Click here for the current official text of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
This morning AFP news service has an article that correctly reports the story about the bill, amendments and the process involved.
Parliament officials said Thursday that the bill — which US President Barack Obama has described as “odious” — had been reintroduced in its original format, which included the death penalty clause.
Bahati continues to say he will recommend the removal of the death sentence for aggravated homosexuality.
A Ugandan lawmaker behind a proposed draconian anti-gay bill that sparked an international outcry said Friday he wanted to drop clauses that would see the death penalty introduced for certain homosexual acts.
“There will be no death penalty at all…that will go,” David Bahati, the legislator who formulated the bill, told AFP.
As expected, Bahati will recommend the removal of the requirement to report known gay people. However, he wants to zero in on “promotion.”
Bahati said the bill was now focused on stopping the promotion of gay rights, and retains a proposal to criminalise public discussion of homosexuality with a heavy prison sentence.
Here is the section in the existing bill on promotion of homosexuality:
The way this is worded, landlords will not be able to rent to gays, most public establishments will be reluctant to serve more than one gay person at a time, if at all. Gay people using cell phones or the internet (bloggers, emailing, etc.) will be in jeopardy. The potential for use of police power to snoop on private citizens is heightened and the potential to use this law to accuse enemies of promoting homosexuality seems clear. While this seems to be intended to put GLB rights groups out of business, the reach goes far beyond those groups.
Although the reporting requirement has been dropped, I don’t think health care professionals are in the clear. If they give advice to a GLBT person that affirms them, then I believe the way this aspect of the bill is worded, then they might violate the very broad language here.
This clearly violates freedom of conscience for those who are gay and those who are not. If a religious leader is convinced that GLBT persons should be treated with respect and dignity, then they could be viewed as engaging in promotion.
I hope the watching world is not thrown off by the possible removal of the death sentence. This effort remains sinister and has the effect of violation of freedom of conscience and other basic human rights.
Related:
- Current Official Text of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009
- Ugandan MPs Cheer Introduction of Original Anti-gay Bill
- Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill to be Tabled in Parliament Today – UPDATED
For “cultural realitivism”please read “cultural relativism”. Sorry
Leonardo Ricardo,
I’m in no way anti-American. I simply defend ideals Americans themselves have maintained in bygone times. In those times, the U.S. saw themselves as a protector of the sovereignty of young nations against old Empires. The most famous case has been President Eisenhower’s support of Egypt against Britain and France in the Suez crisis – so blatantly different from President Obama’s conduct w.r.t. Libya.
Also, the United States have been the homeland of cultural anthropology and cultural realitivism – teaching that we can’t presuppose that all people on the earth are “like us” and so have to adapt our customs, and opposing Western missionarism and cultural imperialism.
I’m quite prepared to protect traditional male-male sex practices in Uganda against evangelical missionarism. But I won’t have that mixed with Western gay missionarism.
Christian missionaries have always been convinced that there are millions of lost souls over the ocean (“animae naturaliter christianae”) which are only waiting for westerners to come and resolve them. Gay missionarism, as described by Carol Ranney, seems based on a similar idea of lost gay souls. That’s possible, of course. But as we don’t know much about male-male sex in Uganda – and the mostly well informed Dr. Throckmorton hasn’t quoted any study about that matter! – I see no reason why male-male sex practitioners in Uganda should have much in common with Western gays (except those Ugandans which intentionally imitate Western customs and fashions).
Gay Propaganda !!! The sponsors of the bill are 100% Ugandans and even before Bahati laid out his bill there were already plans by the government to further amend the Sexual Offenders Act (2000). Bahati merely pre-empted the government’s plans. But seeing the way things are at the moment, I have no doubt that the government will “categorically deny” ever considering amending the already existing penal code dealing with the abominable sex crime of gayism
It was not down to me to declare it a sex crime. Even before I was conceived in the womb of my mother, gayism was already classified as a crime in both religious and non-religious countries. It was once a crime throughout Europe. It was a crime in many communist nations until around 1993. China maintained it as a crime until 1997. However, gayism remains a crime in more than 80 nations worldwide. In more than 100 nations across the world where gayism is officially not deemed a crime, there are severe restrictions on the ability of gay sex practitioners to engage in matrimony; serve in the military; donate their risky blood to hospitals; adopt children or even flaunt deviant behaviour in public. The European Union is pressuring Uganda to allow gayism run amock and yet it has several member-nations that have written constitutions permanently banning gay sex practitioners from the institution of marriage. At least one EU nation (Republic of Lithuania) have laws banning gay propaganda in addition to maintaining a constitutional ban on gay marriage.
Interpol ??? Please don’t make me laugh !!! Do you think that Interpol is an extension of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or Swedish Police Service or the Royal Canadian Mounted Police ??
@Carol A Ranney: “Wheaton College professor Stanton L. Jones has an excellent, Christian-oriented article on the subject.”
Carol, I believe this is the same article that you linked before. This article is not a fair assessment of the state of current research. It is the attempt of one evangelical to create space for ex-gay organizations to claim that change of orientation is possible. The weaknesses of this article have been pointed out on other threads, and I am disappointed that you have not taken these criticisms more seriously.
If you are a supporter of the ex-gay movement, you also are supporting a kind of social enforcement that kills gays, only in this case by their own hand. Please reconsider.
I think I like Maazi’s way of thinking. If you want to crush something, just declare it to be a crime and then all your actions are justified. Further, anything that is not a religion apparently is a proper subject for violent suppression.
Accordingly, I think we need to declare Ugandan citizens to be criminals. Ugandan citizenship is not a religion; it is simply a crime. Ugandans have a low life expectancy, include many AIDS carriers, and have exported violence and mayhem throughout their region. Irresponsible, violent and expansionist Ugandans necessitated a military intervention by Tanzania in 1979, which cost many innocent Tanzanian lives. Enough is enough.
The world needs to declare Ugandan citizens to be the criminals that they are. I am not suggesting that they all be killed. A life sentence would be appropriate. Perhaps hard labor, with all profits directed toward Tanzania as reparations. Those who persist in affirming their warped allegiance to this perversion known as Uganda should be eligible for the death penalty. Maazi, please provide us with your full name and address so that we can forward it on to Interpol.
