Ugandan anti-gay pastors hold hate rally next to gay hero David Kato’s grave

by Melanie Nathan 

Ugandan Pastors Solomon Male & Rev. Musoke are conducting an anti gay rally next door to David Kato ‘s burial grounds in Mukono Uganda to not only further persecute LGBTI Ugandans, calling for hate in the name of Christianity, but also to insult the memory of a great hero and to further the pain already felt by a mother who lost her beloved son. The pastors are accusing the Ugandan government of failing to pass the Anti-homosexuality bill, in an incoherent comment: “the bill in parliament is brought by homosexuals to fight us, fight against it. Join us against homosexuality. Gov’t has failed” is what one observer has noted in a tweet.

Male is the pastor who was recently found guilty in a Uganda court and sentenced to community service and fines along with fervently gay hating Pastors Martin Sempa, Pr Michael David Kyazze,  Pr Robert Kaira,  and others, for conspiring to tarnish the reputation and trade of Pr Robert Kayanja.

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Canada Quietly Fights Uganda's 'Kill The Gays' Bill

BY SUNNIVIE BRYDUM

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Ugandan police officers stay at the entrance of the Esella Country Hotel after police raided a gay rights workshop which was taking place in the hotel, in Kampala, on June 18, 2012. East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project, the organization behind the workshop, said that police forced their way into some activists’ hotel rooms and interrupted the meeting, questioning participants at the event, including activists from Canada, Kenya and Rwanda. Activists condemned the police action and said it represented a growing trend. The Canadian government has quietly spent more than $200,000 fighting Uganda’s so-called “Kill The Gays” bill since the nation’s parliament renewed its efforts to pass the Anti-Homosexuality Bill last November, according to Canada’s National Post.

A senior Department of Foreign Affairs official told the Post that “Canadian officials have conveyed Canada’s concerns with the bill to Uganda’s Foreign Ministry,” and confirmed that Canada is “working closely with Ugandan civil society.” Financial agreements divvying up the $200,000 among Ugandan LGBT initiatives and Kenya — where Canada’s high commissioner for Uganda is based — were signed in January, and continue through the end of March, reports the Post. 

Canadian funding is directly involved with several regional LGBT projects in Uganda, but is not being widely advertised, according to the Post. These projects reportedly include training sessions for activists in Uganda and other African nations facing similar antigay legislation, emergency kits for those who fear for their safety, and the establishment of an emergency hotline to help those LGBT Africans wishing to escape homophobic countries. Most of these programs are run by local African LGBT groups, and directly funded by Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs, reports the Post. 

Canadian government officials — including the High Commissioner to Uganda and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird — are directly involved in these initiatives, according to the Post. Baird came out harshly against the “Kill the Gays” bill at an Inter-Parliamentary Union conference in 2012 in Quebec City, which prompted Ugandan Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga’s promise that she would pass the legislation as “a Christmas gift” to Ugandans who are “demanding it.” The bill did not pass before Parliament took its winter vacation, but the Anti-Homosexuality Bill continues to linger on the parliament’s orders papers under “Business to Follow,” meaning it could come up for debate at any time. Opposition to the bill within the Ugandan parliament is almost non-existent, andUgandan LGBT activists predict that if the body votes on the bill, it will likely pass. President Yoweri Museveni has made conflicting statements about whether or not he would support the legislation.

Homosexuality is already illegal in Uganda, but the bill, which has languished in Parliament since it was first introduced in 2009, calls for the death penalty for LGBT people convicted of “aggravated homosexuality,” a broadly defined category that includes sex with a minor, sex while under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or having sex with anyone while being HIV-positive.

Gay Ugandan couple to remain in Sweden

Gay Ugandan couple to remain in Sweden

A couple who claimed to be the first Ugandan men to be legally married have learned they will be allowed to remain in Sweden after a flurry of death threats helped sway migration officials to drop a deportation order against one of them.

“It feels great. We’re so relieved that the Migration Board (Migrationsverket) finally realized the truth,” Jimmy Sserwadda told The Local.

On Thursday, Sserwadda and his husband, Ugandan national Lawrence Kaala, learned that the Migration Board had granted Kaala Swedish residency. The decision amounts to a stunning reversal for Kaala, who had previously been ordered to leave the country after his application for asylum was denied. The two had been married in late January in a church in suburban Stockholm in what is believed to be the first time that two Ugandan men had been wed in a church.

