Guest Post: "Moral Conflicts & Liberty: Gay Persecution In Uganda & How They Can Be Liberated" by F. Mwine

The following paper was sent to me by Francis Mwine Mubwaro, a LGBT activist from Uganda, with a request to repost it on my blog.

I am honored to oblige, and it is with utmost respect and admiration that I share this document here:

TITLE OF SESSION: MORAL CONFLICTS AND LIBERTY: GAY PERSECUTION IN UGANDA AND HOW THEY CAN BE LIBERATED.

PRESENTER: FRANCIS MWINE

This paper is published under the responsibility of Krysler Thematic and think tank group, where the presenter is the founding member and Chairperson, affiliated to Twagalane Association.

Comments on this paper are invited.

Please contact the author and presenter at EMAIL: frankmwine22@yahoo.com 

Uganda Again Set To Pass 'Kill The Gays Bill' - Followed by Nigeria

What can I say about this, folks - except "I told you so"? 

I've warned about it since I first started this activist blog, after all. 

Free Hate Kills

You believe in freedom of speech, don't you? How about freedom of religion? You believe in that? I know I do. But every so often there are people who come along demanding that some forms of freedom of speech or expression of their religious beliefs are actually "hate speech" - like those nasty deviants and trolls, the homosexuals. Know what I mean? 

No?

Well let me tell you. A few years ago Uganda (yes - that Uganda, the little country in central Africa that most people in the Western world need to look for on a map to see that it is an actual place and not some fictional setting in a novel or a suburb somewhere in Soweto) started cleaning house and tidying up all the loose ends. 

It's A Small World, After All

When Uganda recently tabled its Bill which would effectively have instituted the death penalty for homosexuality and a pink genocide, many countries applied great pressure to Uganda to drop the Bill. So far this Bill has been put on hold, yet in Uganda gay people still face an existing law which prescribes a 14-year prison term simply for being gay - just as in Malawi and several other former colonial African countries.

Malawi has just this week rewarded a gay couple with the maximum prison term for loving each other - 14 years of hard labor, a potential - and even likely death sentence in such a prison. The world has begun to apply pressure on Malawi too because of this outrageous human rights abuse, but the question remains - how much pressure will they apply, and what will happen if Malawi doesn't budge?

Tick Tock

As some of you may have heard by now, Media24 - the former employer of South Africa's new Ambassador (excuse, me - "High Commissioner") to Uganda - is challenging the constitutionality of section 10 of Act 4 of 2000.

Portent Pending

Unlike quite a lot of people - and in what is practically an entire industry set up around the idea of telling people how "God" wants them to live their lives - I am not qualified to say what God wants - or what God says - and I don't believe anybody else is either. 

 

In fact, all I know is what I feel and what I want and what I need - that is what it is to be human and mortal - and fallible, isn't it? Some people, I think, would do well to realize this and put down their sharpened books, get off their lofty pedestals and stop waving their fingers down at us, as though they are somehow special and have a hot line to any god at all.

There is a disturbing trend developing in parts of the modern world, to connect good morals (called "morality") and Christianity, as if people who are not fundamentalist Christians are somehow automatically exempted from being people of good moral character. 

 

Feminists, even when Christian, are described as "backsliding" or "misled" simply because they believe, somewhat controversially - that women are or should be treated as equal to their male counterparts - and thus disagree with the Patriarchy, which had appointed itself - somewhat arrogantly and presumptuously, as a middle-man between humanity and the divine.

Jacob, Jacob, Wherefore Art Thou?

Why has President Zuma of South Africa, who visited Uganda for a few days this past week, not condemned the Ugandan Genocide Bill?

The bill in question, which is still being debated in the Ugandan Parliament and - if passed, will condemn millions of innocent Ugandans to death simply for being born gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex - and simply for being a favorite scapegoat and target for the hatred of an increasingly virulent homophobic agenda in Uganda. This legislation will also effectively turn many heterosexual people into criminals just for not reporting the existence of GLBTI colleagues, parishioners, neighbors, clients, family and friends to the authorities and for "harboring criminals".