One thing that American anti-gay activists and their Ugandan counterparts have in common is their pathological addiction to presenting junk science as factual evidence against homosexuality. Science Insider reports today that
Ugandan researchers are rebelling against having their work misused in support of the draconian Anti-Homosexuality terror law:
On 24 February, Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, signed a draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill into law, after 2 months of declining to do so. Science, he says, changed his mind—in particular, the findings of a special scientific committee his Health Ministry had appointed earlier in the month. “Their unanimous conclusion was that homosexuality, contrary to my earlier thinking, was behavioural and not genetic,” Museveni wrote to President Barack Obama on 18 February, in response to Obama’s pleas that he not sign the bill. “It was learnt and could be unlearnt.”
But some scientists on the committee are crying foul, saying that Museveni and his ruling party—Uganda’s National Resistance Movement (NRM)—misrepresented their findings. “They misquoted our report,” says Paul Bangirana, a clinical psychologist at Makerere University in Kampala. “The report does not state anywhere that homosexuality is not genetic, and we did not say that it could be unlearnt.” Two other committee members have now resigned to protest the use of their report to justify the harsh legislation, which mandates life imprisonment for “aggravated homosexuality,” such as sexual acts with a minor, and prison terms of 7 to 14 years for attempted and actual homosexual acts, respectively.
Dean Hamer, a geneticist emeritus at the National Institutes of Health who discovered the first evidence that homosexuality probably has some genetic basis, says “what’s fascinating about the Ugandan report is that it gets so much right about the science of sexual orientation.” The committee’s report even referred to a recent, genome-wide study confirming Hamer’s original findings.
What the hell is up with these so-called anti-gay fundie Christians and their seemingly endless capacity to lie for the Lord? They prattle on about morals, yet they are the least moral people of all. If Musevini justified his signing of the bill by distorting the science, shouldn’t he now champion repeal, given this new, disturbing information? Or, was the whole science gambit a smokescreen for his religious bigotry? For more on the science of sexual orintation. please visit LGBT Science.
