Re:Uganda is Right to Reject Obama's Homosexual Threats.
MsJo...@aol.com
'The anti-gay measure was introduced in 2009 by a lawmaker with the ruling party who said the law was necessary to deter Western homosexuals from "recruiting" Ugandan children.' (http://news.yahoo.com/uganda-president-signs-harsh-anti-gay-law-165249542.html)While I believe that homosexuality should be discouraged and be kept out of society, I usually tend to hold a position to the effect that homosexuality should not be criminalized. This is the only point where gay activists and I tend to agree.As I was driving home from the office I got to review this position as I was listening to BBC Swahili's reports of Museveni's signing of this anti-gay bill into law. That is when it occurred to me that GIVEN the current onslaught of Western push for the so-called gay rights which will only be get worse it is NECESSARY to have a much stronger stance to homosexuality practices.And this is exactly that I read in this article about an hour ago. Like Museveni, I believe that homosexuality is a social phenomenon, more like a social disease. While people may keep their eyes closed against any type of social corruption, it is another thing completely when individuals start to peddle their corrupt lifestyle in the open. Gay rights activism, as championed by Obama, is an affront to common-sense, and when children have to be forced to believe that they can choose their sexuality and gender because their friends have 'two daddies' or 'two mommies'- that is where we have to draw the line. Perverse human nature does not need any encouragement to manifest itself.While the law as rightly reported has great potential for abuses, I think Museveni got his reasoning right. And it is scary when one's thinking aligns to any of these African dictators'...Charles.__._,_.___
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TransAfrica adds its voice to amplify the outrage of Ugandan and international human rights defenders in response to the most recent attack on the rights of LGBT people in Africa. We demand that President Yoweri Museveni reject the Anti-Homosexuality Bill (AHB) passed by Uganda's Parliament in December 2013. The AHB is widely recognized as hate legislation that would strip lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered Ugandans of their fundamental human rights. Despite his initial refusal, President Museveni said on Friday, February 14, that he would sign the bill which would criminalize "the promotion or recognition" of homosexual relationships.
Nicole C. Lee, president of TransAfrica, stated:
"We join our partner, human rights leader Frank Mugisha, and his organization Sexual Minorities of Uganda (SMUG) in condemning the attacks on our brothers and sisters in the LGBT community in Uganda by an extreme fundamentalist minority. We demand that President Museveni refuse to sign the unconstitutional and hate-filled Anti-Homosexuality Bill passed by the Parliament at the end of last year. The AHB criminalizes an already vulnerable population and feeds irrational hatred and violence towards LGBT people in Uganda."
Ugandan civil society and our partners at SMUG are asking that Americans call on our government to bring the U.S. Ambassador to Uganda back to the U.S. for consultation. This temporary recall will send a strong message to President Museveni.
You can help by making a call today! Please call Secretary Kerry's chief of staff's office at: 202-647-5548.Here is a call in-script to use:Hello, my name is ---------------------- and I am calling to urge Secretary Kerry to take immediate action on Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill, and recall the U.S. Ambassador to Uganda, Scott DeLisi. The Ugandan Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law has requested the recalling of U.S., European and other Ambassadors, for urgent consultations about the way forward for human rights in Uganda as well as in Nigeria, where a similar bill was signed into law by the President. I stand with Ugandan Civil Society concerned about the safety of their LGBTQ citizens, and strongly urge Secretary Kerry to recall U.S. Ambassador Scott DeLisi immediately.
[Thank you to our partners at Health Gap for creating this call to action!]
I'm including more information from TransAfrica's statement calling on President Museveni to reject the bill below. I hope you will join us in taking action today!
For respect of all people's basic rights,
Nicole Lee, PresidentTransAfricaP.S. If you like receiving action alerts like this one, please consider making a donation to TransAfrica now!
Background Information from Uganda:
The forty-member Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law (CSCHRCL) in Kampala, Uganda, called on President Museveni to consider the health consequences of the AHB, as well as the violation of human rights: "Uganda has long been a trail-blazer in the fight against the scourge of HIV/AIDS. The AHB will greatly hinder these efforts .If the President assents to the Anti-Homosexuality Bill and it becomes operationalized, efforts to reach these populations may become illegal and implementers of public health strategies could be liable to criminal charges-alongside the people intended to benefit from these programs. This endangers the Ugandan population as a whole."
