I was browsing reddit.com today looking for anything interesting to blog about when something caught my eye. It was a link to an article about Uganda's anti-gay bill. Having a good friend and former roommate from Uganda I tend to click on anything about Uganda. In the past he has talked about plenty of politics of Uganda, the corrupt government, and blah blah blah. I am not interested in politics at all, but, since I had never heard of an anti-gay bill I was interested.
It turns out that there was a law proposed in Uganda that would impose life imprisonment on all homosexuals in the country. The law is on it's way through Uganda's parliament and is actually being supported by it's top leaders. Besides putting all gay people in jail, they would also imprison anyone who knows the existence of a gay or lesbian and fails to report them to the police within 24 hours. It also requires the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality" which is a sex act between gays or lesbians in which one person has the HIV virus.
As of now it is only a bill, but, the reason controversy is growing is because Uganda's president Museveni is the chairman of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Trinidad which opens on Friday. If the issue is raised up on the summit it could divide Commonwealth leaders. "How the heck could that happen, Zack? This is the 21st century." Good question and right you are, this is the 21st century and countries like the USA, Canada, and Britain for the most part have liberal views on the subject. But, many African and Carribean countries are still socially conservative and still have laws on their books that criminalize homosexuality.
As you can imagine, human rights groups are going nuts over this bill. The person who proposed the bill described homosexuality as a "creeping evil." What do you think about all of this? Can you believe this? What do you think it would be like if it passed? How would they enforce it? Does this sound a little Hitler-ish to you?
I am surprised to hear about this. I have never been to any African or Carribbean countries so I do not completely understand the mindset behind supporting this kind of bill. If something like this happened in the United States, the outrage would be overwhelming. Politicians today can barely say they oppose gay marriage, let alone try to pass a bill making it illegal to be gay. If this passed, I believe gays from Uganda would move to the United States and other gay-friendly countries.
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