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Thursday, December 10, 2009

Homo Developments in Uganda

Posted by Dan Savage on Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 10:52 AM

It looks like "legislators" in Uganda have dropped the death penalty provision from that country's proposed new anti-gay law. (Gay sex is already illegal in Uganda.) These provisions remain...

• Criminalize all speech and peaceful assembly for those who advocate on behalf of LGBT citizens in Uganda with fines and imprisonment of between five and seven years.
• Criminalize the act of obtaining a same-sex marriage abroad with lifetime imprisonment. This penalty may be reduced in the new version, but the act still appears to be criminalized to some extent.
• Add a clause which forces friends or family members to report LGBT persons to police within 24-hours of learning about that individual’s homosexuality or face fines or imprisonment of up to three years.
• Add an extra-territorial and extradition provisions, allowing Uganda to prosecute LGBT Ugandans living abroad.

So family and friends will still have to report a suspected gay person to the authorities under penalty of imprisonment, Ugandans living in other countries could be extradited and prosecuted for marrying a same-sex partner (how on earth would that be enforced?), and—according to this report—gay Ugandans could be forced into the kind of ex-gay treatments programs championed by American evangelicals (in order to "attract errant people to acceptable sexual orientation"). And after initially refusing to take a position on the law, Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren has come out and asked his buddies in Uganda not to kill the gays after all. And Rachel Maddow continues to expose the connections between American evangelicals, political conservatives, and Uganda's homicidal anti-gay political movement...

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