Repeatedly the thyme comes back to underlying anti-Americanism…that´s fine but let us not forget the instigators of most of the current Bahati anti-lgbt fear/hate campaign ARE American Fundamentalist Christians…they´ve lost their battle against lgbt innocents in the U.S.A. so they ¨cultivate¨ other avenues (¨C¨Street) that drive their religious bigotry, pre paid of course, elsewhere. These boys, and they are mostly ill mannered educated thugs, seem to enjoy defiling a nation of superstitous demeaners of fellow human beings…it´s not about Europeon or American ¨moral intruders¨ it´s simply about some ¨religious¨Ugandans who are on the ¨take¨ or plain olde ¨brainwashed¨ and/or refuse responsibility for themselves (and their vile behavior towards others). Yes, it´s about Ugandans.
“distributing flyers, engaging in radio interviews and holding provocative press conferences in swanky hotels to harass Ugandan people”
but it’s okay for politicians, big corporate organizations, conmen, fake herbalists, false prophets and countless other opportunists to use billboards, distribute flyers, engage in radio interviews, hold press conferences that result in millions of desperate and vulnerable ugandans being deceived and fleeced of whatever little they have earned through hard work, even tricked into paying for bogus and harmful “cures” for conditions ranging from poverty to hiv to misfortune? it’s our right to sift information and process it for ourselves, whether it’s disseminated via newspaper, radio, tv, pulpits, kampala’s noisy streets, or conferences… if ugandans know that they do not recognize sexual minorities as a legitimate group, why go to so much trouble to silence representative organizations? even if parliament attempted to stiffle the gay rights debate in uganda (we all know such attempts are driven by sour losers who believe that they have already lost that debate), uganda doesn’t exist in a vacuum and parliament has seriously stoked curiosity and even compassion among previously ignorant and indifferent ugandans, pushing us towards seeking more information on gay rights and homosexuality, information that will always be readily accessible even if local lgbti organizations were banned. and when you look at sexual minorities in uganda, really… what power do they honestly have that our almighty (yet sadly lost and wandering) parliament would want to wrestle from them? would you or your kids be “incited” into homosexuality by ugandans who have to wear masks out of fear for their lives while holding conferences to plead with fellow ugandans and legislators to be less hateful and more tolerant towards their kind? if anything, such “gay promotion” only raises awareness on how unecessarily difficult life is for sexual minorities in uganda… really, i dont see how any heterosexual ugandan would want to become a homosexual ugandan after being exposed to “gay promotion”. quite frankly, such legislation is pointless, defeatist, unconstitutional and a gateway to further repression to be visited on other ugandans.
I think you are being unduly alarmist here. Gayism is not a political or religious belief. It is simply a sex crime that needs to contained properly with adequate legislation. Yes, I agree that there is potential for police abuse. But then that is why we have the judiciary which has proven itself time and time again to be independent of government.
We cannot reject a bill becoming law for fear that somebody will become overzealous and abuse the provisions
After all, has the fear of executing an innocent person wrongly convicted of a crime he didn’t commit forced states in the USA to repeal laws on capital punishment?
Maazi NCO – Your confidence is misplaced. Police powers have been used to stifle protests in your country on matters other than homosexuality. When opponents of th government or the Parliament or the police begin to speak in favor of homosexual rights, then those in power will have statutory authority to jail them for a long time. You may sincerely want to target certain ghosts, but the Bahati bill empowers much more.
This is the folly of the Bahati bill. Other societies have tried to stamp out one undesirable minority or another with the result that eventually more and more people come under the gun. Your children will be safe if you just enforce the laws you have.
Patrocles# ~ Feb 11, 2012 at 3:21 am
“A president e.g. who just now tells catholic institutions: Support birth control/abortion or die!”
there is no “death penalty” clause in the health care provisions.
I should be glad that Dr. Throckmorton goes back to that old and likeable idea, freedom of conscience.
Fact is, you can’t pick it out of the drawer just when it is convenient and then lay it aside again.
A president e.g. who just now tells catholic institutions: Support birth control/abortion or die! isn’t in a position to preach “freedom of conscience” to Ugandans.
In former days, I’d have promoted the idea of a bipartisan movement supporting freedom of conscience on all sides. I don’t do that any longer. Most people don’t at all want freedom in the sense of general liberty, they only want an advantage for themselves and their in-group. So they are doomed to lose it, and that by right.
this whole “gay promotion” thing is such a cowardly and defeatist way of avoiding thorough defeat in the gay rights debate which you homophobes have already lost and keep losing every time you try to make discriminatory laws against sexual minorities.
A simple answer to your question is NO !!. Nobody will harasses these personalities you have mentioned. But the puppet organizations in Kampla fronting for Euro-American Gay Lobby will have their members prevented from distributing flyers, engaging in radio interviews and holding provocative press conferences in swanky hotels to harass Ugandan people about their deviant proclivities. This is the only thing I have been interested in since the bill first appeared in 2009. Even if Bahati Bill is stripped of all its teeth, I will do all I can to ensure that the clauses banning these provocative puppet organizations remain in place. I do not think Police would waste time on pro-gay individuals making passing remarks on gayism or journalists writing the occassional article sympathetic to gayism. However, I will expect the police to fully enforce a blanket ban on puppet organizations run by misguided Ugandans trained, financed and controlled by desperate gay sex practitioners based in Europe and America
Blockheads, blowhards and hatemongers…I once believed they didn´t necessarily come in a set of three. Reality just takes some getting used to, I´ll adjust.
