By James Kabengwa
The step by Uganda’s Parliament to vote in favour of the anti-Homosexuality Bill and an eventual endorsement of the same into law by President Yoweri Museveni is yet another show of backwardness by Uganda’s leaders.
The new law places Uganda’s lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender (LGBT) persons under severe legal challenges and discrimination while it now puts clear prosecutors at will to persecute and stigmatise people, including tourists.
In most of the developed nations, LGBT people are free to marry each other. And this is their choice which must be respected even here in Uganda. As a journalist with a free thinking mind, I call upon the LGBT people to defy this and act the way they want since Uganda is a signatory to various global treaties which prescribe different forms of freedom.
Discrimination of LGBT people is very eminent as religious leaders and politicians have actively charged communities around the country to discriminate against people of same sex orientation.
Already violent and brutal attacks against LGBT people are common and worse, mostly orchestrated by state officials.
The Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2023, that President Museveni assented to in May restricts freedom of speech on LGBT civil rights and introduces harsher penalties for certain types of homosexual acts.
There is no way in the modern times, a person who has chosen to marry their choices be it fellow female or male can be sentenced to life imprisonment for sex or even sentenced to death as the law prescribes in what the MPs called “aggravated homosexuality”.
Where as I disagree with rape and sex through coercion by way of using position of authority or intimidation and or sex with persons older than seventy-five, sex with the disabled and mentally ill, modern legislators should not fall prey to selfish individuals and commit people to grave punishments.
The International community must stand up and squeeze Ugandan leaders until they reverse this stigmatizing law. You can’t use the 18th century laws to suppress freedoms.
The writer is a LGBT rights advocate, journalist and ardent Buganda Kingdom loyalist
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