Foreign Policy has an interesting, and disturbing, round-up of the state of gay rights in the places around the world where it’s most dangerous, and in light of the Senate’s recent repeal of DADT, it’s occasionally good for us to stop and remember how good we have it. Is the United States the best place in the world for gay people? Hell no. But we’re moving up the list.
Predictably, the first nation profiled is Uganda. This is not news to Truth Wins Out readers:
Homosexuality is already a crime in Uganda, but a bill introduced to parliament last year would seriously up the ante. The Anti-Homosexuality Bill would legislate new criminal offenses and step up the punishment for existing ones. “Aggravated homosexuality,” an offense that includes everything from statutory rape to being a “serial offender” of gay acts, for example, would become a crime punishable by death. Gay men who test positive for HIV could be executed as well. Human rights groups have condemned the legislation, which comes up for consideration in the Ugandan legislature early next year. But regardless of whether the law passes, anti-gay vigilantes aren’t relying on the government to do all the persecuting. A local tabloid published a list of known homosexuals earlier this year and called on readers to “hang them,” NPR reported. Four of the men on the list were attacked shortly thereafter.
Also profiled is nearby Nigeria where, they point out, the nation is approximately half Christian and half Muslim, and all the religious leaders tend to hate gays there, but it’s by far the Christians who are the most outspoken against gay people these days. The Muslim states of Nigeria will execute a person convicted of sodomy, though, so it’s sort of six of one, half dozen of another.
Click through and read through the whole thing for yourself, as there are several other egregiously offending nations on the list, then take a moment to be grateful that you’re an American, or a Canadian, or a Briton, or whatever all you people are.
