Myths and misconceptions from Gideon Byamugisha’s article

Reading Reverend Gideon Byamugisha’s article, a few things rubbed me the wrong way.

True, ours is a toxic environment, and his was a great call out of the pharisees in the churches, but I had to remind myself that allies are allies.
Kuchu (LGBTQ+) allies are necessary.., we are a minority. In our countries, in most of Africa, our allies literally speak for us. In many cases that is because we cannot speak on our behalf, for one reason or another.
But, they don’t necessarily truly know us.

We are a minority, however much the haters mobilise more hate by painting the farce of us ‘taking over’, or ‘turning the world homosexual’ as Archbishop Kaziimba and President Museveni believe. Sincerely held beliefs.
(Snigger, ridiculous and sad as it is, the President and Archbishop believe we homosexuals have an agenda to literally destroy the world.., in some way, and that is from their own mouths.)

Reverend Byamugisha is also a person in the Ugandan environment. He has been influenced by the lies, disinformation and myths that are peddled without challenge in Uganda. (Just like we, kuchus, internalise the homophobia in our environment).

In the first paragraph Byamugisha states

 

“Our grave challenges from some selfish homosexual practice recruiters and promoters notwithstanding…”

 

It is important to assert, again and again. We do not ‘promote’ homosexuality. We don’t need to promote what comes naturally to us. We just are. The rest is an invention of those who literally hate and tell lies about us.
In the same breath, we kuchus have to assert, we do not recruit into homosexuality. If one really thinks about it, it is a very ridiculous assertion, a BIG LIE that has taken root, especially in Uganda, promoted literally by anti-gay activists like Martin Ssempa, transplanted as is from the American Far Right. We kuchus, LGBTQ+ people, do not recruit! We don’t make people gay. We dont have an army to ‘recruit’ for. That language and the lies have only one purpose, to dehumanise and demonise kuchus, making us feared and hated by the public. To increase the prejudice against kuchus.

It infuriates me.., that the world has fallen for this false narrative of LGBTQ+ ‘recruiters and promoters’.
Byamugisha is stating what is general belief in Uganda. Homosexuals are dangerous because of ‘recruiters and promoters’. Apparently we as homosexuals have the itch to increase in some way. Thus the ‘recruiting and promoting’.

It is not only in Uganda. It is not only the ‘under-educated’ masses in Africa who believe this nonsense, though we are an easy mark. The anti-gay activists like Family Watch International (FWI), right wing proselytisers have been quite successful pushing the narrative that we kuchus of the world are ‘recruiting and promoting’ homosexuality. And of course the icing on the cake, we homosexuals are supposed to be ‘coming for your children’.

And the world believes that nonsense.

It shows a basic lack of understanding of sexuality. And an underlying desire to believe any and all evil of a stigmatised group. A willingness to suspend common sense, when the target is wrapped in ignorance, myths and there are some willing to push the big lie, in the name of religion or culture, or sovereignty…, or for whatever the reason is.

It is a lie. It is believed. And that is what is…

Yet I still wouldn’t want an ally to drop into the cesspool of thinking that we kuchus have this agenda to ‘recruit’, ‘promote’ and of course ‘come for their children’.

Yes. I know. ‘Promoting’, in the minds of anti-gay forces, especially in Uganda, means me defending myself, like I am doing in this post, debunking myths. That is what is called promoting…, and it is currently illegal in Uganda (Bite me. If that is promotion, I will promote…!). This blog is a shameless promoter of homosexuality.

Rev. Byamugisha also states

 

“Just like people living with HIV/Aids, suspected homosexuals suffer…”

 

Byamugisha has experienced first hand the stigma and prejudice of HIV/AIDS. And in his mind, the stigma and prejudice of ‘homosexuality’ in Uganda might seem similar.

I don’t think it is, though the processes might be similar in social psychology. Ultimately, HIV/AIDS is an infection. Its stigma was largely based on fear. The stigma and prejudice due to homosexuality especially in Uganda and much of Africa is different. Most people don’t realistically fear that they will become homosexual. We are a small, marginalised population which is not growing, despite the anti-gay hype. We are not going to make YOU homosexual! Most adults confident in their sexuality would not believe it so…, but, the anti-gay activists play to that fear, extensively.