I have yet to meet or hear of a single person who chose to be gay through contact with gays or recruitment by gays. On the contrary, the general experience is that people gradually realize (usually at a fairly young age) that they are different from their peers in that their normal sexual attractions are to the same rather than opposite sex. Revealing this to others is fearful and sometimes life-destroying–living in silence, always with a secret about who one really is–is equally life-destroying. Treating these people as a minority and letting them live in peace will not result in the promotion of gayism or the recruitment of others into gayism. And it’s a solution as to what to do about those leaves on family trees (worldwide) who are different from the rest of us. Accept them, give them support and peace. Wheaton College professor Stanton L. Jones has an excellent, Christian-oriented article on the subject. http://www.wheaton.edu/CACE/Hot-Topics
“desperate gay sex practitioners based in Europe and America” If you actually talked to a few of them I think you’d find that their motivation is to support those who, NOT by choice, are GLBT, help them get the health care they are often denied, and give them the preventive teaching to help stop the spread of among other things, HIV/AIDS. Criminalizing gayism drives people underground where ignorance and lack of prevention contributes to the ongoing spread of AIDS. I challenge you to find a single foreign “gay sex practitioner” who is recruiting men to be gay. The decriminalisation of gayism would be a huge step forward for the health of all Ugandans, because it opens up a now-hidden front where HIV/AIDS can be fought.
Carol,
I keep trying to warn people about Maazi, probably in vain. He does not care to see reason. He is not rational. He is single-minded in his belief that being gay is nothing short of evil. He feeds on those who try and make him see reason. He enjoys conflict as should be evidenced by his postings and those of others on this blog. He is very much like Fred Phelps in this way. The best thing to do, as hard as it is, is to ignore him and oppose him in other more productive ways 🙂
would besigye, otunu, mwenda and all the others on the very long and fast growing list of ugandans who have announced some form of appreciation of the value of decriminalizing homosexuality in uganda… would all these ugandans be charged with “gay promotion” and punished based on the conjecture that their public statements on homosexuality somehow influenced heterosexual ugandans into becoming homosexual ugandans? …really??
“Bahati said the bill was now focused on stopping the promotion of gay rights, and retains a proposal to criminalise public discussion of homosexuality with a heavy prison sentence.”
…sounds like each person on that endless list of heterosexual ugandans who have made known their appreciation of gay rights as human rights during public discussion can expect heavy prison sentences…
…pointless, defeatist, triggers a result that’s opposite to the intended result, impractical, unconstitutional… seriously now, is this the best job our elected representatives can do – get paid to droole over this nonsense at the expense of the simple and basic checklists of priorities that we humbly presented to them as they went into office?
There is no such thing as traditional “male-male sex practices”. There is nothing “traditional” about gayism in Uganda. European/American gay propagandists always claim that the continent of Africa was in love with gayism until European missionaries arrived on the continent and instructed its peoples to reject gayism.
The propagandist-writers cannot explain why the missionaries were successful in getting Africans to reject gayism, but failed woefully to cause the Africans to reject polygamy and animism (which is still practised and mixed up with Christianity). The simple explanation is that the missionaries were not responsible in the first place for Africa’s antipathy to gayism. The views of European missionaries on gayism merely concurred with traditional African views on that topic. It was never a case of missionaries instructing Africans to reject gayism. The missionaries didn’t have to instruct anything because pre-colonial Africans already could not conceive of the idea of two men tearing away at their anuses and would have regarded such people (if they existed at the time) of being mentally disturbed people (perhaps, possessed by the devil ??)
With regards to Uganda, these propagandists have published books mentioning the 19th Century King Mwanga II of Buganda who had 16 wives and then exhibited gay behaviour. Given that gayism was a previously unheard of behaviour prior to the antics of Mwanga II, it is the general consensus among modern day Ugandans that the King learned that behaviour from his Arab trader friends. This is entirely plausible, if one considered the peculiar cases of gay behaviour among Arab colonists reported in areas of East Africa under the suzerainty of Gulf Arab sheikdoms at that historical period.
My Dearest Leo,
I can understand that you are upset that the mythology of “American Exceptionalism” has failed woefully to bully our parliament. When I lived in the United States I noticed that everybody who had money was retaining the services of a psychologist (a.k.a “shrink”). I always thought that it was an incredible waste of money, but I was very, very wrong. Given the sky-high suicide rates in your country, I can understand why you chaps need the psychologists. We Ugandans may be poor, but we have our families. As Doc Warren will tell you nothing serves as a moral booster than having your family around.
When I speak of family, I don’t mean it in the Eurocentric sense. I mean it in the Afrocentric sense. In Africa, family is not a man–woman couple and their kids or a two-hunky sodomy-loving men pretending to be married with some unlucky adopted baby being wielded as a trophy won from a victorious court battle over “gay adoption rights”. No, No, No…In Africa, family is everybody who is connected to your family tree (no matter how remote) and all members of that family tree have right to look after any children borne to anybody in that family tree. It is something you will never be able to understand and that is the reason why the western mantra “Mind-Your-Own-Business” is pretty useless in a society such as ours. What any African individual does is the concern everybody connected to in his family tree—his grandparents, father, mother, uncles, sisters, brothers, nephews, nieces, in-laws, cousins, second cousins, etc, etc. So gayism can NEVER be acceptable to us because it violates the essence of who we are. When Africans talk of “family values” they actually mean it. We are not like the double-speaking and double-dealing Republican party hypocrites in your country. We mean what we say.
Now going back to the issue of psychologists/shrinks…
As a Westerner, I cannot ask you to seek support from your family to get over the depressing fact that you cannot have your way with regards to the destiny of our country down here in a little corner of East Africa. So I will recommend that you should go see your shrink so that he can calm you down a bit because no matter how many times you blow your top, our MPs has made an irrevocable decision never to allow any foreigner exercise veto power over our sovereign parliament. The Bahati Bill belongs to all MPs in our parliament. It ceased to be sole property of its author (David Bahati) long time ago.
Beyond the mafia of western imperialist nations, the world has no problems with Uganda. Large swatches of the world agree with us that gayism is not a human right, but rather an abhorrent behaviour that degrades the quality of human life and exposes its practitioners to horrible health hazards. It is no accident that US health system and the health system of many western countries ban sodomites from bringing their risky blood anywhere near a hospital blood bank. Ugandan health system cannot cope with the sort of antibiotic-resistant diseases that gay sex practitioners always come up with.
