Uganda President Yoweri Museveni and his nation’s official media continue to encourage the antigay pogrom that was co-launched March 5 by Ugandan ex-gay activist Stephen Langa, Exodus International vice president Don Schmierer, U.S. ex-gay activist Scott Lively, and Caleb Lee Brundidge, who is an associate of U.S. ex-gay activist Richard Cohen.
According to Uganda’s New Vision via blogger Gay Uganda:
The President further observed that African culture was under threat from Western influence. He advised lawyers to research on African jurisprudence, addressing issues that had been left out by the adopted Western legal systems.
“There are some Western things that we cannot accept, for example homosexuality,” he noted.
“Europeans are saying it is a right and we are saying it is a deviation. You don’t kill them, but you know it is abnormal. But the Europeans come and say it is an alternative way of life,” Museveni added.
Museveni advocates toughening Ugandan laws that already subject gay people to life imprisonment — laws that Langa and Lively say are too lenient.
Box Turtle Bulletin reports:
Current law already provides a maximum lifetime sentence for conviction of participating in same-sex relations. This latest efforts appear aimed at making the condition of homosexuality itself illegal.
We now have media reports of one gay couple arrested in Mbale. It is believed others have been arrested and sentenced as well. We also have reported blackmail attempts, in which anti-gay activists demand money in exchange for not publicly denouncing the individual as gay.
Gay Uganda observes:
Heard this: At a conference about HIV, when some African activists were being asked about the persecution of gays in their countries, one government official was riled by all this emphasis on “rights’ for homosexuals. He stood up, and said, “They should be thankful. The law says we should stone them to death, but (in my country) we have not done that for years.’
Yeah, right.
The ex-gay campaign began March 5 with U.S. and Ugandan conference speakers presenting a united front in favor of forced ex-gay “therapy” combined with long prison sentences for all who fail to be changed into heterosexuals through ex-gay quackery. The nature of the involuntary “therapy” became apparent when Schmierer and Brundidge used their speech time to proclaim, without reputable substantiation, that parents are to blame for sexual orientation and that sexual orientation can be changed if effeminate men butch-up and if strong women properly domesticate themselves.
Since then, the campaign has resulted in vigilante “news” articles published by major Uganda media, featuring pictures of Uganda equality advocates — pictures that are accompanied by explicit and scurrilous accusations about advocates’ private sexuality, insinuating that gay people are a threat to their neighborhoods.
