Anti-Gay Sentiment Plagues Uganda

Since gaining its independence from Britain in the 1960s, Uganda has undergone several decades of violent political coups. Current President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power since 1986, has created the calmest political climate that Uganda has seen during its post-colonial years. However, with one of the lowest per capita incomes in the world and a deeply sexist attitude, Uganda's progress as a country is on hold. It is in this environment, where the inability to feed one's family is commonplace, that human rights and equality are nearly non-existent.

In early October, a small weekly newspaper, Rolling Stone, based out of Uganda's capital, Kampala, ran a front-page headline that said "100 Pictures of Uganda's Top Homos Leak" with a caption reading "Hang Them" beside it. The front page added that homosexuals claim to "recruit 100,000 innocent kids by 2012." The newspaper printed its first issue only a few weeks earlier. The Ugandan government has, once again, come under international fire for its disregard for gay rights and has ordered the newspaper to cease publication, an order that the newspaper has vowed to defy.

TheRolling Stone's sentiments are nothing new in Uganda; other newspapers in recent years have printed stories similar to the recentRolling Stone issue but never to this magnitude. Anti-gay sentiments, along with the marginalization of women, pervade Ugandan society and culture. It is no surprise that men identified in the Rolling Stone's issue were met with public stoning rather than pity. The article last month is only the most recent deplorable event in a long line of anti-gay efforts in Uganda, with the worst of the current controversy starting in March 2009.

In the spring of 2009, three American evangelical Christians visited Kampala and hosted a "Seminar on Exposing the Homosexual's Agenda." For three days the Americans preached to Ugandan elite about the "dangers" that homosexuality presents for society. The Americans claimed that the gay movement was an evil institution in place "to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity" and that gay men prey on teenage boys. The Americans ensured their audience of Ugandan policymakers that "gays can be converted to heterosexuality." Hallelujah.

The ignorance and intolerance of the conference is indisputable; however, a meeting motivated by hate can be contained and does not necessarily lead to action. I do not condone a resigned attitude towards intolerance, but rather, realize the inevitability of that influence and seek solace in the fact that things could be much worse. In Uganda it got much worse.

A few months after the conference, David Bahati, a member of the Ugandan parliament, inspired by the Americans' rhetoric, proposed the "Anti-Homosexuality Bill." Ugandan law already stipulates that homosexuality is unnatural and decrees it illegal, punishable by up to 14 years of imprisonment. The bill calls for harsher penalties for homosexual acts, however, such as the death penalty for repeat offenders. Bahati's bill has stalled in parliament, largely because Museveni recognizes that the international community would cut off the foreign aid his country relies upon if it was passed into law.

Museveni and Bahati both belong to a U.S.-based religious and political organization called "The Fellowship" or sometimes known as "The Family." The organization is comprised of high-ranking government officials, corporate executives and heads of religious and humanitarian groups from around the world that "provide a fellowship forum for decision makers to share in Bible studies, prayer meetings and worship experiences and to experience spiritual affirmation and support" that also is very involved in political legislation. The Family's Wikipedia page (due to its need for "secrecy" as supported by citing "Biblical admonitions against public displays of good works," The Family has no official Web site of its own) reads like a description of Fight Club and The Da Vinci Code: an underground network that seems too surreal not to be fiction.

Various sources have demonstrated the connection between the Ugandan government and The Family, insofar as the religious organization has admitted that Bahati is a valued member of their community. However, the media does not print the link between high-ranking U.S. politicians and Ugandan human rights violations possibly because, as The Family says, it "would not be able to tackle [The Family's] diplomatically sensitive missions if they drew public attention" to their "good work." Truth.

As John McCain rallies conservatives against the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell maybe we can tell him to kill another piece of legislation that is of high interest to his like-minded colleagues: Uganda's "Anti-Homosexuality Bill." But wait, is that what real Ugandans want? Better ask the family.

Eric Horvath, FCRH '11, is an English and economics major from Sayville, N.Y.