Tag Archives: LGBT

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 Within hours, it’ll be in constitutional court, it’ll be repealed without a doubt (as it is in breach of several constitutional provisions), and everyone will be able to get on with their lives.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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Why gays and lesbians don’t get along 1

Gay Relationships • Tags: , , , , ,

It’s not a much spoken about reality but a reality it is. Gay men and lesbians are not wired to get along.

Put more starkly, talking about gay and lesbian social relationships is like talking about chalk and cheese. In that adage lies one of the reasons why gay men and lesbians generally don’t get along; we have as much in common as chalk and cheese.

Yes, yes, you have issues such as LBTI emancipation that usually unite lesbian and gay activists – they are after all fighting a common enemy.  But you have only got to scratch the surface and you find all sorts of nasty, malignant, toxic dynamics even within such groups. But it is fair to say that where the struggle for gay issues is still on the ascendancy, gay men and women get along a little better than usual. That said, I don’t know of more than a handful of organizations in the entire world where gay men and women work together as brothers and sisters for the common good of the male and female gay/rainbow fraternity. The more successful LGBTI organizations tend to have lines drawn in the sand along gay, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender, intersexual lines.

Frenemies? Butch lesbians and most gay men rarely get along.

The less talked about dynamic that makes for uncomfortable gay/lesbian relationships is in the perception among gay men that lesbians see themselves as men. Lipstick lesbians (who look and carry themselves as women) generally tend not to be too threatening to gay men and they are the easier ones to get along with. But bring a butch lesbian, complete with workman’s Timberland boots, oversize jeans and manly swagger, into the mix and you will have gay men silently running for the hills.

Then there is that aggressive streak that seems to bubble just beneath the surface of many a lesbian social gathering. Of course not all lesbians are trigger happy but it is difficult to shake off the perception that too many of them are constantly spoiling for a fight when they hang out. As one of my friends once put it … “some of these loud mouth lesbians really think they are men.”

In that sentence he encapsulated the problems gay men have with lesbians. Gay men like men because … they are men. So, the reflexive reaction of a gay man to another that he finds attractive is to want to embrace him since the sexual dynamics are already aligned. So, when a lesbian tries to act like a man, it is the very antithesis of what a gay man is about.

Inwardly, therefore, most gay men will be screaming to themselves ‘ you are not a man, bitch’ even though outwardly they will put on a pretense of getting along swimmingly.

Lipstick lesbians are usually less threatening to gay men, and so we get along better with them, because they look and act like women. So, while we are already aware that we both don’t want anything sexual from each other, we are content in the knowledge that they don’t deign to offer what we want – namely a man. But the idea that we are hanging out with women who are acting like men, when all along we know they don’t have dicks, is enough to make the ins and outs of such relationships testy at best.

Thus gay men merely tolerate [especially] butch lesbians and will hang out with them socially only if they have to. Lipstick lesbians have the finesse and refinement many a gay man aspires to so we love our stiletto-heeled, dolled up  lesbian sisters; if we hadn’t been men, we would likely have liked to look the way they do. Even as men, we can get some beauty tips from them so they compliment rather than threaten our equilibrium.

No, no, no. We don’t hate lesbians, be they butch or effeminate. We just don’t know how to get along with them when, all along, we have so little in common and, in many extremes, are irritated that they are pretending to be what we know they can’t be; the men we are looking for.

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Ugandan judge condemns anti-gay government bungling 1

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

You might recall that Sexual Minorities Uganda sued Ethics Minister, Simon Lokodo, for breaking up an LGBTI meeting in Entebbe three months ago.

Well, that case got under way today and had to be postponed till July 6 because the defence didn’t have its tees crossed or eyes dotted despite having had three months to prepare.

In what could be a lifeline for them, Justice Eldad Mwangusya, the presiding judge, couldn’t hide his irritation at the disorganized nature of the government’s side as well as Minister Lokodo’s bully boy tactics which prompted SMUG to sue.

The judge’s rather unusual, pre-emptive, public complaint went something like this (and I am paraphrasing  from a third-party as I wasn’t in court):

“These [gay] people have a right of assembly. Why are these workshops being closed [when those closing them] don’t have data about what is going in them? If you are not aware of what the meetings will be about, why not send in your spies and see what is going on instead of closing them down without any good evidence that they are acting improperly? Some of these cases are a waste of time and resources, …”

Amen, Amen, Amen one is inclined to say about the judge’s remarks. Yet, therein lies the government’s potential temporary reprieve. It is surely difficult to see how a judge who has expressed what he thinks about a court case he hasn’t heard yet can hear it out dispassionately.

