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Are US anti-gay evangelical groups involved in Uganda’s debate again?
Author: Dr Frank Mugisha, a human rights and peace advocate.
What you need to know:
- During the 2009-2014 scuffle, I sued US-based evangelical Scott Lively and at trial dirty linen was made public.
Beneath the loud homophobic outcries and the muffled noise by queer folks is a moral awakening. This moral awakening, much as it is clothed in the “save the children” mantra, has everything but saving the children among its aims.
But it would be foolhardy for me to treat today’s challenges as being in a vacuum and without a history. It’s not the first time that we are in this toxic mess.
As a foot soldier on the front line in 2009 and later 2014, the year in which the infamous Anti-
Homosexuality Act, that was infamously christened ‘kill the gays Bill’ was passed, I witnessed first-hand the dark menacing hand of hitherto independent churches in alliance with the homophobic State.
No coincidence
Little wonder, recently members of the African Regional Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Family and other evangelical groups were running into the country.
This is no coincidence that Parliament has just passed another anti-homosexuality Bill with the mover of the Bill stating that he will introduce a new Bill if this is quashed by court, obviously given the fact that it cannot stare the Constitution’s bill of rights in the face and stand.
Despite the moral and puritanical embellishments that belie the ordinary eye, intertwined within such laws is hegemonic contention, there is a fight for freedom keenly tied to notions birthed in the conceptual West i.e. USA and majority of Europe.
We have been treated to a surprise when stories from reputable media link the homophobic storm on the continent to be allegedly sponsored by Russia, hence portraying our Parliament and our puritans as merely pawns in the grand scheme of things.
During the 2009-2014 scuffle, I sued US-based evangelical Scott Lively and at trial dirty linen was made public, including emails between parliamentarians and church leaders in Uganda detailing that the same were in league and the homophobic outburst then was not as innocuous as they wanted us to believe.
Predicted this episode
I had particularly predicted this episode, but not its details. This epiphany was thrown upon me when the US Supreme Court reversed the gains of Roe vs Wade and Justice Thomas Clarence, a member of the Federalist Society, promised that the court was to review all such progressive judgements.
This, I thought, was a dog whistle and it signified the pains of the conservative brigade due to the many achievements on the left, especially regarding minority rights.
To return to the wave that has stormed the continent and has been said by Open Democracy to have links to Russia because of its support of the ‘traditional family’.
It’s hard to decipher what is meant by the ‘traditional family’, especially in this globalised world, and why would the traditional African family be protected by brethren miles off the continent?
It’s important to note that tradition and modernity exist in a dialectical relationship. Without one, one cannot exist.
Africa, the land mass that was baptised so, has always existed as heterosexual dominantly albeit its heterosexualities were not against homosexualities.
This will also come to pass, and like night follows day as Martin Luther King Jr reminds us, “the arch of the moral universe is long it bends towards justice”.
Dr Frank Mugisha is a human rights and peace advocate.