The dirty underhand of Archbishop Henry Orombi (spiritual advisor to MP David Bahati) is at work here. Anglican Bishop Orombi excommunicated Anglican Bishop Christopher Ssenyonjo for ministering to desperate LGBTI people (outcasts mostly) in Uganda. Since being excommunicated Bishop Christopher has traveled worldwide, raised funding for a LGBTI ¨support and counseling¨ service in Kampala. No doubt about it, Bahati will try and pass legislation which would criminalize ¨counseling¨ to the marginalized, victimized and damned LGBTI citizens of Uganda. Egodriven to the max, Archbishop Orombi will try anything to validate his vile actions as head of the Anglican Church of Uganda…this is the same lightweight thug whose ecclesiastical outreach attempted to steal Episcopal Church Parishes in the United States by generating ¨poisoness¨ hate of Gay people from within. The madness of going to great legislative lengths to protect the overdriven egos of Bahati and Orombi is disgusting…worse, they are accomplices to the persecution and murder (David Kato) of their fellow citizens…the two ought be taken before the World Court at the Hague for their destructive to others conniving.
You do have a rather unhealthy obssession with Archbishop Orombi. As far as I can tell, he has not prevented you from practising sexual deviance in your own nation. He is not the only religious leader in Uganda or in Africa that rejects gayism. So what’s your problem with this particular cleric? Why the obssession?
Okay, you hate Orombi for excommunicating the heretical MISTER Christopher Ssenyonjo (I am not Anglican, but I know for sure that Ssenyonjo is certainly not a priest or Bishop of the Church of Uganda. Has Ssenyonjo being granted the rank of a Bishop within ECUSA ??)
But Orombi is not the only Anglican senior clergyman engaging in cross-border ministry to traditional Anglicans alienated by the rock-star make-over of ECUSA. The bishops in Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania and even Rwanda are doing the same. So the question is why are you obsessed with Orombi??
Do you honestly think that Orombi reads this blog or cares about your rantings and ravings. I am not religious, but I know for a fact that the scriptures do not see gayism as a good thing and has recommended some hefty penalties for exhibiting such behaviour. Now Orombi is being true to the faith to which he is called and serves while your buddy-church officials in ECUSA are falling over themselves to be more politically correct than the Democratic Party (and increasingly, the Republican Party). ECUSA is more of a political party than a church. Orombi and his senior church officials refuse to transform the Church of Uganda into a political party. Okay??
This is just rubbish. I am not going to cast a vote in favour of the bill because of Archbishop Henry Orombi or even Honourable David Bahati. I will cast it because it is the correct thing to do !!!
Gay Propaganda !!! Kato was killed by his lover over some squabbles pertaining to his “dangerously adventurous lifestyle” . It has nothing to do with Bahati or Orombi. Sorry, nobody is gonna be tried in the Hague. By the way, if that were the case we will simply get a copy of the Hague Invasion Act (2002) passed by US Congress and pass it here in Ugandan parliament. If Bahati or Orombi were ever kidnapped, we will send UPDF to storm Hague and bring them home safe and sound !!
Okay, you hate Orombi for excommunicating the heretical MISTER Christopher Ssenyonjo (I am not Anglican, but I know for sure that Ssenyonjo is certainly not a priest or Bishop of the Church of Uganda. Has Ssenyonjo being granted the rank of a Bishop within ECUSA ??)
The Rt. Reverend Christopher Ssenyonjo is an Ugandan Anglican Bishop…he´s isn´t unbishopped because the Orombi thinks he´s a renegade for helping the oppressed LGBT Christians in Uganda…he even did the final service for Anglican David Kato (who was murdered by another common thug thanks to Rolling Stone, not U.S. pulication, trash literature in Uganda) and attended the last Lambeth Conference as a guest of the Archbishop of Canterbury…btw, speaking of immoral behavior, drunks, trash and much vertical human corruption, why, oh defender of thugs and thieves (that you know nothing about), oh why don´t you attempt to add some effort to stopping the childwitchburning (rampant in both Nigeria and Uganda), human sex slavery (no doubt a favorite), ragging alcoholism and unhealthy intimacies amongst your much admired heterosexual public? Your society is a mess, totally out of control inflation and deflated bragsters, civil war, decades old resettlement camps and YOU want to discuss LGBT moral twists and turns and who ought love oneanother…you´ve got the obsession, my not-so-deep-friend…it´s deep, sick and nasty (and you harm others as you indulge yourself in moral-like self-disfigurement).
The Bahati Bill belongs to the/your ¨C Street¨ Republican U.
S. Family of origin– your moral origin, for hire as it turns out with or without your pumped up disdain for same. Regardless of the smoozie you like to portray here, it matters greatly that although you ¨say¨ you love your extended family, as do we, you are simply persecuting many of them because of the head you have deeply embedded in ¨pretend¨…why, because you seem to refuse to deal with reality even amongst the clan members–all of your clan members…poor, rich, it´s all the same, low level character defects, pride and foolishness/ignorance can not be uncovered by folks who refuse to deal in reality and acceptance…that would be you?
Feardriven, blindly selfrighteous and biggoted you?
There is no such thing as traditional “male-male sex practices”. There is nothing “traditional” about gayism in Uganda. European/American gay propagandists always claim that the continent of Africa was in love with gayism until European missionaries arrived on the continent and instructed its peoples to reject gayism.
The propagandist-writers cannot explain why the missionaries were successful in getting Africans to reject gayism, but failed woefully to cause the Africans to reject polygamy and animism (which is still practised and mixed up with Christianity). The simple explanation is that the missionaries were not responsible in the first place for Africa’s antipathy to gayism. The views of European missionaries on gayism merely concurred with traditional African views on that topic. It was never a case of missionaries instructing Africans to reject gayism. The missionaries didn’t have to instruct anything because pre-colonial Africans already could not conceive of the idea of two men tearing away at their anuses and would have regarded such people (if they existed at the time) of being mentally disturbed people (perhaps, possessed by the devil ??)
With regards to Uganda, these propagandists have published books mentioning the 19th Century King Mwanga II of Buganda who had 16 wives and then exhibited gay behaviour. Given that gayism was a previously unheard of behaviour prior to the antics of Mwanga II, it is the general consensus among modern day Ugandans that the King learned that behaviour from his Arab trader friends. This is entirely plausible, if one considered the peculiar cases of gay behaviour among Arab colonists reported in areas of East Africa under the suzerainty of Gulf Arab sheikdoms at that historical period.
