Uganda's Anti-Gay Bill To Pass This Year: Official
KAMPALA, Uganda -- Uganda's anti-gay bill will be passed before the end of 2012 despite international criticism of the draft legislation, the speaker of the country's parliament said Monday, insisting it is what most Ugandans want.
Speaker Rebecca Kadaga told The Associated Press that the bill, which originally mandated death for some gay acts, will become law this year.
Ugandans "are demanding it," she said, reiterating a promise she made before a meeting on Friday of anti-gay activists who spoke of "the serious threat" posed by homosexuals to Uganda's children. Some Christian clerics at the meeting in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, asked the speaker to pass the law as "a Christmas gift."
"Speaker, we cannot sit back while such (a) destructive phenomenon is taking place in our nation," the activists said in a petition. "We therefore, as responsible citizens, feel duty-bound to bring this matter to your attention as the leader of Parliament ... so that lawmakers can do something to quickly address the deteriorating situation in our nation."
The anti-gay activists paraded in front of Kadaga, with parents and schoolchildren holding up signs saying homosexuality is "an abomination." The speaker then promised to consider the bill within two weeks, declaring that "the power is in our hands."
"Who are we not to do what they have told us? These people should not be begging us," Kadaga said of activists who want the bill to become law.
Uganda's penal code criminalizes homosexuality, but in 2009 a lawmaker with the ruling party said a stronger law was needed to protect Uganda's children from homosexuals. Parliamentarian David Bahati charged at the time that wealthy homosexuals from the West were "recruiting" poor children into gay lifestyles with promises of money and a better life. Bahati believes his bill is sufficiently popular among lawmakers to pass without difficulty.
Gay rights activists in Uganda, while opposing the bill, point out that it has helped their fight for equality by putting what used to be a taboo subject on the national agenda. Homosexuality is illegal in many African countries.
Pepe Julian Onziema, a prominent Ugandan gay activist, said the new push to pass the law was frustrating.
"It's disappointing, but we are also going to seek a meeting with the speaker," Onziema said. But it is unlikely the speaker will agree to such a gathering, he said.
While the bill appears to be popular in Uganda, it has attracted widespread criticism abroad. President Barack Obama has described it as "odious," while some European countries have threatened to cut aid to Uganda if the bill becomes law.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/12/uganda-anti-gay-bill-2012-pass_n_2116584.html
Posts
You dont blame the trees for burning, You blame the spark that set them ablaze.
Evangelicals went there because they saw it ripe for exploitation and "conversion". They are singularly responsible, and undoing the damage they've wrought will be a massive undertaking.
I would rather the root cause (Westboro baptist types) be eliminated than just the symptoms.
That said, this thread is about symptoms. I really don't think many U.S. politicians will touch this, though. I think they all subscribe to the general American view that Africa is a horrible hellhole that should be avoided at all costs.
Ugandans are to blame. Let's not be colonialist about this and assume The White Man tricked them into voting anti-gay in exchange for $24 worth of glass beads.
I don't think you know what either of those words mean, let alone how conversion works.
But don't let that get in the way of swinging your epeens.
Now we need to step back from the analogy. What are you saying, that Ugandans are naturally homophobic or homocidal?
Don't be stupid, of course that isn't what I'm saying. I'm saying that latent homophobia is a constant in all human society, and these things get stronger the poorer and less developed a culture is.
You guys are acting like Uganda was a land of peace and freedom, but then the CHRISTIANS came and taught them to burn gays. The evangelicals didn't help, but they weren't "the spark". They would have encouraged ideas already present in the country. You can see them doing the same things in the US, but we are too rich and too developed to start straight up murdering people. Why do you think we don't have mass murder of indians and black people anymore?
I'd be fine if Obama made it clear in no uncertain terms, that if they go this route, he'll cut off all revenue that they're getting from the US and that they'll be stuck cleaning up the existing mess and the ones resulting from the thinking that led to this law.
The region does have history of genocidal conflict (See: Rwanda)...
Latent homophobia does not exist in all societies. Where the did you get that idea? And where do you get the idea that the concept of "homosexual" necessarily existed in the tribes of Uganda before colonialism? I don't even know how to unpack your last two statements. Being rich and developed means we don't persecute anyone? What gives you that idea?
If you're going to purposefully not understand what I'm saying I have no interest in discussing this with you further.
It isn't random evangelicals doing this it's a political influencing cult called The Family. I'm sure this bill is the tip of the iceberg with these horrific people.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rachel-maddow-show-us-ties-ugandan-anti
Do you know what it took for the holocaust to be a thing? WW1 and the resulting economic collapse.
Stop being a goose and stop buying into the bullshit, insulting, and latent racist Noble Savage myth.
EDIT: and explain to me how accepted homosexuality in greece (I've got a lot more places to cite, if you want) isn't related to your claim that all societies are latently homophobic.
The South African Baptist Association pretty much does whatever the US one wants. It's a bit weird to be honest.
Now granted, I doubt they'll start murdering gays, but SA is in a much stronger position financially.
Yes, Ugandans have free will, but that only goes so far.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Oh wow, this is wretched.
I'm not going to handhold you through the concept of othering, pal.
This looks like a top-down influenced decision, and the US Churches are pretty much on top.
The fact that this comes from people who should know better is disgusting. And yes, I mean "should know better" like that. And this isn't due to a racial thing, it's pretty much all down to social and economic conditions.
Would they have passed this bill if it wasn't for the religious sentiment? Would they have this religious sentiment (or this strong) if it wasn't for the US influence?
