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NEWS & LETTERS, Janurary-February 2010
World in View
Uganda's anti-Gay law
by Gerry Emmett
Human rights and LGBT organizations around the world have called on Uganda's government to scrap its proposed genocidal anti-Gay law, which threatens those engaging in Gay sex with life in prison, with the death penalty reserved for "aggravated homosexuality." It also threatens those who simply know of people having Gay or Lesbian sex with three years imprisonment unless they inform. It would be a disaster which would also hinder anti-AIDS efforts.
Gays are subject to beatings, death threats, and blackmail on a regular basis. As one government minister stated, "Homosexuals can forget about human rights." Such anti-Gay agitation serves the Yoweri Museveni regime in drawing attention from its own authoritarianism and corruption, and the potentially even greater corruption that can arise with the development of Uganda's oil and resource wealth.
Museveni is closely tied to U.S. right-wing evangelical Rick Warren. Evangelists Scott Lively of Defend the Family International (a Holocaust revisionist), Caleb Brundidge of the International Healing Foundation, which claims to "cure" Gays, and Don Schmierer of Exodus International, who advocates "conversion therapy," are widely credited with inspiring the latest bill since they addressed large numbers of Ugandan lawmakers and police last year with their anti-Gay message.
The same right-wing churches supported apartheid South Africa and terrorist insurgencies in Angola and Mozambique. The genocidal intentions behind Uganda's anti-Gay bill just give away the game that has been played for a long, long time. It shines a much-needed light on secretive groups like The Family, which organize politicians in the U.S. (including Rep. Bart Stupak, of the anti-choice Stupak Amendment).
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