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Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Act Struck Down By Constitutional Court
Source: Buzzfeed
Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Act Struck Down By Constitutional Court
“We become legal again!” said LGBT activist Frank Mugisha. But Ugandan LGBT activists are bracing for a violent backlash to the decision.
Posted on Aug. 1, 2014, at 6:14 a.m.
J. Lester Feder
BuzzFeed Staff
Uganda's Constitutional Court struck down the country's Anti-Homosexuality Act on Friday, giving new hope to the country's embattled LGBT people and human rights activists.
Ugandan journalist Andrew Mwenda, one of a group of ten human rights activists, opposition politicians, and LGBT people who brought the challenge, tweeted from the packed court room:
Andrew M. Mwenda@AndrewMwenda Follow
The retrogressive anti homosexuality act of Uganda has been struck down by the constitutional court - it's now dead as a door nail.
6:16 AM - 01 Aug 14
The retrogressive anti homosexuality act of Uganda has been struck down by the constitutional court - it's now dead as a door nail.
6:16 AM - 01 Aug 14
In the five months since Uganda adopted the law, which imposes a sentence of up to life in prison for homosexuality and criminalizes advocating LGBT rights, LGBT Ugandans have lived under the constant threat of arrest or mob violence. The court's decision paves the way for organizations to again begin operating openly and to allow LGBT people to resume normal lives. But that change will come slowly — homosexuality remains a crime in Uganda under a provision of the penal code on the books before the Anti-Homosexuality Act was passed last December, and there is a chance of a surge in anti-LGBT violence in reaction to today's ruling.
The decision could also significantly ease international pressure on President Yoweri Museveni, who has been under pressure from the United States, the World Bank, and other important donors to get rid of the law or at least substantially weaken it through enforcement.
Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/ugandan-anti-homosexuality-act-struck-down-by-constitutional
14 replies
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An anti-gay law championed by evangelical Christians in Uganda with the enthusiastic backing of Religious Right leaders in the U.S. has passed parliament and is awaiting the president’s decision on whether to sign it. The bill as passed apparently no longer includes the death penalty provision but makes homosexuality a crime punishable by life in prison. LGBT activist Frank Mugisha says his colleagues are panicking, fearing that “there is going to be a hunt.”
Martin Ssempa, a Ugandan minister who has pushed the bill for years, and has been praised by Religious Right leaders like Matt Barber for his strident anti-gay stance, tweeted “Let Freedom Ring!” and posted a celebratory picture of himself with David Bahati, the bill’s sponsor.
Ssempa got plenty of help from American Religious Right figures like Lou Engle and Scott Lively, who is facing a human rights lawsuit brought by Sexual Minorities of Uganda. “This human rights crisis was made here in the United States,” says Tarso Luís Ramos, Executive Director at Political Research Associates.
Given that American Religious Right figures had praised the bill in its even more draconian form – Tony Perkins called it an effort to “uphold moral conduct” – it is sadly unsurprising to see some of them cheering. American Family Association hatemonger Bryan Fischer connected the law’s passage to the controversy in America over Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson. Fischer tweeted:
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/uganda-passes-anti-gay-bill-cheered-us-conservatives
Martin Ssempa, a Ugandan minister who has pushed the bill for years, and has been praised by Religious Right leaders like Matt Barber for his strident anti-gay stance, tweeted “Let Freedom Ring!” and posted a celebratory picture of himself with David Bahati, the bill’s sponsor.
Ssempa got plenty of help from American Religious Right figures like Lou Engle and Scott Lively, who is facing a human rights lawsuit brought by Sexual Minorities of Uganda. “This human rights crisis was made here in the United States,” says Tarso Luís Ramos, Executive Director at Political Research Associates.
Given that American Religious Right figures had praised the bill in its even more draconian form – Tony Perkins called it an effort to “uphold moral conduct” – it is sadly unsurprising to see some of them cheering. American Family Association hatemonger Bryan Fischer connected the law’s passage to the controversy in America over Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson. Fischer tweeted:
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/uganda-passes-anti-gay-bill-cheered-us-conservatives
Uganda’s President Will Sign Anti-Gay Bill. How Did the Nation Get to this Point?