For “cultural realitivism”please read “cultural relativism”. Sorry
Leonardo Ricardo,
I’m in no way anti-American. I simply defend ideals Americans themselves have maintained in bygone times. In those times, the U.S. saw themselves as a protector of the sovereignty of young nations against old Empires. The most famous case has been President Eisenhower’s support of Egypt against Britain and France in the Suez crisis – so blatantly different from President Obama’s conduct w.r.t. Libya.
Also, the United States have been the homeland of cultural anthropology and cultural realitivism – teaching that we can’t presuppose that all people on the earth are “like us” and so have to adapt our customs, and opposing Western missionarism and cultural imperialism.
I’m quite prepared to protect traditional male-male sex practices in Uganda against evangelical missionarism. But I won’t have that mixed with Western gay missionarism.
Christian missionaries have always been convinced that there are millions of lost souls over the ocean (“animae naturaliter christianae”) which are only waiting for westerners to come and resolve them. Gay missionarism, as described by Carol Ranney, seems based on a similar idea of lost gay souls. That’s possible, of course. But as we don’t know much about male-male sex in Uganda – and the mostly well informed Dr. Throckmorton hasn’t quoted any study about that matter! – I see no reason why male-male sex practitioners in Uganda should have much in common with Western gays (except those Ugandans which intentionally imitate Western customs and fashions).
Gay Propaganda !!! The sponsors of the bill are 100% Ugandans and even before Bahati laid out his bill there were already plans by the government to further amend the Sexual Offenders Act (2000). Bahati merely pre-empted the government’s plans. But seeing the way things are at the moment, I have no doubt that the government will “categorically deny” ever considering amending the already existing penal code dealing with the abominable sex crime of gayism
It was not down to me to declare it a sex crime. Even before I was conceived in the womb of my mother, gayism was already classified as a crime in both religious and non-religious countries. It was once a crime throughout Europe. It was a crime in many communist nations until around 1993. China maintained it as a crime until 1997. However, gayism remains a crime in more than 80 nations worldwide. In more than 100 nations across the world where gayism is officially not deemed a crime, there are severe restrictions on the ability of gay sex practitioners to engage in matrimony; serve in the military; donate their risky blood to hospitals; adopt children or even flaunt deviant behaviour in public. The European Union is pressuring Uganda to allow gayism run amock and yet it has several member-nations that have written constitutions permanently banning gay sex practitioners from the institution of marriage. At least one EU nation (Republic of Lithuania) have laws banning gay propaganda in addition to maintaining a constitutional ban on gay marriage.
Interpol ??? Please don’t make me laugh !!! Do you think that Interpol is an extension of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or Swedish Police Service or the Royal Canadian Mounted Police ??
I think I like Maazi’s way of thinking. If you want to crush something, just declare it to be a crime and then all your actions are justified. Further, anything that is not a religion apparently is a proper subject for violent suppression.
Accordingly, I think we need to declare Ugandan citizens to be criminals. Ugandan citizenship is not a religion; it is simply a crime. Ugandans have a low life expectancy, include many AIDS carriers, and have exported violence and mayhem throughout their region. Irresponsible, violent and expansionist Ugandans necessitated a military intervention by Tanzania in 1979, which cost many innocent Tanzanian lives. Enough is enough.
The world needs to declare Ugandan citizens to be the criminals that they are. I am not suggesting that they all be killed. A life sentence would be appropriate. Perhaps hard labor, with all profits directed toward Tanzania as reparations. Those who persist in affirming their warped allegiance to this perversion known as Uganda should be eligible for the death penalty. Maazi, please provide us with your full name and address so that we can forward it on to Interpol.
Repeatedly the thyme comes back to underlying anti-Americanism…that´s fine but let us not forget the instigators of most of the current Bahati anti-lgbt fear/hate campaign ARE American Fundamentalist Christians…they´ve lost their battle against lgbt innocents in the U.S.A. so they ¨cultivate¨ other avenues (¨C¨Street) that drive their religious bigotry, pre paid of course, elsewhere. These boys, and they are mostly ill mannered educated thugs, seem to enjoy defiling a nation of superstitous demeaners of fellow human beings…it´s not about Europeon or American ¨moral intruders¨ it´s simply about some ¨religious¨Ugandans who are on the ¨take¨ or plain olde ¨brainwashed¨ and/or refuse responsibility for themselves (and their vile behavior towards others). Yes, it´s about Ugandans.
I think you are being unduly alarmist here. Gayism is not a political or religious belief. It is simply a sex crime that needs to contained properly with adequate legislation. Yes, I agree that there is potential for police abuse. But then that is why we have the judiciary which has proven itself time and time again to be independent of government.
We cannot reject a bill becoming law for fear that somebody will become overzealous and abuse the provisions
After all, has the fear of executing an innocent person wrongly convicted of a crime he didn’t commit forced states in the USA to repeal laws on capital punishment?
Maazi NCO – Your confidence is misplaced. Police powers have been used to stifle protests in your country on matters other than homosexuality. When opponents of th government or the Parliament or the police begin to speak in favor of homosexual rights, then those in power will have statutory authority to jail them for a long time. You may sincerely want to target certain ghosts, but the Bahati bill empowers much more.
This is the folly of the Bahati bill. Other societies have tried to stamp out one undesirable minority or another with the result that eventually more and more people come under the gun. Your children will be safe if you just enforce the laws you have.
@Carol A Ranney: “Wheaton College professor Stanton L. Jones has an excellent, Christian-oriented article on the subject.”
Carol, I believe this is the same article that you linked before. This article is not a fair assessment of the state of current research. It is the attempt of one evangelical to create space for ex-gay organizations to claim that change of orientation is possible. The weaknesses of this article have been pointed out on other threads, and I am disappointed that you have not taken these criticisms more seriously.
If you are a supporter of the ex-gay movement, you also are supporting a kind of social enforcement that kills gays, only in this case by their own hand. Please reconsider.
“Bahati said the bill was now focused on stopping the promotion of gay rights, and retains a proposal to criminalise public discussion of homosexuality with a heavy prison sentence.”
