Uganda Begins Debate on Anti-Gay Bill; Forced Therapy Considered

The Ugandan Parliament begins debating its extreme "Anti Homosexuality Bill" that seeks the death penalty or life imprisonment for the new crime of "aggravated homosexuality."

Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin reports Martin Ssempa, the leading anti-gay evangelist in Uganda and religious sponsor of the bill, has proposed two amendments:

At a special sitting of the Uganda Joint Christian Council taskforce sat and reviewed the bill to make comments. We resolved to support the bill with some amendments which included the following: (a) We suggested a less harsher sentence of 20 years instead of the death penalty for pedophilia or aggravated homosexuality. (b) We suggested the inclusion of counseling and rehabilitation being offered to offenders and victims. The churches are willing to provide the necessary help for those who are willing to undergo counseling and rehabilitation.

The Orwellian forced conversion therapy is not a new idea. In March, Rod 2.0 reported American anti-gay evangelists suggested the rabidly anti-gay government in Kampala should mandate "conversion therapy" for gay men. No word yet on the bill's most extreme provision, the death penalty. The bill's sponsor, MP David Bahati, says it will remain.

The United States government, which only recently officially came out against the bill,  is urging Uganda to abandon the extreme legislation, Reuters reports.

Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson said, 'We are concerned that if this legislation passes that it could in fact encourage others to do this. We will not have a double standard on human rights. We are opposed to this kind of legislation whether it is in Rwanda or any other country in Africa.' Carson, the top U.S. diplomat for Africa, said the U.S. government had been in touch with Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni to express its opposition to the measure...adding that Museveni was empowered to veto legislation that comes forward. Carson stopped short of tying future U.S. aid to the bill. Uganda is a major recipient of HIV/AIDS relief and received an estimated $390 million in overall U.S. aid in 2009, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Assistant Secretary of State Carson's warning comes on the same weekend neighboring Rwanda proposes criminalizing homosexuality.

Comments

[Tim Trent]

I have completely had enough of people using religion to justify removal of human rights. It's time we campaigned lawfully to make these nations, great and small, give real human rights to all people.

We no longer kill people for being left handed, nor do we force them to use the right hand. WHy do they view homosexuality as being so important?

[Gerrell]

This is insane. I pray and hope to god it does not pass. So many African gays are being trampled upon, I fear more will die before this is over.

[Mel Smith]

Although homophobia exist everywhere, these African nations seem decades behind in how they think. Sorry, that's how I feel.

They went from ethnic hatred to the hatred of gay people.

Uganda and these other poor nations have so much on thier plates. Now, why in the hell are they trying to scapegoat the minority population of gays in their nations? I agree that corruption is one reason.

And what's really sick about the situation is that we got some self-hating gays hating on their own kind. That's some real sick stuff.

They are trying to kill people in the name of God and Jesus. That's some real sick stuff to hear in 2010.

[Dalton]

What Mel Smith said.

Uganda and Rwanda have been torn apart by ethnic hatred, genocide ... and let us not forget the insane genocide of Idid Amin in Uganda. That was only a generation ago. Now they want try to legislate gays out of existence and have proposed inhumane laws, death penalties and forced therapy. I wonder does that include castration and forced hormones?

**shudder**

[alicia banks]

it is the gaybashers who need the forced therapy...not the gays!!!

[Rowan]

As someone said on Queerty, if you can believe in burning bushes, feeding the 5 000 etc, why not that gays are root of all evil and therefore need to be exterminated?

You have no proof for the stuff in the Bible but yet still believe it.

[Xavier Deron]

Really? Quoting black bashing Queerty on Rod 2.0? Srsly?

Rowan, I think one time you mentioned you live in the UK or London, so I'll give you the heads up: Your comments are often obsessed with blacks and Christianity, but quoting a race-baiting, "blame the blacks" and sloppily edited blog on this blog, of all places ... That's a no-no.

Just a thought, hon. Just a thought.

[Jim]

“Just a thought, hon. Just a thought.”

How about a non-thought. Or worse, an attempt to stifle all thought.

I don’t remember anything about Rowan or what he has posted in the past. I have never visited Queerty, but I trust that what many here have said about it is true, that it’s a place where lots of white gay men feel free to post racist remarks without challenge. But just because there are lots of racist comments left on Queerty doesn’t mean that every thought expressed in every comment written on that blog is invalid and unquotable.

Whatever Rowan has written in the past—I don’t recall him particularly—his post here expresses a point worth making. For example, I know lots of people nowadays who believe that the entire physical universe was created 6,000 years ago. I believe that those people are very dangerous.

If you can blindly accept everything your preacher tells you about the world—in contradiction to everything we actually know about it—then you can believe your preacher when he tells you that gay people should be burned at the stake, or that Jews should be stuffed into ovens, or that black people are the sons of Ham and are fitting to be slaves of the racially superior white people.

Now, if you think there is something wrong with the idea that believing everything your pastor or the Bible says without question is a problem, then go ahead and explain why you think that is wrong. But don’t tell us that it’s all wrong because Rowan mentioned a blog that has ugly comments. That sounds to me like the same kind of thought control that I expect from Fox News, or from the white right wing TV preachers, or from men like Ken Hutcherson, who tell us that to be a good black man is to be heterosexual.