While gay rights are on the rise the U.S., vlent homophobia remas rampant many Ain natns
Contents:
- BLACK, GAY AND GRAYG GRACEFULLY LOVE
- PROGRS FOR GAY RIGHTS AI STILL ISN’T EVABLE
- UGANDA PASSED ONE OF THE WORLD’S HARSHT ANTI-GAY LAWS. LGBTQ PEOPLE SCRIBE LIVG THERE AS ‘HELL’
- FIERCE LOVE: STORI FROM BLACK GAY LIFE
BLACK, GAY AND GRAYG GRACEFULLY LOVE
* african gay life *
But for one night each week, the prostut take a break and this place of heterosexual merce be the clost thg Kampala–a cy of 2 ln and the pal of the East Ain natn of Uganda–has to a haven for gay people. At the bar, Kampala’s lbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgenr people gather over bottl of the lol Club beer to soothe rattled nerv and take refuge a place where strangers do not glare at them wh hostily.
Followg the Febary 2014 enactment of a bill that allowed urts to sentence LGBT cizens to life prison, the tabloid Red Pepper prted a list of “Uganda’s Top 200 Homos. The rise anti-gay sentiment has many LGBT Ugandans spairg of ever beg able to walk down the street whout fear of beg spat upon, cursed or even physilly attacked.
Acrdg to a 2013 report by the Pew Rearch Center, the vast majory of Ains–98% Nigeria, 90% Kenya and 96% Uganda, Senegal and Ghana–say homosexualy is unacceptable. At a moment when a large majory of North Amerins, Lat Amerins and Europeans have e to accept homosexualy–and when same-sex marriage is legal 20 untri, cludg the U. Relig nservativ may be losg the battle on LGBT rights the Wt, but Ai, where church and mosque rema rnerston of society, some of the same anti-gay activists have been termed to hold ground, says Ty Cobb, global director of the Washgton-based Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT-rights advocy group.
PROGRS FOR GAY RIGHTS AI STILL ISN’T EVABLE
Beg gay Ai and Europe n be a burn. Do g out affect the way people see you as a man? Do change your daily life? Why do some immigrants ntue to live the closet when they move to Europe? #CryLikeaBoy #Podst * african gay life *
” Many Ain policians have e to see LGBT rights as an unwanted Wtern import, and they’ve rpond by draftg anti-gay legislatn even more dranian than the lonial-era sodomy laws that rema on the books many Ain untri. The cultural divi was highlighted durg Print Barack Obama’s recent vis to Ai, where he raised the issue of gay rights wh Kenyan Print Uhu Kenyatta, parg anti-gay legislatn to the laws that once jtified slavery and segregatn the U. ” Nowhere is the Toxic Brew of Ain nservatism, Amerin evangelil fluence and polil gay-bag more visible than Uganda, where LGBT cizens fear for their liv.
Kawi, the baby-faced transgenr activist Kampala, still has nightmar about the night, 2½ years ago, when she says police officers dragged her out of her home after a tip-off that she might be gay. That started changg 2009, when nservative Ugandan pastors beme ncerned about what they saw as the growg fluence of liberal Wtern valu Uganda and what they feared would be the acpanyg acceptance of homosexualy. S., the three pastors–Stt Lively, Don Schmierer and Caleb Lee Bndidge–were members of a Christian movement that preached agast homosexualy and promoted so-lled gay-nversn therapy to what had bee a rapidly dwdlg dience.
As the Massachetts-based founr of Abidg Tth Mistri, a Christian anizatn hostile to homosexualy, Lively had spent nearly 20 years fightg what he lled the gay muny’s Marxist plot to break down the nuclear fay mol and stroy civilizatn.
UGANDA PASSED ONE OF THE WORLD’S HARSHT ANTI-GAY LAWS. LGBTQ PEOPLE SCRIBE LIVG THERE AS ‘HELL’
-ted Fance Mister David Bahati troduced a bill llg for the ath penalty for gay people, even though lonial-era laws–rarely enforced–already banned homosexual sex.
” Parliament bated Bahati’s 2009 bill at var tervals and passed December 2013; a few months later, Print Yoweri Meveni publicly signed the bill to law, clarg to a gatherg of ternatnal journalists that homosexualy was an example of the Wt’s “social imperialism.
FIERCE LOVE: STORI FROM BLACK GAY LIFE
” Lively, for all his boasts about the impact of his vis to Uganda, wrote a 2010 statement that he was “mortified” that Bahati’s Anti-Homosexualy Act clud the ath penalty, and he lobbied to have changed.
The se argu that Lively vlated ternatnal law through his “volvement anti-gay efforts Uganda, cludg his active participatn the nspiracy to strip away fundamental rights” om LGBT persons unr the Alien Tort Statute, which giv survivors of human-rights ab the abily to sue the perpetrators the U. But the lonial-era law agast same-sex practic is still place, and now that overt homophobia has taken root Ugandan society, each member of the LGBT muny is a potential target.
” Uganda’s gay-rights activists say they will fight the new law as they fought the last one–through the urts, by raisg awarens and by lobbyg for ternatnal support.