…sounds like each person on that endless list of heterosexual ugandans who have made known their appreciation of gay rights as human rights during public discussion can expect heavy prison sentences…
…pointless, defeatist, triggers a result that’s opposite to the intended result, impractical, unconstitutional… seriously now, is this the best job our elected representatives can do – get paid to droole over this nonsense at the expense of the simple and basic checklists of priorities that we humbly presented to them as they went into office?
“distributing flyers, engaging in radio interviews and holding provocative press conferences in swanky hotels to harass Ugandan people”
but it’s okay for politicians, big corporate organizations, conmen, fake herbalists, false prophets and countless other opportunists to use billboards, distribute flyers, engage in radio interviews, hold press conferences that result in millions of desperate and vulnerable ugandans being deceived and fleeced of whatever little they have earned through hard work, even tricked into paying for bogus and harmful “cures” for conditions ranging from poverty to hiv to misfortune? it’s our right to sift information and process it for ourselves, whether it’s disseminated via newspaper, radio, tv, pulpits, kampala’s noisy streets, or conferences… if ugandans know that they do not recognize sexual minorities as a legitimate group, why go to so much trouble to silence representative organizations? even if parliament attempted to stiffle the gay rights debate in uganda (we all know such attempts are driven by sour losers who believe that they have already lost that debate), uganda doesn’t exist in a vacuum and parliament has seriously stoked curiosity and even compassion among previously ignorant and indifferent ugandans, pushing us towards seeking more information on gay rights and homosexuality, information that will always be readily accessible even if local lgbti organizations were banned. and when you look at sexual minorities in uganda, really… what power do they honestly have that our almighty (yet sadly lost and wandering) parliament would want to wrestle from them? would you or your kids be “incited” into homosexuality by ugandans who have to wear masks out of fear for their lives while holding conferences to plead with fellow ugandans and legislators to be less hateful and more tolerant towards their kind? if anything, such “gay promotion” only raises awareness on how unecessarily difficult life is for sexual minorities in uganda… really, i dont see how any heterosexual ugandan would want to become a homosexual ugandan after being exposed to “gay promotion”. quite frankly, such legislation is pointless, defeatist, unconstitutional and a gateway to further repression to be visited on other ugandans.
Carol,
I keep trying to warn people about Maazi, probably in vain. He does not care to see reason. He is not rational. He is single-minded in his belief that being gay is nothing short of evil. He feeds on those who try and make him see reason. He enjoys conflict as should be evidenced by his postings and those of others on this blog. He is very much like Fred Phelps in this way. The best thing to do, as hard as it is, is to ignore him and oppose him in other more productive ways 🙂
“desperate gay sex practitioners based in Europe and America” If you actually talked to a few of them I think you’d find that their motivation is to support those who, NOT by choice, are GLBT, help them get the health care they are often denied, and give them the preventive teaching to help stop the spread of among other things, HIV/AIDS. Criminalizing gayism drives people underground where ignorance and lack of prevention contributes to the ongoing spread of AIDS. I challenge you to find a single foreign “gay sex practitioner” who is recruiting men to be gay. The decriminalisation of gayism would be a huge step forward for the health of all Ugandans, because it opens up a now-hidden front where HIV/AIDS can be fought.
Blockheads, blowhards and hatemongers…I once believed they didn´t necessarily come in a set of three. Reality just takes some getting used to, I´ll adjust.
A simple answer to your question is NO !!. Nobody will harasses these personalities you have mentioned. But the puppet organizations in Kampla fronting for Euro-American Gay Lobby will have their members prevented from distributing flyers, engaging in radio interviews and holding provocative press conferences in swanky hotels to harass Ugandan people about their deviant proclivities. This is the only thing I have been interested in since the bill first appeared in 2009. Even if Bahati Bill is stripped of all its teeth, I will do all I can to ensure that the clauses banning these provocative puppet organizations remain in place. I do not think Police would waste time on pro-gay individuals making passing remarks on gayism or journalists writing the occassional article sympathetic to gayism. However, I will expect the police to fully enforce a blanket ban on puppet organizations run by misguided Ugandans trained, financed and controlled by desperate gay sex practitioners based in Europe and America
would besigye, otunu, mwenda and all the others on the very long and fast growing list of ugandans who have announced some form of appreciation of the value of decriminalizing homosexuality in uganda… would all these ugandans be charged with “gay promotion” and punished based on the conjecture that their public statements on homosexuality somehow influenced heterosexual ugandans into becoming homosexual ugandans? …really??
I have yet to meet or hear of a single person who chose to be gay through contact with gays or recruitment by gays. On the contrary, the general experience is that people gradually realize (usually at a fairly young age) that they are different from their peers in that their normal sexual attractions are to the same rather than opposite sex. Revealing this to others is fearful and sometimes life-destroying–living in silence, always with a secret about who one really is–is equally life-destroying. Treating these people as a minority and letting them live in peace will not result in the promotion of gayism or the recruitment of others into gayism. And it’s a solution as to what to do about those leaves on family trees (worldwide) who are different from the rest of us. Accept them, give them support and peace. Wheaton College professor Stanton L. Jones has an excellent, Christian-oriented article on the subject. http://www.wheaton.edu/CACE/Hot-Topics
this whole “gay promotion” thing is such a cowardly and defeatist way of avoiding thorough defeat in the gay rights debate which you homophobes have already lost and keep losing every time you try to make discriminatory laws against sexual minorities.
“…gay promotion is inciting others…”
so, are you suggesting that all gay people were “incited” into being gay through “gay promotion”?
and if that were true, why are heterosexuals still an overwhelming majority over sexual minorities even in countries where “gay promotion” is common and respected as freedom of speech/expression/conscience/association?
and how do you explain the fact that most “gay promotion” comes from heterosexuals, who stubbornly remain heterosexual themselves… nelson mandela, barrack obama, thabo mbeki, festus mogae, willy mutunga, twinomujuni, rwakafuzi, tamale, nagenda, ssenyonjo… the list is endless… why have they all remained heterosexual and why are there no heterosexuals who were incited into becoming homosexuals on account of these individuals’ loud support of lgbti rights as human rights (what you would probably term “gay promotion”)?
maazi, you were, have been and currently are exposed to daily doses of “gay promotion” …are you afraid that you might become gay as a result?
if homosexuality were decriminalized in uganda today, would every ugandan including yourself become gay? on thinking about that question and preparing whatever responses you may have to that question… you do realise that nobody’s sexuality is going to change because of legislation, don’t you?