The ceremony was supposed to be a happy ending for the two men, who found themselves reunited in Sweden years after their relationship had been cut short due to persecution in Uganda. While Sserwadda had been granted asylum, Kaala learned just days before the wedding that his application had been denied. The couple scrambled to refile Kaala’s application to receive a Swedish residence permit on the basis of being married to Sserwadda, but concerns remained that Kaala would still have to return to Uganda to complete the process.

“After our story appeared in English in The Local it began to circulate in Uganda and people started making threats that we would be killed if we returned,” said Sserwadda. “I think the explosion of media attention made migration officials realize how real the danger was. He couldn’t return after being outed like that.”

In granting Kaala’s permit, the Migration Board waived the usual requirement that resident permit applications based on marriage be filed from the person’s home country.

“Lawrence will not have to go back to Uganda,” Sserwadda explained.

While he is thrilled that he will now be able to live freely in Sweden with the love of his life, Sserwadda remains critical of the handling of their case, and cases of other asylum seekers fleeing persecution for their sexual orientation.

“It’s really a lottery. Sometimes the officials involved don’t even believe you’re gay,” he said.

Sserwadda has vowed to assist LBGT asylum seekers who seek safe haven in Sweden.

UK – Theatre producer deported by Uganda for gay play vows fight to return

David Cecil - I don't feel like taking it lying down

A British theatre producer deported from Uganda after staging a play with a gay character has vowed to fight on and legally win the right to return to a country he calls home. David Cecil has been forced to leave behind everything, including his girlfriend of six years and two children aged two and one.

“That is agony, it’s tough,” he told the Guardian. “It is really upsetting for me.”

The case is tricky for Uganda. On the one hand it wants to present itself as a progressive country that would be a good place to invest; and then there is the case of Cecil, which made headlines around the world last year when he was arrested and imprisoned for staging a play called The River at the Mountain, which centres on a gay factory owner. The case was dismissed by a magistrate in January. About 10 days ago Cecil was picked up by police and detained for five nights before, on Monday, being deported to London – a move he firmly believes is political.

Cecil said he was determined to fight and return. “My life is there: my family, my work, everything. It’s a lovely country, it’s home,” he said. “It is such a brilliant place, such a cool society.”

Click the header link above to read the full article.

Anti-gay religious group gets CIDA funds to work in Uganda

TW: anti-gay rhetoric, problematic language
An evangelical organization that describes homosexuality as a perversion and a sin is receiving funding from the Government of Canada for its work in Uganda, where gays and lesbians face severe threats.An evangelical organization that describes homosexuality as a perversion and a sin is receiving funding from the Government of Canada for its work in Uganda, where gays and lesbians face severe threats. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)
 
An evangelical organization that describes homosexuality as a “perversion” and a “sin” is receiving funding from the Government of Canada for its work in Uganda, where gays and lesbians face severe threats. The federal government has denounced virulent homophobia in that East African country and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has condemned plans for an anti-gay bill that could potentially include the death penalty for homosexuals.

Nevertheless, the federal government is providing $544,813 in funding for Crossroads Christian Communications — an Ontario-based evangelical group that produces television programming — to help dig wells, build latrines and promote hygiene awareness in Uganda through 2014. Until Tuesday, the organization’s website carried a list of “sexual sins” deemed to be “perversion”: “Turning from the true and/or proper purpose of sexual intercourse; misusing or abusing it, such as in pedophilia, homosexuality and lesbianism, sadism, masochism, transvestism, and bestiality.”

Lower down the page, the group asks sinners to “repent.”

“God cares too much for you (and all of His children) to leave such tampering and spiritual abuse unpunished,” according to the group’s website.

Just hours after The Canadian Press contacted the group to ask a spokesperson about the site, the page in question disappeared from public view.

‘We will speak out on the issues that matter to Canadians — whether it is the role and treatment of women around the world, or the persecution of gays.’—Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird

The organization is being funded by the Canadian International Development Agency. Just a few days ago the Quebec government announced its desire to create its own parallel agency because it no longer supported CIDA’s policy choices. This particular funding choice may also conflict with the federal government’s own statements.

Click the header link above to read the full article.

