that human rights be respected everywhere. Today, we can join activists in Uganda in celebration of a victory that could save thousands of lives.

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This isn’t the end of the story. The Guardian heads its article by Simon Sarmiento “Uganda’s Anti-Gay Law is Far From Dead.” It cites continued support for the anti-gay bill from Ugandan Anglicans. Sarmiento says there’s an ongoing danger that the piece will be re-introduced. In particular, he asks whether the multi-national outcry will kill the bill or just weaken it:

According to one American expert, Warren Throckmorton, the bill’s author David Bahati said that the death penalty had been removed from the bill in the committee report. Bahati also said that the provision criminalising “attempted homosexuality” had been removed, and that the penalties for same-sex intimacy had been reduced from the current life sentence.

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Sarmiento asks, cogently: “Has any of the international pressure made any difference? If the bill in some form is reintroduced in the next session, will weakening its provisions make it at all acceptable?”

This question gives me chills. The real danger is that the law will be watered down, reintroduced in the next legislative session, and will pass next year without a whisper from the international community. As always seems to happen with human rights issues in Africa, the second the west sees some other bright-and-shiny somewhere, the disadvantaged of Africa will be left to fend for themselves…which, for various reasons, is a particularly upsetting possibility in the case of Uganda’s LGBT community.This is not a new fight in Uganda. Back in 2007, the western media first started reporting about Ugandans holding mass anti-gay rallies demanding that the government retain its anti-gay laws, and start enforcing them. This was in response to pressure to rescind those laws because Uganda was about to host the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, the summit held by the 50-odd governments of nations that used to be part of the British Empire.

At that time, 2007, the BBC quoted activists estimating that Uganda’s LGBT population is about 500,000 (there are around 32 million people in Uganda). Gay activists counter-demonstrated, but did so wearing masks. The BBC said, “They say they are forced to live double lives for fear of harassment and brutality.” Despite this, a 2008 Ugandan high court decision found that certain guarantees in the Ugandan constitution — freedom from discrimination chief among them — do apply to LGBT individuals.

While outcry against the bill in the U.S. has been widespread, the CNN article on this in particular fails, interestingly, to note the fact that this law would have established (or “would established,” since it can always be re-introduced) the death penalty not just for repeated violations of the law, i.e., being convicted of having gay sex more than once, but for having gay sex while HIV positive, without considering whether safer sex is used.

Uganda, incidentally, has 1.2 million adults living with HIV or AIDS, or about 6.5% of the adult population, according to the Joint UN Program on AIDS. While Uganda’s public health response to HIV through the ’90s has been held up as a model for the world partly due to the sheer scale of the epidemic there (in 1995 91% of Ugandans knew someone with AIDS) and a significant decline in HIV cases there, new infections have been on the rise in Uganda following the government’s move toward abstinence-only education.

Sure, showing cause and effect is difficult there, but given that at least half of Uganda’s new HIV infections come from heterosexual intercourse, and 57% of the adults with AIDS are women, that certainly does place a few things closer to home in horrifying context.

But the role of religion in Uganda worth talking about for a moment, because the power structures of at least two major world religions have a lot to answer for in moral terms — and another gets high marks for its support of human rights, at great risk to its clergy. About 35% of Ugandans are part of the Anglican Church of Uganda. Another 40% or so are Roman Catholic.

Anglican clergy in Uganda have been repeatedly quoted in the media advocating this bill, others like it, and anti-gay violence and oppression in general. Meanwhile, Ugandan Roman Catholic bishops did formally speak out against the bill, according to a pro-life site. The Roman Catholic Bishops did so on the grounds that its punitive measures (i.e., the death penalty) were too harsh, and the current penalty (14 years in prison) is adequate.

In “opposing” the bill on the grounds that 14 years in prison is enough, the Roman Catholic Bishops also applauded the government’s attempts to uphold traditional family values through this bill. I found a copy of the statement at the site of the Uganda Episcopal Conference. Confusingly, that’s “Catholic,” not Episcopalian, “Episcopal” being the U.S. term for the New World offshoot of the Anglican church, but the “Episcopal Conference” being a Roman Catholic term for the assembly of the bishops in a given region.

