Prison, or Death

A final solution?...

Kind of melodramatic, don’t you think?

I have been accused of whining. Yes, I do whine. It serves me. I write mostly about an issue which kind of consumes me. Passionate, consumed to the point of letting logic step aside. Actually, I try to be logical in what I think… Better to know myself than think that I know myself. The struggle is NOT my life.

So, Princess accuses me of whining. And I agree that I do.

But this time I have had to step back and think, hold on, reality is actually worse than my previous expectations of what is. My country is beautiful. Very. Just looking out through the window makes me feel uplifted. Weather fantastic, the green, the climate. Day in day out, I expect these wonderful gifts of nature to unfold. No extremes of temperature. No floods where I am. Truly the Pearl of Africa.

Hitch. I am a Gay Ugandan.

That should be no big deal. I have worked through accepting myself. I live with a man who loves me. We limp on in our life. It is good. Better than most, not as good as we would like it, but it is pretty good.

So, what is bad?

At the moment, in our parliament, a bill has been introduced, targeting such as us. Me and my lover. Fellow Ugandans believe that we are beyond the pale. Immoral, bad, hopeless. The Minister of Ethics and Integrity has been complaining about how our immorality has been spreading. Especially in ‘schools’. We are a threat to something called the ‘family’. So, a bill is introduced to solve this problem.

For anyone caught doing what we do, me and my partner, as frequently as we can- for anyone who has the luck to fall into that trap, the weight of the law is uncompromising. Prison. Or Death.

We homosexuals have no place outside prison, except in the grave. At least not in Uganda. Or as Ugandans. Even if we get outside the country, the long hand of the law would pull us back. And condemn us. To prison, or death.

Our friends are supposed to report us to police within 24 hours of us coming out to them.

If anyone hosts us, he or she gets to be a guest of the state, for a short while. Those who dare ‘promote homosexuality’ by speaking positively of homosexuals. Well, prison, and a fine.

But for us homosexuals, prison, or death.

No get out of the jail card. No half measures. Life in Prison on a first conviction. Death on serial offending, (irony, we can only offend again when we are in prison!) Melodramatic and funny as this seems, these are the facts. Un-embroidered. I do have to tone them down…

I mean, looking at the bill, the intent to commit a homosexual act is also punishable like the act… If I am HIV positive and commit the act, death is the punishment…

Surely, I cannot dent the shine of the moral uprightness of this law?

I mean, I cannot whine. It is there in the black and white letters of what is soon to become law. Actually, it is more frightening in real life than when clothed in my words!!!!!

Will this be a ‘final solution’ to the ‘problem’ of homosexuality in Uganda? For the framers of the Bahati Bill, I have no doubt that that is the intention. A final solution.

Will it work?

Ugandans don’t seem to learn from simple history. Gay purges and pogroms are a part of history that has been consistent. The Dutch did it, so did the English… forcing someone like Alan Turing, and 50,000 others to undergo ‘medical castration’just in the last century. All in the name of controlling the vile vice of homosexuality.

Will Uganda succeed?

Here is to hoping that they will not.

gug