The Kuchu Diaspora Alliance wrote an open letter to President Museveni, calling for him to create meaningful dialogue and lead Uganda with a position based on "informed research rather than irrational reaction." In the letter they noted: "Although the death penalty clause was eliminated from the bill, we believe that criminalizing innocent Ugandans and silencing those who address human rights violations will lead to escalated violence, discrimination, and blackmail against members of our community. If made law, the bill-as with all legislation that is not based on informed research-could be used as weaponry against heterosexual Ugandans who differ in belief and opinion. The effects of signing a bill that threatens the lives of innocent citizens may be impossible to reverse."
The bill will also have far reaching effects on human rights defenders in Uganda as a whole. As the National Coalition for Human Rights Defenders of Uganda (NCHRDU) explained, "The Bill violates the rights of sexual minorities and defenders working to create an enabling environment for Human Rights Defenders to continue doing their work of promoting and protecting human rights."
TransAfrica | 1629 K St. NW | Suite 1100 | Washington | DC | 20006
Stevek
A society of supine lambs breeds erect wolves. - Stevek
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Otitigbe Obadiah Oghoerore Alegbe (The Okatakyie Otitigbe of Africa)
OE
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Otitigbe Obadiah Oghoerore Alegbe (The Okatakyie Otitigbe of Africa)
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AV
I am disappointed...
“Russian President Vladimir Putin defended Russia’s anti-LGBT law, saying gays and lesbians are not discriminated against in Russia and the law is aimed at protecting children. Despite Putin’s claim the law does not discriminate, Violence against LGBT Russians has also been on the rise since the anti-gay law was passed last June.” Why would we compare an African countries to Russia on par? Not even South Africa. I am not talking about GDP or level of sophistication, you can dice and slice it anyway you want but Russia does not receive grants or aids from the EU or US. Nevertheless, the US and EU countries never seized to take the opportunity to criticize Russia LGBT laws, and the ripple effect of such criticism affect economic and political transactions.
Grants are given to those who deserve it. People reward excellence, and many African leaders have not performed to par. Why should the US or EU extend a grant to some country that has enacted a rule of law that threatens the livelihood of its citizens. First off, these types of enactment cost more money. You should know. If a law that violates human right is enacted in any country, majority of the world leaders will use any tool available to them to persuade the dissident-country. While these tools of persuasion are always scalable, the mildest is often cutting aids, grants, etc; then trade sanctions could follow if deemed necessary. I am only entertaining this analysis above to address the cleverly inserted premise of African countries rights to decide its own faith. But this is boring and I do not wish to dwell on it. Let’s face it, the issue is homosexual rights as human rights- to be or not to be in Africa.
There was a time, that arguments like these started in the western world, when Christians did not have rights to worship, and they were prosecuted and criminalized. Then Christian gained power and prosecuted other Christians, for worshiping differently, then they all came after the pagans. Then came the notion that Africans have human rights and should not be made subservient slaves. Many people in the diaspora, as well as in Africa opposed the notion. But eventually, all nations caught on sooner or later. Today, gay people are on the stand. This is how far we have come about the issue of human right.
Human right= (being + nature - ( race – ethnicity - gender ) * (experience + civility))
Now we think that while the majority of the world, especially the West, finally came to an understanding that Gay right is human right, that does not apply to Africans and African country leaders who decided against it shouldn’t be persuaded to see the forest in spite of the tree?
Are you, herewith your unintelligible argument, saying that Africans are not human enough to deserve human rights? What part of human rights do we not understand? Why should there be a double standard for people in the rest of the world and not for Africans?