It should be interesting to see what the defence’s case will be. My prediction is that they are going to chop and turn a while longer and then they will ultimately fail to defend the case, losing it by default. They haven’t got a legal leg to stand on and they know it.

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Mea Culpa? 1

Uganda - Politics • Tags: , , ,

My first interpretation had been that it was a an attempt by Minister Simon Lokodo to justify his Gestapo tactics.

However, it seems as though greater powers than Simon Lokodo have prevailed and he has been forced to sign a hastily written and stinting mea culpa. Best to read it from the horse’s mouth here.

And here is an image of the government’s statement, apparently forcing its Minister of Integrity and Ethics to eat humble pie. Homosexuals will no longer be denied the right to meet and discuss gay issues after all. Or is it that what the statement is saying? My mind is not what it used to be so you will have to decide for yourself:

Statement from the Uganda Media Center website

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Simon Lokodo attempts to justify his Gestapo tactics 2

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

Poor Simon Lokodo! He is a cabinet minister in Uganda who cannot even interpret correctly the law he purports to be defending. Below is his statement following the international outcry he stoked when he raided and scuppered an LGBTI  meeting that was meant to discuss human rights issues:

RESPONSE TO INTERNATIONAL CRITICISM ON THE ARREST OF GAY ACTIVISTS

Kampala

Uganda has come under criticism for intervening in a gay activists’ meeting that was taking place at a Hotel in a city suburb early this week. Police intervened in the meeting that was suspected to be promoting gay activities and questioned the participants who were later released.
The Government would like to state that much as promoting gay activities is illegal according to Section 145 of the Penal code Act, Uganda does not segregate against people of a different sexual orientation.
No government official is bent to harass any section of the community and everybody in Uganda enjoys the freedom to lawfully assemble and associate freely with others.
Cultural attitudes in Africa are very different to elsewhere in the world, 2/3 of African countries outlaw homosexual activity and 80% of East African countries criminalize it. Whilst at a global level more than 80 countries outlaw homosexual acts.
The government would like to encourage all Ugandans to be vigilant and stay away from unlawful activities that would get them in trouble with the law.

Rev. Fr.  Simon Lokodo
Minister of Ethics and Integrity

Simon Lokodo needs to be educated about section 145 of the Penal Code. That section  criminalizes homosexual sexual acts – sexual acts “against the order of nature,” and these have to be proved in court. It neither criminalizes being gay, in fact being gay is not a crime in Uganda, nor does it criminalize meeting to talk about gay issues.

Tss!

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East African Legislative Assembly passes HIV bill 1

Gay - Political, Health, Health Politics, HIV, Uganda - Politics • Tags: , , , , ,

The-flags-of-the-member-states-of-the-East-African-Community

Behind the Mask is reporting some great news coming out of the regional parliament of East Africa. It is still a little known and underrated body called the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA), but it has put out a statement calling for all the regional governments to provide HIV/Aids health services to all citizens, including “vulnerable” groups without discrimination; a statement that will force the governments of Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi to, at the very least, debate who the vulnerable groups are.

Logically, the strategy should be for activist groups to ensure that the debate should focus on who the vulnerable groups are;  orphans, waifs, male and female sex workers, women who are still treated as chattels by men, lesbian and gay men, prisoners and so on and so forth … then keep hammering away at it until none of them can be spoken of in isolation.

The EALA pronouncement provides an opportunity to  make Ugandan (East African, African) gay men and women part of the mainstream conversation. We, too, suffer from the same health issues as anyone else and that puts the focus on gay men and women who are asking for the right not to die of preventable diseases – a right no one will argue is borne out of thinking that gays are special as the argument has tended to be put forward, quite convincingly, whenever we say we are being persecuted or hated by Ugandans who we, rather unfairly, tar with the indiscriminate brush of homophobia.

As I have argued on a number of occasions, elsewhere, hate or persecution are amorphous concepts that most people in Uganda (Africa) don’t really understand unless they see one of their own beaten up in the streets or jailed, blood on the streets, bodies being put in the ground, that sort of thing.

It is arrant hyperbole to argue that Ugandans (for instance) are homophobic – most Ugandans may be bewildered by the concept of homosexuality, but they don’t walk anywhere near the circles we hang out in to have any impact on our lives one way or the other. The people hounding us are a tiny but very vocal minority whose agenda is selfish personal gain, but who nonetheless haven’t managed yet to turn the entire country into the kind of homophonic maniacs foreigners have been led to believe Ugandans are. The reason for this is that Ugandans (I think Africans in general) are simply not that kind of people.

