Politicians such as David Bahati and religious leaders like Pastor Martin Ssempa and Pastor Robert Kayanja should not be granted visas to visit countries that adhere to international human rights standards. Individuals like Scott Lively, who campaigned for the repression of LGBT groups in Uganda, must be held accountable for their actions. There should be real consequences for this deadly promotion of hatred and bigotry. Ugandan society has been poisoned by this exported homophobia and deliberate misinformation. Religion has been hijacked to demonize and persecute LGBT minorities.
This is not about the West exporting homosexuality to Africa or a “gay agenda” it is instead about right-wing Christian evangelicals from the West using homophobia as a tool to establish a foothold in the African continent, and local Ugandan politicians and “ men of the cloth” profiting from this narrative. The most important first step is challenging the narrative that homophobic politicians, religious leaders, and outsiders have crafted. That is why a sustained, multi-pronged approach is needed to move forward. Stemming homophobia in Uganda will be difficult it is fully entrenched in Ugandan society and politics and is an easy way of unifying an otherwise ethnically and politically divided population. Clearly, the LGBTQ community became a pawn in the political process and a scapegoat for the ills facing Ugandan society. LGBTQ Ugandans have courageously refused to stay silent and continued to fight for their human rights. But statements by high-level officials in the Ugandan government, such as Ugandan Minister for Security General Elly Tumwine, who claimed that LGBTQ people are connected to terrorism, continue to put the LGBTQ community at risk. In response to international pressure, the president’s office denied that the bill will be re-introduced. On the heels of Wasswa’s murder, the recent threat of reintroducing the “Kill the Gays” bill from member of Parliament (MP) James Buturo and other MPs, and the arrests of over one hundred suspected homosexuals at an LGBTQ friendly bar, catapulted Uganda back into the international spotlight, signaling an escalation of violence and repression toward the Ugandan LGBTQ community. Uganda continues to be ground zero in the cultural wars over homosexuality. The GBGR measures the extent to which countries are human rights protective or persecuting towards sexual minorities, ranking countries on a scale from “A” to “F.” Uganda scores a mere 11 percent, sharing this dubious distinction with The Gambia, South Sudan, and Tanzania. It ranked an “F” or “Persecuting,” a failing grade on the F&M Global Barometer of Gay Rights™ (GBGR).
But Uganda is among the worst of these countries. Over seventy countries still criminalize homosexuality, and Uganda is among thirty-two countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that still criminalize homosexuality. Uganda is not unique in its criminalization of homosexuality. Sylvia Tamale observes, “it is not homosexuality that is un-African but the laws that criminalized such relations…what is alien to the continent is legalized homophobia, exported to Africa by the imperialists where there had been indifference to and even tolerance of same-sex relations.” American fundamentalist missionaries were on a mission to save God-fearing Ugandans from the evil Western “ gay agenda.” They found willing servants in opportunistic politicians and Ugandan religious leaders who argued that homosexuality was “un-African” and a Western export. However, even though the law itself fell, the spirit lived on, as the bill had enjoyed wide-spread support in Uganda, where 93 percent of Ugandans were opposed to homosexuality.įor Christian fundamentalists, Uganda-an impoverished country recovering from years of corruption and violence-provided a blank canvas to project their missionary zeal and strong homophobia. Six months later, and after widespread international pressure, the Ugandan Constitutional Court ruled the Anti-Homosexuality Act invalid on procedural grounds. Although the death penalty was dropped from the 2009 version, the bill was still signed into law in 2014 as the Anti-Homosexuality Act. Supporters of the bill equated homosexuality with pedophilia, insinuating that gay adults groomed vulnerable children into homosexuality. Under the guise of “protecting the traditional family,” the bill advocated for the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” and the imprisonment of anyone “promoting” or failing to report homosexuality. It first gained international notoriety in 2009 when David Bahati, a member of the Ugandan parliament whose views were heavily influenced by American evangelicals, introduced the now infamous “ Kill the Gays” bill.
Uganda was not always the extremely homophobic country it has transformed into.