Can't say, but these morons had a bunch of chances to make things better, and instead they made things worse.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Seriously, homophobia is a thing, it is pretty pervasive in a lot of human society.
Your argument was that you want me to prove the negative that Uganda had no concept of homosexuality until colonial involvement, which started far far before the meddling of American evangelicals.
I know that it's hard to see other arguments when you believe you have the moral right view, and nothing I've said was meant to say that Evangelicals haven't been doing reprehensible things, but the idiotic idea that evangelicals are the cause of homophobia or the persecution of minority groups in a poor, undeveloped country is not worth any more of my time.
You have consistently misrepresented and purposefully misunderstood my posts this whole conversation and I no longer have the inclination to continue this line of dialogue.
And yet Greece and Rome continue to be an exception to the general rule. Homophobia and sexual prudishness isn't isolated to Judeo-Christian religions either, the current Dalai Lama is on record as saying that homosexual activity is inappropriate for Buddhists. China isn't too hot on them either and I think we all know what China thinks about Christianity...
This is not about religion. Well over 90% of Christians would not be okay with outright sentencing gays to death. Virulent bigots come in all stripes.
What we need to do is express to our government that it is extremely inappropriate for them to continue to send foreign aid paid for by our tax dollars to countries that see fit to exterminate homosexuals. In addition I would be extremely interested in any efforts to get homosexuals out of Uganda before this law comes into effect and grant them refugee status in the US.
Fuck all this noise about religion. Continue to shout down bigots wherever you may encounter them, I always do; but we have a problem that we need to apply solutions to now to minimize loss of innocent life.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/world/africa/04uganda.htm
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
On the other hand, I don't don't by the hive mind bullshit. I get that some groups are better at forcing the acceptable "dictated" views than others, but the Ugandan people should know better and should be much more vocal against this law.
That doesn't absolve the assholes. Other countries aren't in states of grace before we meet them, colonialism fucked up the economies of the third world, it didn't create shitty human beings. Shitty human beings, throughout history, have been very adept at taking hard times and turning them to their advantage.
Wasn't Greece a case of ephebophilia is which the younger party was expected to be an honorary woman? Not particularly persuasive.
Actually, this wasn't Germany's first genocide. Hell, it wasn't even their first genocide in 35 years.
That one was actually all Europe. The British used a strategy of alternating institutional favoritism (among other tactics) to build a rivalry and hatred between the two groups as a way to prevent a unified resistance. When the British left one group in charge, there were some hard feelings.
Hmmmm......
Greece and Rome are not the exceptions to the rule.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-Spirit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijra_(South_Asia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fa'afafine
Not even in africa is it the rule.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality#Africa
I'm not sure how we're supposed to solve a problem in another country when people in this thread can't even get past the ethnocentrism inherent in a statement that homophobia is latent in all societies. Homophobia is an unambiguously modern phenomenon.
And I said nothing about Christianity. Nothing at all about religion.
EDIT: I did mention Christians, but I certainly didn't say they were the sole cause of homophobia, only the cause of what is happening now in Uganda. As you may have noticed in the history article I link, Christian missionaries (and islamic ones, though to a lesser extent) were very influential in early Ugandan colonial culture. Kony's army isn't named "The Lord's Resistance Army" for nothing.
If you define modern as 2k years ago and beyond, sure.
Yes and you aren't going to vote because you can't express your views properly by voting for an anarchist President. Please go back to highschool if all you've got is angsting out and pointing at the flaws and hypocrisy in modern society.
What does that have to do with anything? Did you want to debate or discuss something or are you here to make pithy attacks on my character? Seriously this is 4chan stuff.
You are a ridiculous goose of a person that would rather talk about how bad everything is than do anything to even attempt to fix it, or at least make it less shit. I find that attitude immensely irritating and rather deplorable in its results. You are the worst element of Progressives.
Just stop talking about religion. Asshole religious people being assholes has definitely made a bad situation worse, but it would not have been a bigot free utopia without their influence. They took existing biases and fears of otherness and amplified them.
This thread is for getting our local governments to take action against heinous crimes against humanity, not for dishing out admonishment to an entire spectrum of religions with widely varied views on many things.
If you really feel that we need to examine the actions of a small group of powerful Fundamentalist Evangelical Christians and how their role in this made things worse start another thread. Feel free to also talk about how all Muslims want to institute Sharia law and practice female circumcision there, and Buddhism being a public menace and fire hazard because of how frequently its practitioners self-immolate while you're at it.
"So much money" tends to be a recurring answer though, and apparently it's enough to affect the value of the national currency.
So threatening to withhold a good chunk of that money would probably be a pretty hot poker to menacingly point at their butts, though that wouldn't exactly send a good message. In fact, it'd probably strengthen the narrative this anti-gay movement is hawking, that gays are somehow a harmful "foreign" presence in cahoots with "ebul westahn gubmints".
Still, I think it's a powerful tool that shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, but this problem goes deeper than just hatin' on gays. There needs to be some kind of initiative to shut the biggest loudmouths up. Sadly, the most effective initiative would have to come from within Uganda itself, otherwise it might run into the very same problem cutting foreign aid would - coming from "us", an official international political body or organisation, it'd be viewed as some kind of direct cultural warfare or some shit. This is a problem that keeps popping up when industrialised nations deal with nations in developing parts of the world, and it's a really tough nut to crack.
I got a little excited when I saw your ship.
I would also note how much this forum mocked conservatives for crying about how Egyptians and Libyans elected religious candidates on the premise that advocating for democracy except when it doesn't go your way is hypocritical.