Patrocles# ~ Feb 11, 2012 at 3:21 am
“A president e.g. who just now tells catholic institutions: Support birth control/abortion or die!”
there is no “death penalty” clause in the health care provisions.
Patrocles, that is a preposterous mischaracterization of the president’s effort to make contraception freely available for all women. Now a compromise has been reached which makes your observation even less connected to reality. I really don’t care how you choose to express your so-called freedom of conscience but let’s please try to stick to the facts. Thank you.
“…gay promotion is inciting others…”
so, are you suggesting that all gay people were “incited” into being gay through “gay promotion”?
and if that were true, why are heterosexuals still an overwhelming majority over sexual minorities even in countries where “gay promotion” is common and respected as freedom of speech/expression/conscience/association?
and how do you explain the fact that most “gay promotion” comes from heterosexuals, who stubbornly remain heterosexual themselves… nelson mandela, barrack obama, thabo mbeki, festus mogae, willy mutunga, twinomujuni, rwakafuzi, tamale, nagenda, ssenyonjo… the list is endless… why have they all remained heterosexual and why are there no heterosexuals who were incited into becoming homosexuals on account of these individuals’ loud support of lgbti rights as human rights (what you would probably term “gay promotion”)?
maazi, you were, have been and currently are exposed to daily doses of “gay promotion” …are you afraid that you might become gay as a result?
if homosexuality were decriminalized in uganda today, would every ugandan including yourself become gay? on thinking about that question and preparing whatever responses you may have to that question… you do realise that nobody’s sexuality is going to change because of legislation, don’t you?
I should be glad that Dr. Throckmorton goes back to that old and likeable idea, freedom of conscience.
Fact is, you can’t pick it out of the drawer just when it is convenient and then lay it aside again.
A president e.g. who just now tells catholic institutions: Support birth control/abortion or die! isn’t in a position to preach “freedom of conscience” to Ugandans.
In former days, I’d have promoted the idea of a bipartisan movement supporting freedom of conscience on all sides. I don’t do that any longer. Most people don’t at all want freedom in the sense of general liberty, they only want an advantage for themselves and their in-group. So they are doomed to lose it, and that by right.
Patrocles, that is a preposterous mischaracterization of the president’s effort to make contraception freely available for all women. Now a compromise has been reached which makes your observation even less connected to reality. I really don’t care how you choose to express your so-called freedom of conscience but let’s please try to stick to the facts. Thank you.
The Bahati Bill belongs to the/your ¨C Street¨ Republican U.
S. Family of origin– your moral origin, for hire as it turns out with or without your pumped up disdain for same. Regardless of the smoozie you like to portray here, it matters greatly that although you ¨say¨ you love your extended family, as do we, you are simply persecuting many of them because of the head you have deeply embedded in ¨pretend¨…why, because you seem to refuse to deal with reality even amongst the clan members–all of your clan members…poor, rich, it´s all the same, low level character defects, pride and foolishness/ignorance can not be uncovered by folks who refuse to deal in reality and acceptance…that would be you?
Feardriven, blindly selfrighteous and biggoted you?
My Dearest Leo,
I can understand that you are upset that the mythology of “American Exceptionalism” has failed woefully to bully our parliament. When I lived in the United States I noticed that everybody who had money was retaining the services of a psychologist (a.k.a “shrink”). I always thought that it was an incredible waste of money, but I was very, very wrong. Given the sky-high suicide rates in your country, I can understand why you chaps need the psychologists. We Ugandans may be poor, but we have our families. As Doc Warren will tell you nothing serves as a moral booster than having your family around.
When I speak of family, I don’t mean it in the Eurocentric sense. I mean it in the Afrocentric sense. In Africa, family is not a man–woman couple and their kids or a two-hunky sodomy-loving men pretending to be married with some unlucky adopted baby being wielded as a trophy won from a victorious court battle over “gay adoption rights”. No, No, No…In Africa, family is everybody who is connected to your family tree (no matter how remote) and all members of that family tree have right to look after any children borne to anybody in that family tree. It is something you will never be able to understand and that is the reason why the western mantra “Mind-Your-Own-Business” is pretty useless in a society such as ours. What any African individual does is the concern everybody connected to in his family tree—his grandparents, father, mother, uncles, sisters, brothers, nephews, nieces, in-laws, cousins, second cousins, etc, etc. So gayism can NEVER be acceptable to us because it violates the essence of who we are. When Africans talk of “family values” they actually mean it. We are not like the double-speaking and double-dealing Republican party hypocrites in your country. We mean what we say.
Now going back to the issue of psychologists/shrinks…
As a Westerner, I cannot ask you to seek support from your family to get over the depressing fact that you cannot have your way with regards to the destiny of our country down here in a little corner of East Africa. So I will recommend that you should go see your shrink so that he can calm you down a bit because no matter how many times you blow your top, our MPs has made an irrevocable decision never to allow any foreigner exercise veto power over our sovereign parliament. The Bahati Bill belongs to all MPs in our parliament. It ceased to be sole property of its author (David Bahati) long time ago.
Okay, you hate Orombi for excommunicating the heretical MISTER Christopher Ssenyonjo (I am not Anglican, but I know for sure that Ssenyonjo is certainly not a priest or Bishop of the Church of Uganda. Has Ssenyonjo being granted the rank of a Bishop within ECUSA ??)
The Rt. Reverend Christopher Ssenyonjo is an Ugandan Anglican Bishop…he´s isn´t unbishopped because the Orombi thinks he´s a renegade for helping the oppressed LGBT Christians in Uganda…he even did the final service for Anglican David Kato (who was murdered by another common thug thanks to Rolling Stone, not U.S. pulication, trash literature in Uganda) and attended the last Lambeth Conference as a guest of the Archbishop of Canterbury…btw, speaking of immoral behavior, drunks, trash and much vertical human corruption, why, oh defender of thugs and thieves (that you know nothing about), oh why don´t you attempt to add some effort to stopping the childwitchburning (rampant in both Nigeria and Uganda), human sex slavery (no doubt a favorite), ragging alcoholism and unhealthy intimacies amongst your much admired heterosexual public? Your society is a mess, totally out of control inflation and deflated bragsters, civil war, decades old resettlement camps and YOU want to discuss LGBT moral twists and turns and who ought love oneanother…you´ve got the obsession, my not-so-deep-friend…it´s deep, sick and nasty (and you harm others as you indulge yourself in moral-like self-disfigurement).
