President Joe Biden, in a statement, condemned the new law as “a tragic violation of universal human rights—one that is not worthy of the Ugandan people, and one that jeopardizes the prospects of critical economic growth for the entire country.”
Biden said Washington was considering additional steps. “including the application of sanctions and restriction of entry into the United States against anyone involved in serious human rights abuses or corruption.”
Cruz is definitely no friend of gay rights. He criticized the 2013 Supreme Court ruling that guaranteed the right of same-sex couples to marry in all 50 states. Last year, he voted against the Respect for Marriage Act, which repealed the Defense of Marriage Act. More recently, Cruz called for an investigation into Anheuser-Busch for its advertising collaboration with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
But even the Texas senator called the Ugandan law “horrific & wrong” and said “all civilized nations should join together in condemning this human rights abuse.”
But Cruz’s criticism of the Uganda law did not sit well with some on the religious right, such as former Trump lawyer and conspiracy theorist Jenna Ellis.
Frank Mugisha, leader of the banned group Sexual Minorities Uganda, told an April forum sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies that extreme American evangelicals are trying to push lawmakers in other African countries to pass anti-LGBTQ+ legislation:
“Our parliament is getting more and more conservative, thanks to the extreme American Evangelicals who are going to Uganda all the time and promoting this hatred, but also indoctrinating Ugandans with these conservative views.
“Just last weekend we had a conference in Uganda that was called The Interparliamentary Conference on Family Values, and the resolution from this parliament was to introduce similar legislation in other countries. We already see Ghana has one. Kenya is trying to introduce one. … We’ve seen demonstrations in Malawi; LGBTQ persons getting arrested in Burundi, Somaliland, and other countries.”
In a report published in October 2020, independent international media platform openDemocracy found that “more than 20 U.S. Christian groups known for fighting against LGBT rights and access to safe abortion, contraceptives and comprehensive sexuality education had spent at least $54 million in Africa since 2007,” with Uganda receiving nearly 40% of these funds.
“They have lost support in their home country. Now they are looking for countries where they can dump their ideologies,” Mugisha told openDemocracy. “They do it somewhere else where they feel they have more power.”
Fox Odoi-Oywelowo, one of only two Ugandan members of Parliament who voted against the 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Bill, told openDemocracy in a recent interview:
”Nelson Mandela held the view that love is inherent and inborn. Hate, on the other hand, is taught, acquired. I think we are all born good human beings and we’re all born to love—to love ourselves, to love other human beings, to love our neighbors, regardless of color, regardless of sexual orientation, regardless of stature.
…
“Homophobia has never been part of traditional African societies. Perhaps they had a lack of understanding, but they let them live in peace.”
the evangelicals are coming
During the 1970s, the brutal dictator Idi Amin tried to turn Uganda into an Islamic country even though Muslims only constituted about 14% of the population. Amin’s regime killed nearly 500,000 people from 1971-79, including thousands of members of predominantly Christian tribes.
Among those killed was the Anglican Archbishop of Uganda Janani Luwum, who was accused of treason in 1977 after sending a protest letter to Amin about the arbitrary killings and other acts of violence carried out by the security services. Luwum was beaten and shot to death. He was later honored by the Anglican Church as one of the 10 Modern Martyrs with a statue in Westminster Abbey.
After Amin was forced to flee the country in 1979, U.S. evangelical missionaries began arriving in the country. Among the first groups to begin work in Uganda was the mainstream Christian humanitarian aid and development organization World Vision U.S.A. Its then-President Stan Mooneyham visited Uganda in 1979 to make an initial pledge of $500,000 to provide food, medicine, and other emergency supplies.
In a July 1979 article for World Vision’s magazine, Mooneyham wrote about his visit to Uganda and how “the church of Jesus Christ” would be “at the heart of the reconstruction of the nation.”
”Hearts throughout the entire nation are open and receptive to the gospel. Once again, the suffering, martyred church has become the source of strength for a tortured nation. … I hope the days ahead for Uganda will bring a rich, bountiful harvest of peace and reconciliation. May the fruit of that harvest remain sweet.”
The evangelical missionaries did build medical clinics and schools in the devastated nation as part of their effort to prompt a religious revival. Two decades later, there would be a bittersweet harvest of hatred and divisiveness as more extreme right-wing evangelicals saw greener pastures to spread their homophobic message of hate.
the impact of HIV/AIDS
During the 1980s Uganda was ravaged by the AIDS epidemic, but the major mode of transmission was by heterosexual transmission. Doctors in Uganda became aware that there were cases with similar symptoms being reported among white, homosexual males in San Francisco, but at first they could not make the connection. In 1986, about a quarter of the population in the capital city of Kampala was infected with HIV. By the end of the decade, HIV prevalence among pregnant women in Kampala had peaked at over 30%.