It is also true to argue that it is safer to be a gay man in Uganda than it is in many parts of the United States of America. If you don’t believe this, try checking out how many people have been killed for being gay in Uganda (or jailed) in the last 10 years and compare them to how many have been attacked and even killed in various parts of America in just the last 3 years despite some of the best protections against homophobia one can find on the planet.

In that sense, then, gay men and women in Uganda don’t suffer from hate or persecution that should require governments in Europe to make hysterical phone calls to Yoweri Museveni threatening this and that if gays are not accommodated when they are also not making phone calls  asking him to end female genital mutilation, the arresting and jailing of journalists and opposition politicians, rounding up of street protestors and jailing them for years without trial and, of course, misuse of state funds which deny basic health services to millions, etc. All of these ills have claimed and continue to claim more victims than ‘gay hate’ and one can rightly argue that they deserve greater attention.

But once the debate shifts to ignoring vulnerable groups in the fight against HIV/Aids, with the government of Uganda itself admitting that HIV cases are going up again, then we have a solid case to make to the wider Ugandan population if we argue that gay men and women must be included in the strategy to check the spread of HIV. Every Ugandan will see that no one is asking for special consideration as has been argued where ‘gay persecution’ is concerned.

And how can you make the argument that gay men and women are being ignored in the fight against HIV/Aids, which the government’s own reports show they are, without mentioning men who have sex with men? How can you mention HIV/Aids provision for LGBTI and avoid talking about gay men and women? How can any government plausibly talk about providing access to health services for LGBTI and then also continue talking about making homosexual activity punishable by death and/or imprisonment?

See why the strategy and focus need to shift to HIV/Aids and health for all vulnerable groups, including LGBTI?

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What has Tusapa got to do with gay rights? 9

Gay - Education, Gay - Human Rights • Tags: , , , , ,

Who are these people? Gay activists don't seem to know about them

This one has just been brought to my attention by Ugandan gay activists who should know about this group but don’t! It is a youth group calling itself Tusapa and their website is Tusapa.org.

The group claims to be fighting for gay rights and is even soliciting funds from wherever they can. The problem is that the gay angle seems conveniently tacked  on to what they do – likely in an opportunistic effort to make money. The other, more worrying, problem is that their entire photo gallery is littered with youths; young people who can’t be older than 15 or 16 who were photographed at events that clearly had nothing to do with homosexuality or gay rights.

Sadly, this kind of nefarious scheme wouldn’t be new at all in Uganda. It, however, has very serious implications that go far beyond making a quick buck and one hopes that it will be nipped in the bud quickly.

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The price of Activism 2

Gay - Human Rights, Gay Rights - The Struggle • Tags: , , , , , ,

Peter Tatchell is 60, lives in a small council flat, remains as busy as a bee trying to continue the work he has chosen for himself for the last 45 years, and is still single, well … alone. In the interview he gives to Gay Star News, you get the clear impression that Tatchell would do it all again if he could roll back the years.

But, goodness, the price he has paid makes you wonder how he has put up with being an activist for so long. The physical assaults (he counts more than 300), echoing in the wilderness to an unresponsive audience like John the Baptist , the tussles with despotic presidents’ operatives, the never ending campaigning on a shoe-string budget, the enduring loneliness (alone-ness?). Any one of those would have deterred the faint of heart. But Tatchell has kept going, and seems ready to keep going till he keels over.

Peter Tatchell  personifies true activist’s lot in struggles that have succeeded; selfless, bold, determined, controversial and relentless.

On the frontline: Peter Tatchell

Why do they do it? The simple answer to this question is that I don’t know. I wouldn’t do it; I am too worldly, too mindful of the need for circumspection in many things that we do (some might call this cowardice, but there you have it) and too scatterbrained to stay with any cause for 45 years – my attention would wander to something else in about 3 months.

Peter Tatchell makes the excellent case about what activism should not be about. If you are in it for the money, for the fame, for your ego, you likely need to find a different profession. The idea that one should become an activist to get rich exists in some minds of course but money clearly becomes a distraction if it is the driving force.

People like Tatchell can lay claim to the successes they have (see what he sees as his major accomplishments here) because they understood that these kinds of struggles are bigger than the individual. It would of course be foolish to think that Tatchell has not in part been driven by the notoriety the bully pulpit has given him over the years.