If your daughter, son or sibling has this so called homosexual tendency” and happens to be in Uganda, or Nigeria or even bloody Russia for crying out loud, would you agree that the best way for such perceived “deficiency” is to be treated as an act of crime and sent to jail? I think many monkey heads are mixing up gay people with pedophiles, violent fetish criminals and rapists. And you dare go to the Bible, when most of the outed pedophiles are Christian priests. In Africa today, priests of African churches commit crime of adultery, physical and psychological rape beyond human comprehension. Ugandan and Nigerian priestly leaders with useless phd talking kakalakan get to decide the faith of so many people unjustly... What part of politology class did we miss in school that fuels the amnesia of separation of the church and state?
The Nigerians and the Ugandans are on to a witch hunt- now, they want to lynch gay people… Yeah right. You know who else thought that way? Hitler and the rest of the Eugenicist.
Sometimes, Africans appears to more racist and classist than the worsts of the aristocratic brats (Teachers who taught us Nonsense). Perhaps many of our educated fellows still harbor that primordial instinct that makes us uniquely culturally slow …. I say ketchup to that. You ought to know, that one cannot be attempting to do right in one department of life and whilst doing wrong in another. Yeah, Gandhi Said that, and Mandela second it: You are either good or bad. And this is a bad argument to say the very least. This is a stupid legislation enacted by some nominal African leaders who can’t see forest because of the tree.
And for you dare drum this up in Diaspora, where a lot of hope, sobriety, and rationality rest on our shoulders… all I can say is gosh! (sigh) get a grip! Please…. What are you saying? homosexuality in Africa is going to destroy African culture? This is a good one for Nollywood and should be on TV. (LOL)
Which culture by the way? African Christianity, or African Islamic? Or, perhaps African spirituality? Or African love culture, governance culture, which tradition is this going to destroy exactly? So where is the cultural imperialism effect that is not already taken its toll on our asses?
This is not a game. People’s lives and wellbeing are at stake. So we should be very careful in encouraging countries making a rule of law on what is not fully understood. Homosexuality is not an opinion, some people are born that way. In most cases, it not a choice. This is the first understanding. Even more so, who the 4ck are we to decide who is entitled to love or be loved in return by whom. This is stupid and I am very disappointed that this ugly sentiment is being echoed in the diaspora when it is actually expected from us radiate intelligence and rationalize decisions.
My name is Wale. This my personal response to idiosyncratic correspondences.
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Cliff
Greetings Bro. Wale:
I've watched this debate carry on in this forum, in one way or another, for the last several weeks and chose not to get in the middle of it because (a) I did not know the participants and (b) I saw how this debate moved from a philosophical one to a personal one (the insinuation that anyone who championed gay rights must themselves be gay, for example). Now, with your commentary, someone I have met and respect has weighed in with words of disappointment in the intellectual and moral direction of our Pan-Afrikan Diaspora. I wanted to give the different opinions I've read some thought before weighing in myself.
As a heterosexual Afrikan Descendant man who knows more than one gay person (none of whom, as far as I am aware, is a pedophile or any other type of abuser of the human rights of others), I'm not here to persuade anyone on this Forum one way or the other. I do, however, recognize that there are (at least) three major issues here that seem to have intertwined themselves.
(1) The issue of human rights. One may take issue with the way a person lives their personal life, but when things get to the level of imposing a legal statute against their personal life, individual liberty is threatened and one must consider where that threat will stop. Will such a statute inspire people to spy on others, invading their privacy Police-State-style in an effort to ferret out incriminating evidence of homosexual activity? Will tragic mistakes be made because of someone's misunderstanding or misinterpretation of what they know, or think they know? Will people feel motivated to manufacture evidence against others to "out" them based on falsified information? How many of "Uganda's Top 100 Homos" were falsely "accused"? Could such a measure be used to execute political "hits" on those who oppose the wishes and policies of those in power? And how long before acts of terrorism and murder against suspected gay citizens are being reported regularly in the news as a result of the legislation?