In 1991, Museveni added promotion of condom use to Uganda’s anti-AIDS arsenal despite opposition from Christian and Muslim religious groups. Condom use was supported by President Bill Clinton. Uganda’s “ABC plan,” consisting of abstinence, being faithful, and condom use, reduced the HIV-infection rate.
But after taking office, President George W. Bush, urged on by his right-wing evangelical supporters, began promoting abstinence-only HIV prevention programs. In response, Museveni began de-emphasizing condom use. The abstinence-only policy had the enthusiastic support of a certain GOP House member from Indiana.
The pastor speaking in the clip is the Rev. Dr. Kapya Kaoma, a pro-LGBTQ+ Anglican priest from Zambia now living in Boston. He went to Uganda undercover to conduct research exposing the ties between U.S. right-wing evangelicals and anti-LGBTQ legislation in Uganda.
Kaoma told The Independent that homosexuality was illegal in Uganda under laws that dated back to British colonial rule that were never repealed. “But nobody was ever arrested or prosecuted based on those old laws. People turned a blind eye to it. Homosexuality was not a political issue.” He said that all changed when some right-wing evangelicals exported their brand of virulent homophobia to Uganda.
anti-gay education and attitudes
The above clip is from the 2013 PBS documentary “God Loves Uganda” by the Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams, who is gay. His film focuses on two American Charismatic Christian pastors, Lou Engle and Scott Lively, who helped foment the anti-gay attitudes in Uganda that resulted in passage of the 2014 Anti-Homosexuality Act, which called for life imprisonment for anyone convicted of being gay. The law was later struck down on procedural grounds in the courts.
Lively began visiting Uganda in the early 2000s. In 2009, Lively traveled to Uganda to speak at an anti-LGBTQ+ conference at a Kampala hotel attended by law enforcement officers, religious leaders, and government officials. Lively’s five-hour speech was broadcast on Ugandan television.
Mother Jones reported that Lively claimed homosexuals were aggressively recruiting Uganda’s children and argued that human rights protections shouldn’t be extended to these “predatory” figures. He likened homosexuality to a disease and suggested that if Uganda didn’t “actively discourage” same-sex relations, the nation’s children might soon be throwing orgies and performing oral sex on school buses.
The Southern Poverty Law Center quoted Lively as telling the conference:
”The gay movement is an evil institution [whose] goal is to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity in which there’s no restrictions on sexual conduct except the principle of mutual choice.”
From “God Loves Uganda”:
Lively said, “We need public policy that discourages homosexuality.”
Mugisha, the leader of Sexual Minorities Uganda, told The Independent on Sunday: The idea “of a gay agenda, of recruiting people to homosexuality—that language wasn’t used in Uganda pre-2009. [Lively] made my work very difficult and was conspiring with my legislators, but [to Ugandans] he was like God himself. People were worshiping him as if he was from heaven.”
A month later, the Ugandan parliament was considering legislation that included the death penalty for LGBTQ+ people in some instances and life imprisonment for others, the Southern Poverty Law Center said.
Sexual Minorities Uganda partnered with the Center for Constitutional Rights to sue Lively in federal court in 2012 in his home state of Massachusetts. The lawsuit accused the evangelist of committing crimes against humanity for his active participation in efforts to strip away the fundamental rights of LGBTQ people.
In 2018, U.S. District Court Judge Michael Ponsor ruled that the case could not be tried in the U.S. because Lively’s actions took place in a foreign country. The judge did issue a scathing opinion that found that Lively had violated international law by aiding “a vicious and frightening campaign of repression against LGBTI people in Uganda.”
Engle, an outspoken opponent of abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, was a senior leader of he International House of Prayer, a Kansas City, Missouri-based megachurch, that sent young missionaries to serve as “prayer warriors” in Uganda. In 2010, Engle came to Kampala to speak at a prayer rally in support of the anti-gay legislation. Before arriving, Engle issued a statement that he opposed including the death penalty in the bill, but in his speech he praised Ugandan pastors for “showing courage to take a stand for righteousness” in promoting the proposed anti-gay law.
The documentary includes footage of Engle speaking at the rally:
“NGOs, the U.N., UNICEF, they are all coming in here and promoting an agenda,” Engle said. “Today, America is losing its religious freedom. We are trying to restrain an agenda that is sweeping through the education system. Uganda has become ground zero.”
Engle also brought Ukrainian pastors to the U.S. for training and education. Among them was Martin SSempa, whose fiery sermons focused on demonizing LGBTQ+ Ugandans and calling for them to be severely punished. He even screened hardcore gay porn in church services and lectures, graphically describing the images to stir up anti-gay hysteria in what became known as the “Eat Da Poo Poo” meme. (Note: Link contains offensive material.)
