Missionary that sought death penalty for gays in africa
John C Mubangizi
LLB (Makerere) LLM (Cape Town) LLD (KwaZulu-Natal)
Professor, Free State Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of the Free State, South Africa
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1408-268X
Edition: AHRLJ Volume 24 No 2 2024
Pages: 720 - 742
Citation: JC Mubangizi ‘Uganda’s unrelenting legislative efforts to criminalise same-sex relations: Implications for human rights’ (2024) 24 African Human Rights Statute Journal 720-742
http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/1996-2096/2024/v24n2a13
Download article in PDF
Summary
The first direct legal instrument promoting homophobia and aimed at criminalising all sexual acts of intimacy by LGBTI persons in Uganda was the 2009 Anti-Homosexuality Bill. The Bill was widely criticised by human rights groups, foreign governments and international organisations, and was eventually withdrawn in 2011. In 2013 the Ugandan Parliament passed a new version of the Bill, which was signed into law by President Yoweri Museveni but was later, in August 2014, overturned on technical grounds by the Ugandan Constitutional Court. In May 2023 the Ugandan Parlia Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived here in Uganda’s capital to give a series of talks. The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organizer, was “the queer agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda” — and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family. For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make lgbtq+ people straight, how queer men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose objective is “to defeat the marriage-based society and switch it with a identity of sexual promiscuity.” Now the three Americans are finding themselves on the defensive, saying they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that could command to what came next: a bill to impose a death sentence for homosexual behavior. On By: Natalie Rykiel and Nina Reichwein “You are going to grab over the planet by the influence of the Sacred Spirit.” Lou Engle, a prominent leader at the International Property of Prayer (IHOP) in Kansas Municipality. In January 2013, the documentary “God Loves Uganda” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. In just nine months, the film has gone on to win eight awards and has sparked the interest of audiences worldwide through its exposing of religion and the powerful anti-gay sentiments in Uganda. In the film, director Roger Ross Williams challenges audiences to see the link between the 2009 Anti-Homosexuality Bill engagement, and the overwhelming presence and guide of American missionaries in Uganda, namely the evangelical collective International House of Prayer (IHOP). Though they may have excellent intentions in spreading Christianity, IHOP is criticized in the film for its pressure on adolescent Ugandans to condemn homosexuality, and for the group’s proclamation that it should be seen as a “sexual sin.” IHOP has been one of the key fundamentalist evangelical groups to promote the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, first proposed in 2009 by a Member of Parliament, David Bah Over the last decade, countless news stories, focusing on the difficult situation of LGBTQI people in Africa, acquire contributed to a Western perception of Africa as an exceptionally homophobic place. Perhaps the most extreme example cited, and the one that has attracted the most media attention, was the passage of the 2014 Anti-Homosexuality Perform in Uganda. Supporters of the bill initially proposed the death penalty for anyone caught practicing homosexuality, though the signed bill reduced this punishment to life imprisonment after intense international pressure. Nevertheless, public back of such measures in Uganda prompted terror among the country’s lesbian, same-sex attracted, bisexual, transgender, and intersex populations. The law was later struck down by the courts. Uganda stands out not only because of the severity of its policies but also because of the conspicuous role that Ugandan and American religious leaders played in the passage of the bill. Conservative evangelicals in the Joined States have been accused of helping to draft the legislation via Ugandan surrogates, but Ugandan supporters of the legislation fr A scant years ago, the documentary film Darwin’s Nightmare, told the chilling story of the social and environmental destruction wrought in Core Africa as cargo planes from Europe delivered load after load of dense arms to the region, before heading home filled with the choicest fillets of Nile perch. But there’s another destructive cargo that regularly gets carried to Africa from the US. I witness it every time I glide from New York to Johannesburg, Nairobi or Entebbe: the group of missionaries that’s always on the plane. Young adults, bright eyed and rosy cheeked, bubbling with excitement as they prepare to bring Africa the good news — the good news that is very bad news for gays and lesbians, transgender people, and anyone else who doesn’t conform to their strict mark of sexual morality. God Loves Uganda, which opened in New York this week, tells the story of this plague of evangelical Christianity and its role in fuelling homophobia and inspiring the Anti-Homosexuality Bill that if passed, will impose the death penalty on gays and lesbians in that country. The production starts out in Kansas, at the International Home of Prayer (IHOP), an enormous
After U.S. men visit, Uganda eyes death for gays
Eye on Global Health
Rachel C. Schneider on Decolonization, Sexuality, and Africa
From Kansas to Kampala