Beyond the mafia of western imperialist nations, the world has no problems with Uganda. Large swatches of the world agree with us that gayism is not a human right, but rather an abhorrent behaviour that degrades the quality of human life and exposes its practitioners to horrible health hazards. It is no accident that US health system and the health system of many western countries ban sodomites from bringing their risky blood anywhere near a hospital blood bank. Ugandan health system cannot cope with the sort of antibiotic-resistant diseases that gay sex practitioners always come up with.
You do have a rather unhealthy obssession with Archbishop Orombi. As far as I can tell, he has not prevented you from practising sexual deviance in your own nation. He is not the only religious leader in Uganda or in Africa that rejects gayism. So what’s your problem with this particular cleric? Why the obssession?
Okay, you hate Orombi for excommunicating the heretical MISTER Christopher Ssenyonjo (I am not Anglican, but I know for sure that Ssenyonjo is certainly not a priest or Bishop of the Church of Uganda. Has Ssenyonjo being granted the rank of a Bishop within ECUSA ??)
But Orombi is not the only Anglican senior clergyman engaging in cross-border ministry to traditional Anglicans alienated by the rock-star make-over of ECUSA. The bishops in Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania and even Rwanda are doing the same. So the question is why are you obsessed with Orombi??
Do you honestly think that Orombi reads this blog or cares about your rantings and ravings. I am not religious, but I know for a fact that the scriptures do not see gayism as a good thing and has recommended some hefty penalties for exhibiting such behaviour. Now Orombi is being true to the faith to which he is called and serves while your buddy-church officials in ECUSA are falling over themselves to be more politically correct than the Democratic Party (and increasingly, the Republican Party). ECUSA is more of a political party than a church. Orombi and his senior church officials refuse to transform the Church of Uganda into a political party. Okay??
This is just rubbish. I am not going to cast a vote in favour of the bill because of Archbishop Henry Orombi or even Honourable David Bahati. I will cast it because it is the correct thing to do !!!
Gay Propaganda !!! Kato was killed by his lover over some squabbles pertaining to his “dangerously adventurous lifestyle” . It has nothing to do with Bahati or Orombi. Sorry, nobody is gonna be tried in the Hague. By the way, if that were the case we will simply get a copy of the Hague Invasion Act (2002) passed by US Congress and pass it here in Ugandan parliament. If Bahati or Orombi were ever kidnapped, we will send UPDF to storm Hague and bring them home safe and sound !!
Not really. It has nothing to do with freedom of conscience—gayism is not a religion. It has nothing to do with freedom of expression because gay promotion is inciting others to commit sex crimes. If it is a serious crime in many EU nations to say that the tragic Jewish Holocaust is a myth then there is no reason why gay advocacy cannot be a serious criminal offence in Uganda.
This clause is the smartest provision of the original bill. It does not make life difficult for anyone who wants to continue sexual deviancy in his/her house. It makes it impossible for any public space to be given to western-choreographed gay propaganda designed to confuse our impressionable youths. Those who want to march up and down the streets in their underwears and wave rainbow flags can always immigrate to San Francisco and do that over there. Gayism will not be promoted in Uganda.
Clause 13 is perhaps the most insidious part of the Bahati Bill. It is designed completely to marginalize LGB Ugandans ot the point where their lives become utterly impossible. It is also a ferocious attack on peaceful freedom of expression, and criminalizes just about anyone who has anything to do with someone who is gay.
It is essential that all who are campainging against the Bill ‘spread the word’ about Clause 13 (or whatever supercedes it), making clear to as many people as possible all its hideous implications.
Not really. It has nothing to do with freedom of conscience—gayism is not a religion. It has nothing to do with freedom of expression because gay promotion is inciting others to commit sex crimes. If it is a serious crime in many EU nations to say that the tragic Jewish Holocaust is a myth then there is no reason why gay advocacy cannot be a serious criminal offence in Uganda.
This clause is the smartest provision of the original bill. It does not make life difficult for anyone who wants to continue sexual deviancy in his/her house. It makes it impossible for any public space to be given to western-choreographed gay propaganda designed to confuse our impressionable youths. Those who want to march up and down the streets in their underwears and wave rainbow flags can always immigrate to San Francisco and do that over there. Gayism will not be promoted in Uganda.
Clause 13 is perhaps the most insidious part of the Bahati Bill. It is designed completely to marginalize LGB Ugandans ot the point where their lives become utterly impossible. It is also a ferocious attack on peaceful freedom of expression, and criminalizes just about anyone who has anything to do with someone who is gay.
It is essential that all who are campainging against the Bill ‘spread the word’ about Clause 13 (or whatever supercedes it), making clear to as many people as possible all its hideous implications.
The dirty underhand of Archbishop Henry Orombi (spiritual advisor to MP David Bahati) is at work here. Anglican Bishop Orombi excommunicated Anglican Bishop Christopher Ssenyonjo for ministering to desperate LGBTI people (outcasts mostly) in Uganda. Since being excommunicated Bishop Christopher has traveled worldwide, raised funding for a LGBTI ¨support and counseling¨ service in Kampala. No doubt about it, Bahati will try and pass legislation which would criminalize ¨counseling¨ to the marginalized, victimized and damned LGBTI citizens of Uganda. Egodriven to the max, Archbishop Orombi will try anything to validate his vile actions as head of the Anglican Church of Uganda…this is the same lightweight thug whose ecclesiastical outreach attempted to steal Episcopal Church Parishes in the United States by generating ¨poisoness¨ hate of Gay people from within. The madness of going to great legislative lengths to protect the overdriven egos of Bahati and Orombi is disgusting…worse, they are accomplices to the persecution and murder (David Kato) of their fellow citizens…the two ought be taken before the World Court at the Hague for their destructive to others conniving.