Ssempa described himself as a consultant to the Ugandan government and his congregants included David Bahati, the parliament member who first introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in 2009. His ministry also received financial support from the Canyon Ridge Christian Church, a Las Vegas megachurch.
the seeds of hate
Such seeds of hate soon bore their evil fruit. In 2011, David Kato, a prominent gay rights activist, was bludgeoned to death at his home after winning a court victory against a tabloid that had identified him and other LGBTQ+ activists in its pages and called for homosexuals to be killed.
Shortly before his murder, Kato, a leader of Sexual Minorities Uganda, was interviewed for the documentary. He said members of U.S. pentecostal churches had come to Uganda, a very religious country, to seek a “greener pasture” to preach their brand of homophobia.
”When the American evangelicals came here and they preached so much that we were recruiting children, so they made all of the parents in the whole country really hate us … ,” Kato said. “And when the Americans preach hate here, they forget they are preaching to people who just take the law into their hands.”
His words prove prophetic. One of the final scenes in the documentary shows Kato’s funeral. Bishop Christopher Senyonjo, who was excommunicated by the Anglican Church of Uganda after supporting LGBTQ+ rights, told the mourners that Kato’s death was “a result of the hatred planted in Uganda by U.S. evangelicals.”
“I have known these people who are LGBT. I respect them for what they are and I believe they are going to heaven like you others. … Please don’t be discouraged. God created you. God is on your side.”
The anti-homosexuality act
The Anti-Homosexuality Act, first introduced in 2009, was finally signed into law by Museveni in February 2014. The bill originally called for the death sentence for “aggravated homosexuality,” but it was amended to change the punishment to life in prison. A person convicted of the loosely defined “offense of homosexuality” faced a maximum sentence of seven years in prison.
But in August 2014, Uganda’s Constitutional Court declared the law “null and void” on procedural grounds, ruling that the bill should not have been voted on due to lack of a quorum.
Odoi-Oywelowo, the liberal parliament member, told openDemocracy that the pentecostal communities never ceased in their message and spent millions of dollars to promote the new anti-homosexuality law.
“I think we also rested on our laurels after 2016 and thought the battle was won and so was the war. And unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. We need to, as human rights activists in this country, build a critical mass of people who understand LGBTIQ+ rights.”
In January 2023, anti-gay hysteria was stirred when a social media post went viral in which a person describing himself as a parent claimed that his son had been sodomized for four years by a teacher at Kings College Budo, one of Uganda’s most prestigious schools. School authorities dismissed the post as a forgery. The case is under investigation. The following month, Minister of Education Janet Museveni, the president’s wife, announced an investigation into sexual misconduct in schools.
Museveni signed the draconian anti-gay law on May 29. Within days, two petitions had been filed by activists. But the new law has already caused terrified LGBTQ+ Ugandans to go into hiding or flee abroad, according to DW.
“Is it a crime to embrace my identity? I am even scared for my life like a refugee. Why are they even criminalizing this [homosexuality]? This is who I am. I am scared for my life, and I am scared for my friends. I am scared for my family. We are really scared,” one member of Uganda’s LGBTQ community told DW, speaking on condition of anonymity because he feared reprisal.
Odoi-Oywelowo has signed both petitions to the Constitutional Court seeking to have the new law declared null and void. He told openDemocracy:
”We need to interrogate the limitations that Parliament intends to impose on people’s rights. Are they demonstrably justifiable in a free and democratic society? I think it’s high time we had that discussion. But we should have that discussion on the merits, and let the courts pronounce themselves. … We need to know to what extent our judicial system is prepared to protect the rights of Ugandans.”
the situation in america
Uganda could be the canary in the coal mine. The same U.S. evangelical churches that exported their gospel of homophobia to East Africa are active in the U.S. supporting punitive anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in red states. As of June 2, 2023, the American Civil Liberties Union says it is tracking more than 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills in the U.S.
Alabama has approved a bill making it a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison or a fine up to $15,000 for anyone who provides gender affirming care to a minor. And there has been another wave of anti-abortion laws, some of which set criminal penalties. Idaho approved a bill that makes it a felony punishable by up to five years in prison for any adult who helps a minor cross state lines to receive an abortion without the parents’ consent.
Some Republican state lawmakers in South Carolina even proposed a bill that would have applied the state’s homicide laws to people who undergo abortions, which under the criminal code could have resulted in the death penalty. Republican legislative leaders declared the bill “dead on arrival.”
Pepe Onziema, a Ugandan gay rights activist, interviewed from Kampala by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, said it was in the interests of our American partners to make a strong response to the new anti-gay law in his country.
