EXPORTING HATE: How American evangelicals got Uganda to pass an LGBTQ+ death penalty
The bill prescribing the death penalty for homosexuality has passed in Uganda, after years of meddling and anti-LGBTQ propaganda from U.S. evangelicals.
Thanks to legislation signed into law in Uganda on Monday, being caught in same-sex acts can be punished by life imprisonment, and even being deemed to have “attempted” same-sex interactions can result in a 7-year prison sentence.
For acts defined as “aggravated homosexuality,” the death penalty is on the table.
The bill was passed by Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni after being returned to the legislature on its previous attempt, where a requirement to report people for same-sex acts was removed, as well as the criminalization of merely identifying as LGBTQ without engaging in sex acts — changes that do little to diminish the harm of the law but give an appearance of an attempt to make it more palatable.
This follows decades of anti-LGBTQ activism from the U.S., with evangelical organizations like the Family Life Network exporting their anti-gay views to Uganda.
One seminar disseminated over African media is titled “Exposing the Homosexuals’ Agenda,” and similar propaganda claiming falsely that LGBTQ people are ‘recruiting’ or ‘converting’ people and preying on children has also been widely circulated,
(That might sound familiar in the U.S. right now, too.) Foreign Policy reports:
“This recasting of homosexuality as akin to pedophilia, alongside the widespread use of similar language, is meant to legitimize the response and crackdown by governments and institutions. If gay people are not successfully framed as predators, then extreme measures against them could be questioned. However, the violence that LGBTQ+ people experience in Africa has been justified by these anti-gay groups through the construction of a narrative of intent by ‘them’ to target children.”
LGBTQ people are fleeing the country, and those who have already left are expressing their fear that they will never be able to safely return home, according to the Washington Post.
The efforts of evangelical organizations in the U.S. to meddle in LGBT rights in Uganda and other nations have raised concerns for years, specifically as these organizations have pushed “ex-gay” narratives to promote conversion therapy and other abusive treatment.
Between 2007 and 2020, in fact, over $54 million has been spent by these right-wing extremist groups on promoting anti-LGBTQ propaganda in Africa, with nearly half of that targeting Uganda, according to LGBTQ Nation.
