At the end of this month, the first same-sex marriages will take place in England and Wales. However, while this is a major breakthrough for LGBT rights in the UK, it serves as a stark contrast to the lack of gay rights in Uganda. At the end of February this year, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni publicly signed the Ugandan Anti-Gay bill into law, despite an international outcry against the bill. Consequently it is now the law in Uganda that homosexuals, or convicted ‘offenders’, will be sentenced with life imprisonment. It is illegal to promote homosexuality in any way, and it is also against the law for two people of the same sex to be married. It is of small comfort that the most severe punishment, the death penalty, has been omitted from the bill after Uganda bowed to international pressure.
President Museveni was originally going to postpone signing the bill after saying in a statement “I… encourage the US government to help us by working with our scientists to study whether, indeed, there are people who are born homosexual.” The President wanted to know whether homosexuality was a choice, or whether you are born homosexual. Uganda’s MP David Bahati was the sponsor for this law, and he argued that homosexuality was “behaviour that can be learned and can be unlearned”.
The international backlash to the signing of this bill has been huge, with President Barack Obama saying that President Museveni’s decision to sign the bill will complicate America and Uganda’s relationship. This could be of massive consequence to Uganda, who receives around £240m in aid every year from the US. Homosexuality has always been illegal in Uganda; this bill is building on the remnant attitudes of British colonialism, which deemed homosexuality to be unnatural among the local Ugandan people. President Obama has told Uganda that by signing this bill, they are taking a step backwards. People across the world are protesting against this law, the most recent of which has been the openly gay cycling legend Graeme Obree calling for the Ugandan politicians that support the anti-gay law to be banned from the 2014 Commonwealth games in Scotland.
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