Ugandan Parliament Reconvenes, With Lingering 'Kill The Gays' Bill

The ‘Kill The Gays’ Bill is anything but dead as Uganda’s parliament goes back to work.

BY SUNNIVIE BRYDUM

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Frank Mugisha, Executive Director of Sexual Minorities Uganda, one of the largest organizations fighting for the rights of LGBT people in that country. 

After nearly two months off and a broken promise to pass the “Kill the Gays” bill as a “Christmas gift” to Ugandans, the Ugandan Parliament reconvened this week. The odious Anti-Homosexuality Bill once again appeared on the orders papers under “Business to Follow” this week. The legislation, which does still include the death penalty for some LGBT people, was listed on Wednesday as the eighth item under business to follow, according to Box Turtle Bulletin’s Jim Burroway.

Burroway contends that means the legislation is unlikely to be heard in the immediate future, but does speculate that members of Parliament have the bill “waiting in the wings” to bring up for debate as a distraction or unifying factor in the face of other contentious, unrelated legislation. While international condemnation of the so-called Kill The Gays bill has been loud and swift, support for the bill within Uganda and inside Parliament is reportedly high and unwavering. 

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex Ugandans have taken to the streets and to new media to make their voices heard and contradict President Yoweri Museveni’s statement in a conversation with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour last year that “there is no discrimination [and] there is no persecution” of LGBTI people in Uganda. But the LGBTI Ugandans featured in an exclusive photo essay for The Advocate tell a very different story. Read about their experiences in first-hand accounts right here. 

Homosexuality is already illegal in the country and punishable by up to 14 years in prison, but the so-called Kill the Gays bill, sponsored by MP David Bahati and first introduced in 2009, would penalize: “aggravated homosexuality”— consensual same-sex acts committed by “repeat offenders,” anyone who is in a position of power, is HIV-positive, or uses intoxicating agents in the process — with capital punishment. The lesser “offense of homosexuality,” also criminalized in the bill, encompasses anyone who engages in a same-sex sexual relationship, enters into a same-sex marriage, or conspires to commit “aggravated homosexuality.”The bill also calls for three-year prison sentences for friends, family members and neighbors who do not turn in “known homosexuals” to the police. 

Roger Ross Williams: 'They Tried to Pray the Gay Away'

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BY JERRY PORTWOOD

After Roger Ross Williams read about Uganda’s contentious antigay bill, the Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker decided to travel to the developing country and explore the connection between American Evangelicals and the bill, which originally proposed a death penalty to gay people. The result is the documentary, God Loves Uganda, which will probably make you question the way you look at missionary work differently from now on.

The doc, which premiered at Sundance, has already been called the “most terrifying film of the year,” and as Williams explains in an interview on the fest’s site, there are other harrowing encounters that weren’t in the final product, including when he was outed as gay himself while interviewing subjects. 

“We didn’t talk about me being gay, but there was one hairy moment when the Ugandans found out. I was outed, so to speak, in Uganda when I was invited to dinner at the home of an antigay pastor. I was terrified…

Someone who wanted to expose me sent them an email that said I’m gay. They’d pulled an interview I’d done from the Internet. The Ugandans said, ‘We love you and we want to pray for you and cure you.’ ”

The filmmaker says that some of the Ugandans refused to believe it since they had met him and has no personal conflict with him. As he discovered, “I think a lot of the Evangelical Americans and Ugandans believe if they pray hard enough they can pray the gay away,” but since the film is about a bigger idea, Williams left these details out of the final film.

Click the header link above to watch the trailer.

CO Radio Preacher Who Supports Ugandan 'Kill the Gays' Bill Also Calls on U.S. Government to "Remove the abomination from the land" (video)

holygoddamnshitballs:

Earlier this year, we reported that Colorado pastor Dave Buehner of Generations Radio said that homosexuality will “destroy society… destroy everything,” a statement he made after likening gays to cannibals and child molesters. Today, Joe Jervis alerted us to an interview Buehner gave to Colorado Springs NBC affiliate KOAA, which reported that Buehner’s comments are “causing a national stir.”

Buehner repeated his claims about homosexuality and claimed that homosexuals should be treated like rapists and murderers. He also urged Colorado legislators to “remove homosexuals from society, saying they’ll also pay the price at the golden gates if they don’t fall in line.”