HIV infection particularly affects kuchus. We then suffer a double stigma. Stigma of HIV infection and the stigma due to our sexuality.
In Uganda, at the moment, it is easier to come out as a person living with HIV. It is much, much harder to come out as kuchu. And those of us who are forced to come out would embrace being HIV positive before we embrace or come out as kuchu. That is brutal, but it is what is on the ground.

In the end, Rev Godfrey Byamugisha was very, very courageous. Calling out one’s bosses for moral failings is suicidal…, metaphorically speaking. But, he does it. And he does it on behalf of a minor, marginalised, persecuted social group, the kuchu in Uganda.

Damnation…, whenever I start cementing my belief in the evil of religion; Christian and Islam in Uganda and Africa…, there comes someone with the guts to call out my budding prejudice.
Most Christians and Moslems would lynch me, literally and metaphorically in Uganda and Africa, because of my sexuality. But, most does not mean all. There are a brave few willing to challenge the rivers of hate flowing.
Yeah, they do deserve a certain respectful notice. The Godfrey Byamugisha’s, Justin Welby and Pope Francis’ of this world. They are boulders rolling against the flow of rivers of institutionalised hate, and deserve my respect.

 

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1 Popular Ugandan, and African Parsing of Homophobia

 This is a 3 part reply to an article written by one, Mathew Otieno, a Kenyan, published on a mecatornet.com . This is Part 1.

First, I am kuchu, (LGBTQ+ Ugandan

The article was interesting. Refreshing. In Uganda, a down to earth examination of issues is hardly publishable.

Mr Otieno seems to write under the illusion that ‘what should be’, is ‘what is’, reality.
For example, he asserts that

“the New York Times, went downright colonial by trying to connect the law’s passage with the American conservative backlash against the LGBT+ agenda, laying the blame partly at the feet of organisations like Arizona-based Family Watch International, which has organised and participated in pro-family conferences in Uganda. This is rubbish”

Matter of fact, the rubbish is Mr Otieno’s assertion. The reporting might have been inconvenient, but it was accurate.

That US Arizona  group Family Watch International (FWI) was involved in the first 2014 Anti-Homosexuality Act in Uganda.

On the weekend after the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2023 was first passed by Uganda’s Parliament, FWI held a 2 day conference for African legislators in Entebbe, Uganda. Supposedly supporting African sovereignty and ‘family rights’, its focus was on its staple 3 ideological issues: anti-LGBTQ+, anti-contraception and anti-abortion; against ‘Comprehensive Sexuality Education’.
Museveni made an appearance. He was so convinced of the threat to humanity paused by homosexuality that he called on Africa to save the world.

One of the attendees, Kenyan MP Peter Kaluma left for home (Nairobi, Kenya) trumpeting on Twitter his determination to table an anti-Homosexuality bill. Indeed, he did so, the Family Protection Bill, directly reflecting FWI rhetoric, and some of the provisions, an FWI wishlist. He admitted the influence.

FWI in its Africa specialisation, talks about our ‘sovereignty’, and plays deftly on ‘western hegemony’ and the ‘LGBTQ+ agenda’. ‘Racism’ and ‘colonialism’ are always in the background, cards to play.
Frankly, they cone us. They understand, just as Mathew Otieno reacted, those are trigger points for Africans post colonialism.  They can manipulate us, and do so.  Winking and nudging they intimate that their governments are playing colonialism. We fail to ask WHY they would go against their national interests.

Reacting with knee jerk reflex like this blinds us to the obvious manipulation from the likes of FWI. And, Mr Otieno fell into the trap, angrily claiming agency, our sovereignty in the face of colonialism and racism. We are sovereign in FWI’s eyes only as long as we follow their agenda, grounded in our ignorance and prejudices, which they reinforce.

 

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Asumani Basalirwa of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2023 Fame

 

Asumani Basalirwa, Member of the Parliament of Uganda, Bugiri Municipality, in the opposition, JEEMA Party. Famous for having introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2023 to the Parliament, and he is quite invested in it. He has promised that if it is nullified, he will move it again.

He is famous. Been making the rounds, a celebratory lap of victory once the Bill became an Act. He should, he is famous. And it might be the only bill that he moves that becomes law…, after all, he is in the opposition.

Typical Ugandan legislator indeed. Though he seems to be feeling the heat, complaining that it is the press that keeps talking about the Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023.., indeed. But, he has been talking to the BBC, Radio Deutche Welle and others. He is a politician.