The bill’s passage and Museveni’s assent are but the latest in what has been a long, convoluted, and controversial international history. The most prevalent narrative in the United States of the “Kill the Gays” bill’s genealogy goes something like this: American evangelicals and Pentecostals, losing the culture wars in the United States, decided to export the battle front to places like Uganda, where they enlisted new recruits in their homophobic campaign. Trans-oceanic, religio-political networks were fashioned by U.S.-based organizations like the International House of Prayer (IHOP) and The Family, along with Ugandans like the Rev. Martin Ssempa or MP David Bahati—the bill’s most notorious supporters. These collaborations provide the evidence needed to claim that the egregious “Kill the Gays” bill was but the inevitable, perhaps the intended, product of Western anti-LGBT activism. In this narrative, as seen in news reports like Jeff Sharlet’s “Straight Man’s Burden” and the recent documentary “God Loves Uganda,” the story of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill is the extension of an American story: American agendas, agency, money, and power are at its heart. Uganda is treated, in many ways, as incidental, becoming a convenient battleground.
http://religionandpolitics.org/2014/02/18/ugandas-president-will-sign-anti-gay-bill-how-did-the-nation-get-to-this-point/
The bill’s passage and Museveni’s assent are but the latest in what has been a long, convoluted, and controversial international history. The most prevalent narrative in the United States of the “Kill the Gays” bill’s genealogy goes something like this: American evangelicals and Pentecostals, losing the culture wars in the United States, decided to export the battle front to places like Uganda, where they enlisted new recruits in their homophobic campaign. Trans-oceanic, religio-political networks were fashioned by U.S.-based organizations like the International House of Prayer (IHOP) and The Family, along with Ugandans like the Rev. Martin Ssempa or MP David Bahati—the bill’s most notorious supporters. These collaborations provide the evidence needed to claim that the egregious “Kill the Gays” bill was but the inevitable, perhaps the intended, product of Western anti-LGBT activism. In this narrative, as seen in news reports like Jeff Sharlet’s “Straight Man’s Burden” and the recent documentary “God Loves Uganda,” the story of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill is the extension of an American story: American agendas, agency, money, and power are at its heart. Uganda is treated, in many ways, as incidental, becoming a convenient battleground.
http://religionandpolitics.org/2014/02/18/ugandas-president-will-sign-anti-gay-bill-how-did-the-nation-get-to-this-point/
Americans’ Role Seen in Uganda Anti-Gay Push
KAMPALA, Uganda — Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived here in Uganda’s capital to give a series of talks.
The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organizer, was “the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda” — and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family.
For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”
----snip
he three Americans who spoke at the conference — Scott Lively, a missionary who has written several books against homosexuality, including “7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child”; Caleb Lee Brundidge, a self-described former gay man who leads “healing seminars”; and Don Schmierer, a board member of Exodus International, whose mission is “mobilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality” — are now trying to distance themselves from the bill.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/world/africa/04uganda.html
KAMPALA, Uganda — Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived here in Uganda’s capital to give a series of talks.
The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organizer, was “the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda” — and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family.
For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”
----snip
he three Americans who spoke at the conference — Scott Lively, a missionary who has written several books against homosexuality, including “7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child”; Caleb Lee Brundidge, a self-described former gay man who leads “healing seminars”; and Don Schmierer, a board member of Exodus International, whose mission is “mobilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality” — are now trying to distance themselves from the bill.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/world/africa/04uganda.html
The Uganda Anti-Gay Bill's U.S. Roots
Even if the death penalty is removed from Uganda's Anti-Homosexual Bill, its passage would codify the country's extraordinary persecution of gays—and American evangelicals will bear responsibility, says Michelle Goldberg.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/05/11/uganda-anti-homosexual-bill-inspired-by-american-]evangelicals.html#sthash.YkN5xxYT.dpuf
Even if the death penalty is removed from Uganda's Anti-Homosexual Bill, its passage would codify the country's extraordinary persecution of gays—and American evangelicals will bear responsibility, says Michelle Goldberg.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/05/11/uganda-anti-homosexual-bill-inspired-by-american-]evangelicals.html#sthash.YkN5xxYT.dpuf
Soooo happy for LGBT family in Uganda!!!
bring thus Genocide bill up for another vote again REAL SOON.
They've got blood on their hands. The blood of "Christ"...
