Recently I’ve changed my Twitter bio to say “common sense and human rights activist.” Sometimes, actually most often, I don’t understand people and governments’ lack of common sense. To me, and everyone I know, its common sense to treat everyone equitably regardless of superficial attributes such as skin color, sexuality, gender identity, and religion, just to name a few. At the end of the day were all people all trying to live our lives happily; but why do some people go out of their way to make other peoples’ lives hell?
What brought this to mind is the bill going through parliament in Uganda which would make homosexuality punishable by death (it’s already illegal punishable by jail sentence). Having sex with someone of the same sex is punishable by death and gay-like touching in public is punishable by a lengthy prison sentence. If this isn’t bad enough, the law if passed would also target non-homosexuals--anyone failing to report an incident within 24 hours would be punished.
Here’s a lovely quote from a sitting of the Ugandan parliament, not the bill debate, contextualizing the views of homosexuality in the realm of the government (and probably many citizens):
“If Government were to legalise marriage between men and men, and women and women, we would be talking about a threat to human civilisation. In such a marriage, either of two individuals decides to act as a husband or wife to the other. This situation is what is known as homosexuality or same-gender marriage.
Lately, Mr Speaker, some international groups and countries have been demanding that Uganda should legalise homosexuality. Those behind this abnormal, unhealthy, unnatural as well as illegal lifestyle have argued that doing so would be a human right and in defence of freedom. In Uganda, UNICEF, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Frontline Human Rights Defenders, and East and Horn of Africa Human Rights groups have been in the forefront of a campaign to legalise homosexuality.
The groups above have been assisted by local NGOs that depend on them for funding this propaganda among our population. In fact, ten years ago UNICEF helped in the funding and distribution of books to schools, which were unknown to the Ministry of Education and Sports, and they were popularising homosexuality. Following UNICEF's unwelcome intervention, I recently wrote to the Minister of Education and Sports to express our resentment of their promotion of illegality and called for a tough response that would curb such intrusions” (http://bit.ly/8AlPfQ).
First question, wtf?!?!?! Second, since when does one same sex partner have to act as the opposite sex equivalent of wife or husband? Third, how the hell does LOVE threaten human civilization? Aside from offering context, I wanted to include this quote as I’m thrilled to see so many NGO's taking up this issue (I’m a monthly Amnesty supporter!).
A Ugandan MP David Bahati introduced the bill and defends it saying, "homosexuality is not a human right. It is a foreign behaviour imported and promoted by people using the poverty in our country to expound bad behaviour" (Guardian.co.uk -- http://bit.ly/1QQmsJ).
This perplexes me. How has society come to view homosexuality this way? Homosexuality is a natural occurrence in every species, including about 1500 animal species (http://bit.ly/IanjC). I have news for you, Government of Uganda, the lions in your parks and on your savannahs are also homosexuals! It would be equal on the ridiculous-scale to propose a bill banning animal homosexuality and punishing it by death, maybe one already exists.
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