Tag Archives: Canada

Let the Bahati Nazi Anti-Gay Bill be passed! 6

Gay Social, Uganda - Politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Surrounded by “school children and teachers” (it’s not clear where they got them from in the middle of a school day, during examinations time), Uganda’s foremost homophobes have written a lengthy communiqué demanding that the Bahati anti-gay bill is debated and passed by Uganda’s Parliament as a Christmas gift to … themselves.

It’s time for their wish to be granted.

I have actually come to the conclusion that the best possible outcome IS for the Bahati Bill to be passed. Within hours, it’ll be in constitutional court, it’ll be repealed without a doubt (as it is in breach of several constitutional provisions), and everyone will be able to get on with their lives. The actual reality is that Ugandans pretty much stopped caring a long time ago, that is, assuming they ever did. … … The bill is a red-herring.  Always has been. (James Onen aka Fat Boy)

There are a number of reasons why debating and passing the bill is now the best outcome:

1. It is time for this bill to stop hanging over the gay community like a nuclear cloud. If it is passed by Parliament, as it surely will,  then we can deal with its consequences “as is” as opposed to as we guess it might be.

2. All these so-called pro-children pastors and politicians have used this bill to enhance their profiles, raise hundreds of thousands of dollars from evangelical extremists abroad, all in the name of saving children and Christianity as we know it, and will continue to do so as long as the bill lies comatose in Committee. The dishonesty this bill has engendered needs to finally be stopped.

3. Even the gay community needs to get closure on this bill one way or the other. As things stand, we have all these rag

It’s time for my close-up Mr. DeMille

tag LGBTI organizations, some with just one executive and a fictitious list of members, who talk to well wishers in yonder lands and ask for money on behalf of the gay community in Uganda ostensibly to fight this bill. If it is settled by Uganda’s courts, the bona fide gay lobby could then focus on raising awareness for issues that actually impact the gay community in Uganda such as HIV/Aids plus other health and wellness crises that have taken a back sit because they don’t grab the headlines, don’t make for sensational copy.

4. The Speaker of Uganda’s Parliament, peripatetic Rebecca Kadaga, (who I must admit I like a lot) is currently riding high in Uganda on the back of just this bill. She seems busier than a bee these days; turning up one morning in Quebec to spar with Canada’s foreign minister, the other she’s getting off the plane at Entebbe Airport to a hero’s welcome, the next she’s chairing human rights meetings in London, and the next she’s dancing the Tamenaibuga on top of a pick-up truck in Kamuli.

It is time for this bill to pass so that we can examine her stalking horse candidacy critically in the light of more deserving national concerns. It is very well for a politician to milk a vote-getting issue dry, albeit it one that tramples the human rights of a cross-section of her fellow citizens, but it is quite another for her to be given a free ride on everything else simply because she stood up to a boorish Canadian foreign minister.

I find myself on the extreme spectrum of those who want the damn bill to pass. I am curious to see how in the hell they’d enforce such a crappy law. (not to mention I plan to abuse it, BUM-CHECK road blocks … (Kim Bakugan John)

5. Last but not least, Sebaspace is sick and tired of talking about this bill. Let’s get it debated, passed, thrown out by the courts and then I can finally work on my edifying tome that I know will win me the Nobel Literature prize that I so deserve but which I can’t quite focus on yet because of all the din surrounding whether I will be in jail or alive once the damn bill is passed.

In fact it will be in my literary interest if I am thrown in jail or killed on account of this bill. Imagine those worldwide headlines … and my adoring fans screaming my name to the Pope to make me a saint …

Gay literary genius a martyr!  Uganda’s foremost gay literary genius jailed for life … Homophobic mob flashes gay literary genius in middle of a pot-holed street! … Jailed Ugandan gay literary genius up for a Pulitzer Prize … Ugandan gay genius the new Oscar Wilde … Sebaspace aced by Bahati Nazi law!

Let this bill be passed.

All right Mr. DeMille, I am ready for my close-up.