And a liar.
Apparently he doesn’t have any idea about the American Right Fundamentalists visit.., [he says maybe because he is a Muslim!]. Well, I am not a believer.., but I know about the Family Watch International group conference in Entebbe which hosted a chunk of his MP colleagues and the President made the appeal to Africa to save the world from homosexuality. I wasn’t there, I am not a believer.., am not in parliament. I know the conference was there. Shame, a politician indeed.

A pawn of course-
Any member of the ruling NRM would have faced Museveni’s wrath for moving without permission. Technically he didn’t need the Executive to assent. The Inter-Religious Council for Uganda needed one.

He is a very proud legislator,
again and again, he reminds one in an interview that he is a legislator. But, typical Ugandan elitism, he believes that his legislative function is in a vacuum, where he ‘legislates’ and that’s all.
He says he doesn’t need to know how many people will be saved from homosexuality by the Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2023. Oh, he also doesn’t need to know how many people need legal aid, and he is bringing a bill to that end. Dear lawyer legislator, in this day and age, even I presume you need an estimate and a budget!

This is the guy who wrote the Bill to outlaw LGBTQ+ identity and he defined and criminalised ‘homosexual touch’!!!
Oh yes, read Asumani Basalirwa’s bill. It is in the annals of Ugandan history. According to what he wrote, even identifying as ‘Gay’ was enough to earn you prison.

As for the challenges to the HIV/AIDS program,
the proud legislators answers are informative. They are all a variety of ‘its doesn’t concern me’, ‘I am not to blame’, ‘Someone else should have checked’, ‘They didn’t tell me’, As I said, he is a mighty writer of the law, in the vacuum of his considerable experience.

And, he is of the elite of Uganda.
He doesn’t really care that life prolonging treatment of HIV for One million plus Ugandans was put at risk by his actions. Oh no, he goes for treatment to India or Turkey, or Dubai…, why the hell would he have to worry about his constituents who cannot fly out of the country for treatment?
Nope. He is a legislator, he doesn’t have to worry about any planning for the projected budget shortfall because of his bill. Others should do something.

Selfish, oriented to ‘I, myself, my concerns’, and that is all that seems to concern Asumani Basalirwa… Supremely ignorant and proud of not wanting to educate himself. A politician’s shrug of the shoulder, nothing concerns him, but what concerns him directly.

What a shining example of a legislator in Uganda!
Unfortunately, he is quite a good example of most of so called ‘Ugandan Elite’. Oh, they do call themselves that.

 

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Rehabilitation of the Ugandan Homosexual Offender

 

In spite of supremely hypocritical cries of ‘blackmail’, ‘sovereignty’ etc, etc from anti-gay activists like Bahati and Ssempa, Basalirwa and others, the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023 has distinct influence from far right Anti-gay Activists from the USA. The likes of Family Watch International. Their love of ‘converting the homosexual’ crept in.

Make no mistake, my country mates are hate filled nincompoops. They are being led like sheep, all parroting the same nonsense, and not even TRYING to think through what they are doing.

But, I have to recognise the Fundamentalist Christian Right coming from the US. And their poodles in Africa, of course.

I digress.

In a ‘Christian’ show of compassion, the homosexual is given a chance to repent and convert from their evil ways. Not from outside prison, of course. Prison is the big stick to effect the ‘conversion’, in God’s Name, of course.

Where is this stated? Hold on to your seat, here is Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2023.

 

“16.  Rehabilitation of homosexual

(1)       The court may, upon convicting a person of the offence of homosexuality, order the provision of social services for purposes of rehabilitating the convicted person.

(2)       The services referred to in subsection (1) may be provided by the prisons service or by a probation, social and welfare officer or of the area where the convicted person is serving his or her sentence.”

 

I think this was a darling pet pevee of the current Primate of the Anglican Church. He has been frothing at the mouth, trying to prove to the broken Anglican communion that he is the most Anti-Homosexual of all the GASCON group, the Anglicans defecting from the Church of England’s Communion.

I am informed his mates were kind of worried about his bloodthirstiness in advocating for Death and Prison to the homosexual. So, some sort of ‘rehabilitation.’

Notice; it is involuntary. It is in prison. Court orders it.

What else are they going to order? A reminder of the horrors that have passed for Homosexual Conversion therapy in the past.