(2) National sovereignty. I get Ms. Joe's point about the degree to which the West seeks to pressure African nations to accept Western values while continuing to reject those values that are a part of historic African culture (from polygamy and polyandry to non-Abrahamic, traditional African spiritual practices). The US and the West also utilize these pressure tactics against countries that practice different socio-economic-political systems (the Cold War against Socialist countries since the early 20th Century) or who choose leaders that oppose Western control over their countries (Lumumba, Nkrumah, Allende, Mossadegh, etc.), while themselves continuing to practice what many feel is the most exploitative system of all, capitalism, and elect leaders who wage war around the world. Thus, the current US stance seems to carry a tinge of hypocrisy as far as national sovereignty is concerned.
(3) African self-determination. This comes up for both sides of the debate. While one may state that the pro-gay US stance is an indication of undue Western interference in African affairs, so is the anti-gay stance when most of us use God and the Bible as our standard. What interpretation of God are most of us using? The Judeo-Christian one that was imposed on us from Europe (more precisely, Constantine of Rome)? The Islamic one that was brought from Arabia? And weren't both of those cultures responsible for using their religions to not only enslave our Ancestors in the Maafa but also to play out their current modern-day Clash of Civilizations on African soil while their stormtroopers kill us and their prospectors steal away our Mother Continent's precious resources?
In the end, any sovereign nation can make decisions about how it wants its people to live. They then must deal with whatever consequences that choice leads to. Hopefully, the Uganda law will not result in some epidemic of Matthew Sheppard-style acts of terrorism. (Sheppard was stalked, chased and murdered, in near-ritual fashion, in 1998 because fellow Texans did not feel a gay man deserved to live.) Perhaps the people of Uganda will respond to the law in a more ethical and moral way than a bunch of rednecks in Texas did. (But perhaps not.) Perhaps the responses of other nations of the world, in terms of their willingness to interact positively with Uganda, will help inform them as to how to enforce such a law or whether or not to repeal it. (The US, for example, has a number of laws against sodomy, but I know of no one currently serving time in jail for it, though there are those who have been targeted because of their belief in polygamy.)
My personal feeling on this is that, of the above priorities, human rights has to be the foundation, if for no other reason than to protect their individual right to live free from fear and to prevent acts of terrorism against the next person or persons we may find personally disgusting (rightly or wrongly), and that national sovereignty and African self-determination are also necessary to ensure the safety of the people and their collective right to live free from fear. Both are important, as no one or ones should have to feel that their lives, insofar as they do not infringe upon the rights of others, are being unduly controlled or coerced.
But any discussion we have in this day about the influence of the West, in the area of gay rights or any other, will be incomplete as long as we are talking about a continent where African countries' official languages are not indigenous ones; where African countries' official religions tend to be Christianity or Islam while traditional African religions (including the moral concept of Ma'at) are considered "pagan" and "primitive"; where Africans on the Continent and in the Diaspora spend the currency of alien lands (and those alien lands continue to take a "cut" of all monetary transactions); where Africans are still unable to defend ourselves from foreign and domestic adversaries; where the boundaries of African nations, set in 1885 by the colonial powers of Europe, have largely gone unchallenged to this day; and where the way we look at ourselves is still determined by our historical enslavers and exploiters. Baba Kofi of SADA is correct in his critique of the undue influence of Christianity and Islam in Africa, and Dr. Fanusie is correct that we generally take an excessively simplistic approach to geopolitics.
Thus, my main concern is that we formulate our positions based on the best of our historical African spirituality and morality. (Perhaps this is so difficult because it means admitting that we have much to learn, even about ourselves.) Too often, we use the standards of our historical oppressors to guide us in deciding on key issues, and that has helped to maintain us in a state of economic, political, social and moral bondage. Sometimes, we don't even see how we are being controlled. We have failed to sit together, as a Diaspora or as an African Family, to work on these major issues, instead waiting for the next crisis or controversy to rear its head. As long as we continue in this way, we will forever be manipulated by the religious values, political influences and economic machinations of others.
Here's to that day when we finally, truly come together as an African people.
Peace and Power,
Bro. Cliff
Editor, KUUMBAReport Online (http://kuumbareport.com)
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menre ayes
Subject: Re: [africanworldforum] Re:Uganda is Right to Reject Obama's Homosexual Threats.
From: sen...@gmail.com
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2014 21:54:57 +0000