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Kadaga (Uganda) 3 – Baird (Canada) 0 12

Gay - Human Rights, Uganda - Politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

“We are not a colony or a protectorate of Canada.” (Rebecca Kadaga)

In what is not going to hurt Rebecca Kadaga’s chances at the ballot in 2016 at all, she has taken on John Baird, Canada’s Foreign Minister and, in my mind, won hands down. Rebecca Kadaga is the current (and first female) Speaker of Uganda’s Parliament.

Invited to a conference, entitled ‘Citizenship, Identity and Linguistic and Cultural Diversity in a Globalised World’, Canada’s Baird apparently saw it as an opportunity to lecture Kadaga (and by implication, Uganda) about the death of David Kato about 20 months ago, implying that Kato’s murder was a state-inspired crime.

Kadaga would have none of it and went for him in a way that only someone of her confidence in the law (Kadaga is an accomplished lawyer) would. She was absolutely right, again in only a way someone with a good understanding of the law can be.

Please listen up Mr. Baird and all your hand-wringing friends all over the world who have elected yourselves  yes, elected yourselves, to wail louder than the bereaved:

Uganda’s legal system is not, cannot be perfect. It must be rife with miscarriages of justice, many of which will never be righted if only because Uganda lacks the resources to revisit cases that might have been decided incorrectly. But that imperfect law is what Uganda has and it passed the verdict that Kato was killed in a lover’s tiff.

Until you pay for your own superior investigation and prove otherwise, it’s game, set and match on that case. Kato was killed by an angry male lover and that is all there is to it. I have indicated before that there are many elements to the police investigation that I found disquieting but the verdict is the verdict is the verdict. Until I can prove otherwise, I, too, have to live with it.

I know all these friends of ours out there (many of them, dare one say it, making a living off of the back of gay rights issues in sub-Saharan Africa) wanted a different verdict, namely one that would advance their assumption that Kato was killed by the government of Uganda. They didn’t get it so Kadaga is absolutely right to call out their arrogance when they use their high offices to call out Uganda’s elected officials  about legal cases that have been settled in courts of law that the people being lectured to had nothing to do with.

Canada’s Foreign Minister was thus out-of-order to harangue Rebecca Kadaga in the way he did. If he has evidence that David Kato was killed by the state, he should have taken her aside and given it to her. Or better still, he could have stood up on his bully pulpit and presented it to the world. But for him to try to publicly embarrass his own guest was rude, supercilious and, frankly, boorish. Kadaga was thus absolutely right to stand up to this man.

“as a Speaker of Parliament, it is my responsibility to protect the rights of Members of Parliament; hence I cannot deny them the right to move private members’ Bills. The debate on homosexuality is not a settled matter.” (Rebecca Kadaga)

Even on the question of gay rights, which I feel Canada has a right to lobby Ugandan officials about, Baird should never have tried to talk at Kadaga the way he did. It was a breach of diplomatic etiquette if not condescending.

To put it in context, you will not find a single incident where a Canadian Foreign Minister, past or present, has talked to a Saudi Arabian or Kuwaiti official in the way Baird talked down to Kadaga. Yet those countries have far more egregious gay rights abuses than Uganda. Indeed Baird will not talk publicly down at an American official either. Yet more gay men and women have been killed in the last three years in Washington, DC (population 600,000) than have been killed in Uganda (population 33m) in the last 5 years.

So, let me turn again to our friends in the gay rights struggle. Please listen up one more time:

Much as you are ready to wail on our behalf at the drop of a hat, we, Ugandan gay men and women, are the ones who will live with the consequences of your bull-in-a-China-store recklessness. Stop acting as though this baby belongs to you – it doesn’t. You merely alienate people we shall eventually need when you embarrass our elected officials in public.  Consult before you charge.

Finally, terrible though the Bahati Bill might be, Uganda’s Parliament has a right to debate it if that’s what it decides to do. You can lobby from the sidelines, you can arm-twist whoever with threats to withdraw foreign aid, you can even lecture and give ultimatums – preferably in private.  Should the law nonetheless be passed, then you can impose sanctions and whatever other measures you consider fit. You, (well, your ancestors) introduced this parliamentary system of governance to Uganda, remember?

On a related but separate note … I must admit it’s getting very difficult for this Ugandan gay man not to like Rebecca Kadaga very, very much.

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