Buehner maintained: “God’s law to the civil magistrate in terms of homosexuality says you should remove the abomination from the land, so that’s God’s instruction to the people who work up in the capitol who make our laws. That’s what they’re going to be held accountable for.”

Buehner and his co-host Pastor Kevin Swanson support the Ugandan “kill the gays” bill and laws from the pilgrim era that criminalized homosexuality.

LGBT Ugandans File Suit Against Antigay American Pastor Scott Lively

The first case of its kind, Sexual Minorities Uganda v. Scott Lively seeks to hold the antigay American pastor responsible for his persecution of LGBT people in Uganda.

BY SUNNIVIE BRYDUM

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On Monday, January 7, lawyers representing Sexual Minorities Uganda will make oral arguments in a landmark case that aims to hold the American founder of Abiding Truth Ministries, Scott Lively, responsible for inciting persecution of LGBT people in Uganda. SMUG v. Scott Lively was filed in federal district court in March 2012, and alleges that the Evangelical pastor’s efforts in Uganda to equate homosexuality with the Nazis, Rwandan genocide, pedophilia and more, violate international human rights law.

The Center for Constitutional Rights is representing SMUG, and will offer oral arguments at 11 a.m. on Monday at the Federal Courthouse in Springfield, Mass. The arguments will address Lively’s motion to dismiss the case, and LGBT advocates are asking any and all supporters to attend the hearing in a show of solidarity with Uganda’s LGBT community.

The case is the first of its kind, and relies on a 200-year-old law known as the Alien Tort Statute, which gives “survivors of egregious human rights abuses, wherever committed, the right to sue the perpetrators in the United States,” according to the Center for Justice and Accountability. Following the arguments, expected to last for two hours, CCR will hold a press conference with legal counsel and Frank Mugisha, Executive Director of SMUG. The Advocate will offer follow-up coverage on the hearing. 

Uganda Drops Charges Against Gay Play Producer, David Cecil

After a recent series of cringe-worthy anti-gay incidents within its borders, Uganda has taken one step in the right direction by dropping the charges against David Cecil, the British producer behind the country’s first gay-themed play.

Click the header link above to read more.

PHOTOS: We Are Here: LGBTI in Uganda

American-born gay photographer D. David Robinson collected portraits and first-person accounts from lesbian, gay, transgender, and intersex Ugandans, then turned to The Advocate to offer these brave activists a forum to elevate their stories in their own words.

BY SUNNIVIE BRYDUM

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Photos by D. David Robinson © 2013, for use by The Advocate with this article only. All Rights Reserved. Subjects have approved use of images contained herein.

Despite taking a month-long break for the holiday on December 14, Uganda’s Parliament will once again consider the “Anti-Homosexuality Bill” when it reconvenes in 2013.

As it stands, the so-called Kill The Gays bill would prescribe the death penalty for LGBT Ugandans, “repeat offenders,” anyone who has same-sex relations with a minor, with someone who is mentally handicapped, or under the influence of drugs or alcohol. The bill demands long prison terms for those spared capital punishment, and requires friends, family, and neighbors to report any “known homosexuals” to authorities or face jail time themselves. 

But despite potential passage of the Kill The Gays bill and a hostile environment stoked to an ideological inferno by American Evangelicals proselytizing in Eastern Africa, Ugandan LGBTI people have a simple message: We are here. We are Ugandan. We will not be silenced. 

Click the header link above to read the full article and view the photos.

UGANDAN LGBTI YOUTH GROUP FOUNDER ARRESTED FOR HOMOSEXUALITY

By Melanie Nathan

Screen Shot 2012-12-16 at 5.58.38 PMWhile many of us celebrate New Years Eve, our LGBTI family around the world suffer persecution and are unable to openly celebrate with their loved ones.  Reports are coming in from Uganda that one of the founders of LGBTI group Youth on Rock Foundation, (YRF)  was arrested by police officers today and charged with crimes relating to homosexuality.  The named person is Kaweesi Joseph, who is currently, according to the reports, being held at Kawempe police station.

Frank Mugishu of SMUG  has now confirmed that  Kawesi Joseph, one of the founders of LGBTI group Youth on Rock Foundation was arrested by police officers. He is charged with “carnal knowledge (homosexuality)” and “recruiting youth into homosexuality.” We have received information that attorneys have spoken with the Kawesi and that plans are being made to try and make bail.  We will provide updates as we get them.