There has to be a certain level of ego-tripping else one might never get out of bed on a cold, rainy day to crow about the same message that has been ignored for months if not years. It should thus not be a point of shame if a certain amount of drive is fueled by the attention the activist gets.

Whether it is for totally altruistic intentions, craving for attention, a selfless desire to fight for the dispossessed, notoriety, awards, etc., I wouldn’t do it. And, to me, that is the reason why people like Peter Tatchell deserve to catch a break. At 60 he should at least have someone he calls his own to come home to.

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Joel Nana advocates the easy road 2

Gay - Human Rights, Gay - Political • Tags: , ,
Softly, softly approach: Joel Nana

Rod 2.0 is reporting that [the rather dishy] Joel Nana is complaining about David Cameron‘s and Barack Obama’s advisory that aid should be linked to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersexual (LGBTI) rights in the countries that receive it.

Nana and the other activists only have a point insofar as they argue, rather obviously, that aid should be linked to all human rights, including gay rights. But thereafter they meander into Neville-Chamberlain-esque appeasement.

Basically the activists are trying to eat their cake and have it, too. If you want LGBTI to receive basic and specialized HIV/Aids medical attention (which, frankly, is the biggest priority in most parts of Africa, with gay visibility being a distant second), then you have to deal with governments such as Malawi’s, Zimbabwe’s and Uganda’s which have ordinances that threaten or could threaten those self-same rights to health you are agitating for. A dead gay man is of no use to any gay human rights activist so it stands to reason that the first fight must be to ensure that sick gay men stay alive. What then is wrong with Obama insisting that the money his country sends to Uganda for HIV programs ($600m in 2011 alone) must address the LGBTI community as well?

Whenever activists decry aid cuts because “they have to be more nuanced,” one can’t help ask … would you have made the same argument when sanctions were slapped on Apartheid South Africa? Nana should be in a great position to answer that since he hails from that great country.

This mollycoddling of  willful neglect of needy citizens because it might offend some people we might need as friends is cowardly, timid. You have to break eggs to make an omelet yet it seems Nana and Co want to have the omelet of LGBTI protections and still have the egg of the compact with  “the broader civil society” intact. It is unrealistic to think that you are going to achieve human rights (in this case, health provision) for the LGBTI people who need it without offending someone. If you want to have women freed from the yokes of abusive husbands, you will have to contend with slaughtering cultural sacred cows that bring up men to view women as chattels. Saving children from abuse necessitates taking them to school, often leaving resentful parents and/or relatives who will not have that labor to control as they did before.

Then there is the notion the activists raise that sanctions buttress the view that homosexuality is un-African. This argument is tangential, not supported by the facts; it is the kind of mentality that one cannot eradicate by condemning sanctions since it is already well entrenched in many African minds despite unfettered aid disbursements over the decades. Afrogay thus has no idea what possessed the activists to include this argument in their communique to Cameron and Obama.

It should of course not be lost on anyone that the donor sanctions, advisories, interventions, interferences, diktats (whatever you want to call them) often work. If it hadn’t been for the ultimatum Uganda’s Museveni received in 2009 on the Nazi anti-gay bill that David Bahati, a Ugandan member of Parliament, introduced, Uganda would now have the death penalty for homosexuals on its statutes. Malawi is now reviewing “bad laws” thanks entirely to the sanctions imposed upon that country by her donors. Zimbabwe has not yet renounced her foolish anti-gay laws but the reason the more circumspect Morgan Tsvangirai is part of that country’s cabinet is … sanctions. And we all know that Tsvangirai is not as close-minded as the travesty of a president he runs the country with.

No, no, Joel Nana and your fellow activists. If you are under the assumption that donors don’t have a direct, and pivotal, role to play in the fight for gay right (or all human rights) in Africa, you are not speaking for AfroGay because he sees evidence on the ground in Uganda, Malawi, Zimbabwe etc., that they do. Yes, donors should consult with the stakeholders on the ground,, and they are doing that. AfroGay happens to think, however, that the time to talk has already passed since LGBTI men and women all over Africa are dying from HIV/Aids while expensive conferences happen in lofty assembly halls across the world which don’t translate into medical care for LGBTI on the ground.

But look at the seismic reaction Cameron’s and Obama’s words have achieved in the space of just a couple of days. We need bold leaders like them to move this discussion out of talking shops into implementation.

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