Kampala Gay News and the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014 (part 3)

Series 3: Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014 and President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni’s letter to Uganda Parliament 

*The Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014 of Uganda was annulled in the same year it was passed but the climate of endemic homo & transphobia has fueled fear, restlessness, neglect by many of routine self-care putting emotional, physical and psychological well being of LGBTIQQ Persons at risk.

The Letter that begun it all:

In a letter dated 28 December 2013 to the speaker and members of the Ugandan parliament, President Museveni expressed dismay that the bill had been passed without the required quorum. "Recently, we had the anti-homosexuality bill. This is, again, something we had advised to shelve until we had studied it in depth. Some elements, however, insisted and, without even quorum of Parliament, 'passed' it. How can you 'pass' law without the quorum of Parliament after it has been pointed out? What sort of Parliament is this? How can Parliament be the one to break the Constitution and the law repeatedly?” Concerning the substance of the bill, Museveni asked in his letter,

“Who is homosexual?"

My answer is that a homosexual is somebody who is abnormal because the normal person was created to be attracted to the opposite sex ... to procreate and perpetuate the human race. ... [M]y bishop of North Ankole, Rt. Rev. Muhanguzi ... asked the following question: ... How can God contradict himself by saying in the Book of Genesis that Adam should be given a wife, Eve, and then also create homosexuals? ... However, now that I have been forced to concentrate my mind on this issue by the actions of a small group of our MPs led by the Rt. Hon. Kadaga, I can see the fallacy of Bishop Muhanguzi's position. ... Do Albinos create themselves? No. Simply, nature goes wrong in a minority of cases. ... The question at the core of the debate of the homosexuals is:

"What do we do with an abnormal person? Do we kill him/her? Do we imprison him/her? Or do we contain him/her?" 

Apart from the people who are born abnormal, it seems there is a larger group of those that become homosexual for mercenary reasons - they get recruited on account of financial inducements. ... How about the women lesbians? Apart from the ones who are born abnormal and the ones that may become lesbian for mercenary reasons, there may be those that go into that practice because of sexual starvation when they fail to get married. Women are normally more [numerous] than men.... In the past, this imbalance could have been addressed by polygamy. ... The groups that can be rescued ... are those who are homosexual or lesbian for mercenary reasons or on account of ... failure to get legal partners. The rescue for these mercenary deviants is, first and foremost, economic - rapidly industrialize Uganda, modernize agriculture, etc. ... In addition ... we should legislate harshly against those people with money, from within and without, who take advantage of the desperation of our youth to lure them into these abnormal and deviant behaviors. I would support a life sentence.... On this one I would agree with the Bill passed by Parliament. The unanswered question, however, is: What do you do with the really abnormal people? ... Only the other day, I saw on television that Dr. Allan Turing, the genius mathematician that cracked the German Enigma code for the anti-Hitler alliance ... was a homosexual. This man ... enabled them to win the war. Yet, the British chemically castrated him in 1952, where-upon he committed suicide, apparently. Were the British correct in handling that issue like that? The British no longer think so. Only the other day, the Queen had to apologize to this ... person ... [who was] much more useful to society than the millions of sexually normal people. ... [T]he challenge is how to correctly handle the sexually abnormal on the one hand and those who use money or any other influence to recruit sexually normal people into this abnormal and disgusting behaviour. When we meet in the NRM caucus, we shall, I am sure, find a scientifically correct position. For more see: https://www.scribd.com/doc/202917513/President-Museveni-Letter-on-Anti-Homosexuality-Bill-December-2013.