Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Some Sanity...

Joachim Buwembo, writing in the East African, calls for some sanity from anti-gay mad Ugandans.

Indeed, the country is in the grips of a gay panic. First, for your information, Ssempa wants a 3 million people march on Kampala. The aim, to support this bill. Here is the text of the bill.

And, where did Ssempa plan that Million People March on Kampala? Here are his words.

Ssempa: …meat, can be another man’s poison. So they want us to eat their poison of homosexuality, we are saying no. So, we want people to show how they feel because I don’t know how they underst… so, on January 19, there’s been a task force that met, of religious leaders, and we realise it’s Christmas time, but we have to send a message, a strong message out, and we did yesterday, thanks for the coverage, but there was an agreement, people were saying, ‘no! I have to show that I support my president, that I support my Parliament, that I support my culture’, and so… on January 19, we are going to have a couple days where Ugandans are going to show how they feel about this issue of homosexuality. So, we are going to have people coming from all over the country, converging on the city, even other cities there’s going to be shows of expression of support. So, we are expecting more than 3 million people to show up that day, maybe 5… but this is, this is an issue that people feel very deeply and passionately about.



What is the aim? What will be the result? Aim is pressure on the government. Result, whip up anti-gay hysteria.
So, the call for calm seems very sober indeed.

Today, A Ugandan cannot run away from giving an opinion about homosexuality, after the national parliament was petitioned in a formal motion to prescribe draconian measures including the death penalty for the act.
Of course a penalty, whether light or maximum, presupposes a crime.
The gravity of the prescribed penalty also indicates the seriousness of the offence in relation to other offences.
So according to the framers of the Bill, a girl who prefers a girl is more dangerous to the society than officials who robbed millions of dollars meant to treat aids, malaria and tuberculosis patients in 2004. Only four of the over 100 suspects were sent to jail with light sentences.
And we are yet to see a conviction of any of the few men who stole most of the $200 million meant for the 2007 Kampala Commonwealth Heads Of Government Meeting, turning ‘Chogm’ into a vulgar world in Uganda.
But here we are, required to have an opinion on an ‘offence’ which we are neither predisposed nor qualified to understand.
In my many years of existence, I first recognised a homosexual only three years ago. I say ‘recognised’ and not ‘identified’ because I only have her claim as ‘proof’.
In a normal situation, the sane thing would be to refrain from commenting on things we do not understand.
But not when it is a matter of life and death.
The good Christians who love us to death insist they still love us. Indeed. To death.

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