In the meantime it would seem to me that the police are preempting the Anti-Homosexuality Bill  (AHB) (also known as The Kill the Gays Bill) which has been introduced into this parliament and has yet to pass and the arrest may be political as anti-gay catalysts for the Bill try and drum up more support for its passage.  Although there is an existing law which people can be charged under for “carnal knowledge or defilement,” there is currently no law that speaks to the so called “recruitment” of homosexuals. While we all know such is impossible to do, the Ugandan AHB seeks to make the misnomer a crime.

If Kaweesi’s charges are pursued the facts may be difficult to prove and certainly the aspect of “recruitment” could be  thrown out by a competent court of law.

Ugandan Gay Group's Office Burgled As Bishop Claims They Don't Exist

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RollingstoneLGBT activists in Uganda had their Christmas cheer dampened by news that an unidentified vandal or vandals broke into the offices of Sexual Minorities Uganda, the African nation’s leading equality group, and stole most of their essential equipment.

Among the stolen items, as listed on their press release:

5 Desk top computers – CPUs and Flat Screens
1 water Dispenser 
One gas cooker 
One Gas cylinder 
One refrigerator 
One audio recorder 
One spy pen 
And other unidentified property.

SMUG activists are concerned that the thieves will be able to gain access to member databases on the computers, thereby jeopardizing people’s identities and safety in a country where homophobia runs rampant. It could even be used to fuel another one of Uganda’s increasingly frequent tabloid tales outing and endangering gay people. 

Meanwhile, prominent Ugandan Bishop Godfrey Makumbi from the Church of Uganda pulled a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and claimed that there’s no such thing as homosexuality in Ugandan culture. “Realistically this is not in our culture. Because our African sexual values are completely heterosexual, I personally have never seen people fancying it here,” he said.

Kill the Gays Bahati implicated in possible murder of fellow MP

by Melanie Nathan

Those of us who have kept a keen eye on Ugandan member of parliament David Bahati since 2009 when he first introduced the infamous Anti-Homosexuality Bill, otherwise known as the “Kill the Gays Bill” all believe that the man, David Bahati is quite capable of murder or that he may well be adept and capable of conspiring to commit murder.  All specualtion of course.  However and after all he did author a bill that is designed to kill gays. What would the difference be between state sanctioned murder and any other?

News of the death a week ago of outspoken Butaleja Woman MP, Cerinah Nebanda, came as a great shock to Uganda and the world.

“A few Members of Parliament have died in the past but none of them captured the country’s imagination the way this young, bubbly and courageous MP has. That can be explained by the fact that not only was she very young, aged just 24, her death was almost sudden as she was not known to be sick.,” notes ALL AFRICA.     “More so, as one of the so-called NRM “rebel MPs”, she was a very active, vocal and critical legislator, which made her stand out. “

Now according to Ugandan press, almost a week after Cerinah Nebanda’s death, David Bahati  finds himself a person of interest in the death of the young MP.

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WATCH: Ugandan Trans Man Calls Antigay Rev. Ssempa a 'Hooligan'

A transgender man appeared on Ugandan television’s Morning Breeze to talk about homosexuality, but he could barely get a word in edgewise with antigay Reverend Martin Ssempa’s vitriolic hate speech and constant interruptions.

BY SUNNIVIE BRYDUM

The Reverend Martin Ssempa, a vehemently antigay pastor in Uganda who travels the country preaching against “sodomy” byshowing pornography in churches, couldn’t show basic common courtesy to a transgender man whom he appeared with on Ugandan talk show Morning Breeze.

In the video clip from Ugandan news channel NBS, Ssempa repeatedly interrupts and shouts over Pepe Onziema, a transgender man and LGBT activist in Uganda.

As Ssempa launches into a graphic description of how he perceives that gay men and lesbians have sex — complete with the classic “exit only” defense of the anus — the preacher repeatedly interrupts and refers to Onziema as “she” and “this woman,” despite the moderator’s repeated attempts to correct and rein in the preacher, who continues his outbursts in English and Luganda.

Click the header link above to read more and watch the interview (trigger warning: NSFW, cissexism, anti-gay rhetoric).