14 DAY TRIAL // Despite being intensely criticized worldwide, Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” bill will become law and go into effect next month, speaker Rebecca Kadaga has announced, as reported by Gay Star News.
In a country where 89 percent of the population considers homosexuality morally unacceptable, it’s no wonder the LGBT community is having such an impossibly difficult time to have their civil rights respected.
However, even in this context, the measure is extreme and bound to draw even more outrage for the simple reasons that it states that gays should be executed or, “at best,” imprisoned for life.
It’s the people who are asking for such a law, Kadaga says, as cited by the aforementioned publication: hence, the need to pass the bill by December and have it take effect immediately.
Call it a “Christmas gift,” Kadaga says, one that should keep the Ugandans safe from the “serious threat” represented by the LGBT community.
Criminalization will be two-fold, with punishments to match the crime: aggravated and offense.
“‘Aggravated homosexuality’ is defined as gay acts committed by parents or authority figures, HIV-positive people and repeat offenders. If convicted, they will face the death penalty,” GSN reports.
Just being in a gay relationship will be considered an offense and will get you life in prison, not the death penalty.
Initially formulated in 2009, the “Kill the Gays” bill was shelved when international outrage threatened to cut off humanitarian aid for the country.
“US President Barack Obama has described it as ‘odious’, and Canadian politician John Baird has said it is ‘vile, abhorrent, and offends decency’,” GSN writes.
The official response to this came from Uganda lawmaker Atim Ogwal Cecilia Barbara, who asked for a continent-wide ban on the gays, with a minimum penalty of life imprisonment.