Confused yet? Don’t worry, the Ugandan Catholic Bishops are, too. Their statement says, in part:

While we appreciate the homosexual agenda to be a direct attack on human values and morals, we differ with the anti-gay bill in those sections where the sinner is demonized…Capital sin militates against the inalienable right to life from womb to womb. The bill is also wanting in those sections where failure to report a homosexual cast attracts imprisonment. Such clause jeopardizes pastoral ministry and contravenes the priestly oath of confessional secrecy. The same objection applies to medial ethics. Without addressing those sensitive areas, the bill might polarize society or even end up exonerating advocates of homosexual agenda.

[Link.]

So…translating, here, the bishops seem to think the law is bad because it could potentially interfere with the sacrament of Confession, and capital punishment encourages abortion. The statement also, incidentally, advocates ex-gay programs as the solution to homosexuality in Uganda.

Keep in mind that somewhat unlike Anglican clergy, Ugandan Roman Catholic bishops report to Pope Benedict, formerly Cardinal Ratzinger (not one of my favorite people in the world, even before he inherited the world’s funniest hat). Back in 2009, Pope Benedict was criticized when he welcomed the new Ugandan ambassador to the Holy See, and did not mention the matter of Uganda — even though an earlier version of this bill had already been introduced to Parliament, and was making headlines then. English-speaking Catholic apologists are fond of pointing to this completely incoherent Radio Netherlands article, in which The Vatican made some truly namby-pamby statements opposing “unjust discrimination” against gay men and lesbians.

But if the Vatican is trying to oppose unjust discrimination in Uganda…they’re doing it wrong. In fact, about as wrong as one can do it.

In March of this year, when the United Nations considered a U.S.-introduced statement against institutionalized homophobia (clearly inspired by the Uganda events), the Vatican issued a strongly-worded objection to it. In this statement, the Vatican actually — oh, Journalism Gods, please forgive me, I’m lapsing into bold-and-all-caps-hysteria — The Vatican actually claimed that those who OPPOSE the homosexual lifestyle are being subjected to persecution because of their beliefs. I am not making this up, people! The Vatican saw a U.N. statement opposing the death penalty for homosexuality as a golden opportunity to tackle the thorny problem of discrimination against homophobes. Huh?

On the other hand, the Unitarian Universalist congregation in Uganda is laying down the law at great personal risk. This will potentially get Uganda’s Unitarians in trouble with the part of this law that bans the “promotion” of homosexuality. In fact, the Unitarian pastor of Kampala (the Ugandan capital) left the country in March out of fear for his safety, to tour Unitarian churches in the U.S. speaking on the issue. The pastor asked that his name not be used in today’s piece on the Unitarian website UUWorld.org, for his safety and the safety of the orphanage his church runs, for kids who lost their parents to AIDS.

That’s the kind of homophobia we’re talking about here — violence that, as a very smart guy said once, “…multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.” AIDS orphans at a Unitarian orphanage have to fear for their safety, because the Unitarian church supports gay rights. As Tulsa, Oklahoma Unitarian Rev. Marlin Lavanhar said of the matter: “What’s at stake is that our religion is illegal [in Uganda] because of our stance on the inherent worth and dignity of all people.”

This isn’t “traditional family values” the Ugandan Catholic Bishops are applauding or the Anglican clergy are advocating. Those groups aren’t shouting hooray for heterosexual marriage at all — or, if they are, they’re doing it in the weirdest fucking way possible. This is nothing more or less than a crazed, delirious, whacked-out squick factor at its most extreme — a homophobia so overcome with abject terror that it can do nothing but strike out — at AIDS orphans. That kind of insanity has been crystallized and almost turned into law. In a Commonwealth Nation.

Seriously…that’s the “civilizing influence” the British Empire left? That’s the legacy of the European Enlightenment? That’s the sum total of the moral imperative Roman Catholic Bishops can offer their flock? That’s how the Anglican church interprets “love thy neighbor”? With violence against a Unitarian AIDS orphanage? That’s family values?

In Uganda (and elsewhere), this fight is far, far from over; this round in the fight isn’t even over. Sarmiento points out in his Telegraph article, while the temporary defeat of the law is a “victory” in every sense of the word, it does nothing specifically to address the existing oppression in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa.

Homosexual behavior is still illegal in many if not most countries in Africa. According to the CNN article, these laws were introduced in the colonial period.

Homophobia is just one of the many gifts that Europe’s empires left behind for their former colonies like Uganda, along with churches that continue to strongly support anti-LGBT legislation, oppression, and violence.

Image: Protest against the Ugandan bill in November, 2009, by Kaytee Riek, via Flickr.