Ugly anti-gay law enacted

[reader]

From CNN

Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has signed some of the harshest anti-LGBTQ laws in the world, the speaker of parliament said, defying international pressure. 

The bill includes the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality’ which includes sex with a minor, having sex while HIV positive and incest.

The bill criminalizes sex education for the gay community and makes it illegal not to expose what it calls perpetrators of aggravated homosexuality to the police. It calls for “rehabilitation”– widely discredited conversion therapy – for gay offenders.

Museveni sent the bill back to parliament for revisions earlier this year. The latest version of the bill passed earlier this month. 

Uganda’s longtime president has already faced extensive criticism from Western governments, including the US, over the law. 

A similarly homophobic law was struck down by the courts in 2014.

[Latbear4blk]

He may be planning to run for Florida or Texas Governor.

[PeterRS]

I feel desperately sorry for Ugandan gays. I assume those who can afford it will elect to leave for other countries, but with many African countries holding on to British colonial anti-gay sex laws, I wonder to which countries they might consider moving.

[Riobard]

9 hours ago, PeterRS said:

I feel desperately sorry for Ugandan gays. I assume those who can afford it will elect to leave for other countries, but with many African countries holding on to British colonial anti-gay sex laws, I wonder to which countries they might consider moving.

Mauritania is another example. Shira Law (sp?). Death penalty on the books, not applied since mid-1980s). This decade a group of men getting harmlessly a bit tipsy at a party and arrested and jailed because they were perceived as behaving as though they were imitating female characteristics. 

But look at the Uganda legislation details. There is a lack of logic in certain components, and I’m not referring to the batshit crazy ideology related to homosexuality. The published discussions about how to detail the legal applications are also gong-show grade even outside of the homonegativity value system. 

Let’s say for the sake of argument that the law was about spitting saliva in a public place, a simple rule about comportment. There are peculiarities in how the law is applied. For example, if two adults (18-74) agreed that innocuous spitting was fine in each others presence they are both indictable. If one is a consenting age 75+ and the other younger (18+), let’s say 72, then the younger is exclusively liable and the older person obviously in mutual agreement with the harmless release of saliva into the gully is exempt and considered as victimized in the act. So one day arbitrarily subject to execution, the next day apparent impunity. What a fiasco in terms of basic conceptual logic, though unsurprising parallels to flimsy underpinnings of draconian sexual diversity censorship. Stupid is as stupid does.

The legislation is akin to a war crime. Let the sanctions roll, I would say, but one worry is that the hard won western sourced cross-pollination of HIV-related support and management might be set back. Since HIV is also central to the new legislation, cutting off Uganda based on rights violation principles might inadvertently exacerbate key elements of the health agenda. Tricky.

[Riobard]

19 hours ago, Latbear4blk said:

He may be planning to run for Florida or Texas Governor.

Right, “othering” is a sad and disturbing trend seen everywhere and your parallel is on the money. 

[alvnv]

10 hours ago, PeterRS said:

I feel desperately sorry for Ugandan gays. I assume those who can afford it will elect to leave for other countries, but with many African countries holding on to British colonial anti-gay sex laws, I wonder to which countries they might consider moving.

UK, I hope