“These so-called therapies, which are known to be performed in more than 60 countries, include counselling (some with verbal abuse and humiliation), prayers, psychiatric medications, hormone injections, aversion therapies where nausea-inducing medications are given alongside presentation of homoerotic stimuli, and application of electric shock to the brain, or to the hands and genitals. Other methods include exorcism, ritual cleansing through beating the patient, force-feeding or food deprivation, forced nudity, solitary confinement, hypnosis, and “corrective” rape.

Besides lack of medical and scientific validity, so-called conversion therapy has potentially harmful physical and psychological consequences. It is inhuman, cruel, degrading and completely unjustifiable “treatment” that has absolutely no place in the ethical practice of medicine, or in Christian life or civilised society in general.”

Truly, a fervent prayer. The gods, all the gods help the LGBTQ+ Ugandan caught in the net of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2023.
Society, the religions, the state have all teemed up to make sure you are straight. The deities have mercy on your sanity.

 

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Kenya’s ‘Family Protection’ Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Parliament

Kenyan MP George Kaluma journeyed to Uganda for that conference. The conference where Ms Sharon Slater schooled Africans on matters of African sovereignty, and Traditional Family Values. [Doesn’t it seem funny that someone needs to come from Arizona, US to school these poor Africans leaders about matters of family and African sovereignty?]

Pull back a second and wonder…, but, it is a matter of fact that the people who listened to the ‘Family Watch International’ came fired up. They came energised as foot soldiers to come and protect the ‘Family’ and assert our ‘Sovereignty’ which apparently are threatened. The Americans had given a passionate presentation!

Last week, Mr Kaluma went ahead and translated his lessons into action, the practical results the ‘Family Protection Bill’, which was offered up to the consideration of the Kenyan Parliament. The language in the bill is very familiar, but, it goes a step further. It is Family Watch International propaganda, undigested. American right stuff, which shouldn’t be out of place in so called ‘Bathroom bills’ in Florida and other states. Any American following their politics will be surprised at this language appearing in a bill in an African country.

“bill also seeks to ban Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) in pre-primary, primary and secondary schools education programmes. He avers that the content teaches children masturbation, Abortion on demand parental information or consent, pornography, homosexuality, and LGBTQ and that they are trapped in the wrong body.
The bill if passed will uphold the prior rights of parents and guardians to their children’s education.”

That, that was a ‘copy and paste’ operation. That is in the bill that is currently in the Parliament of the Republic of Kenya.

This begs the question, has nobody talked to these willing pawns about what is happening? In Uganda, Dr Sylvia Tamale and Nicolas Opio seemed quite aware of what was happening. Check their comments in the Guardian about the conference on ‘Sovereignty and Family’, Of course, if you have any somewhat positive attitude to kuchus in our countries, then everything that you say is tainted. But still….! Dr Tamale called it a mix of ‘manipulative organisers and gullible participants’, and MP Kaluma proves her point. He took what was ‘taught’ by rote, copied and pasted it into his brain, and from thence into a bill for the National Parliament!

Talk of gullible participants. My own president was convinced that Africa was needed to save the world from homosexuality of course!

MP Kaluma’s ‘Family Protection Bill’ of course has the Family Watch International staple on anti-LGBTQ propaganda and presumed actions.

“It will also criminalize the promotion, recruitment, and funding of homosexuality and LGBTQ behavior.
defines “sex” as the biological state of being male or female observed and assigned at birth.
The MP also wants the state to limit rights to assembly, demonstration, association, expression, belief, privacy, and employment in childcare institutions in respect of homosexual convicts. The bill further prohibits adoption by homosexuals”

Wow, talk of a ‘hate bill’ all dressed up as ‘protection of the family’, for our ‘traditional values’

Most of this stuff is well presented in the Southern Poverty Law report on Family Watch International. No wonder they label FWI a hate group. But, it is more that a hate group. It is a group of proselytizing fanatics determined to bring their vision of America to Africa. They have been suffering series of defeats in the US. In Uganda, Kenya and the rest of Africa, when they dress up issues as ‘Family Values’, ‘Traditional Values’, ‘Sovereignty’ and other catch phrases, our politicians lap it up, not actually having an understanding of what they are hearing. The cultural imperialism is camouflaged, blamed on we, African kuchus, while the real imperialist cozen with our leaders, political and religious.

 

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