Kill The Bill

I have great respect for GLBTI pastors and ministers - and straight clerics, who support their faith's central ethos of love, peace and tolerance - surely they have to bite their tongues a lot! I doubt I could manage it, but then as an activist I am not expected to.

From The Squeak To The Tail

Have you seen the Uganda issue is finally making the news in SA? Finally? After more than a month of international protests and campaigning by human rights bodies? A month and a half? A month and a half of a complete mainstream news blackout?

Three whole mentions on 5fm news this past Friday morning, plus an enjoyable and lengthy rant on the topic by DJ Gareth Cliff - in the Mail & Guardian and one tiny paragraph I found buried somewhere in the middle of the Herald. What continues to upset me is the broad lack of interest in SA. No official comment, no acknowledgment of objections or petitions and no protests either. Over in the US and UK groups are calling for protest action - and gathering outside Ugandan embassies. That's right, people actually pitch up when you call a protest over there. I have to wonder how many people would turn up for a protest in SA anyway with all the pervasive apathy? Past experience tends to make me cautious.

A Purpose-Driven Genocide

Uganda!

Finally this news breaks on SA media. Well it's about bloody time! And I do mean bloody. Another article also made it into the mainstream media, this time in the Citizen. I still have to gauge the SA public response to it, but I have an idea there will be quite a few comments in favor of the bill coming from the whack-jobs and wing-nuts.

It seems to me that current events in Uganda influenced by the US religious right are in fact no more than a virulent symptom of problems at home - that these things being said and used by proponents of this "Bill" and the genocide it would ignite, in fact have their origins in the backward deep south "bible belt" of the country most people naively think of as the most liberal and democratic place on Earth. Why would I say this? Let's take a look:

Overturning Democracy

More than fifteen years after the New (New, new, new etc) South Africa and the inception of our visionary Constitution, conservative (and invariably religious fundamentalist) groups and political parties who bitterly oppose any civil rights for GLBTIQ people, still complain about the fact that such decisions which have far-reaching consequences for minority groups, were not put to a popular vote. Some of these groups have increasingly made it very clear that they intend to pursue means to overturn these rights.

To their minds, democracy is just a numbers game, and the weight of numbers automatically makes something right just because it has been voted on. Does it?

'Tis A Cold Light That Dawns

Is love a "habit"? Is love not as vital to human beings as the air we breathe?

Some people call the links to articles I provide in arguments against bigotry and against the use of religion as a tool to oppress people and as an agent of hypocrisy, "trying to justify" my views on human sexuality and gender and even religion.

Situation Normal

I think it is telling that those supporting the Ugandan Genocide Bill make references to sources those of us in the activism game for some time easily recognize and can dismiss as either "cranks" and wildly inaccurate, or "hostile" and overtly malicious. 

On the two now internationally infamous Facebook hate groups where people are openly supporting their country's "leadership" of the international community in the surprisingly related fields of gay and human rights, they try to discredit something their sources cannot disprove by just quoting people and studies which cannot verify anything at all - "studies" performed by people who just want to create the impression that being GLBTI is not natural so they can claim that it is somehow a "choice". 

This of course - if left unchallenged, gives them a visible advantage over those who oppose this travesty of justice called the Ugandan Genocide Bill - and that is the purpose behind this confrontation - to challenge them, their Bill, their hatred, and their ignorance.

Frog Soup

I must admit I find it disturbing that a man who dodged going to trial to face 180 charges of corruption to become president of SA - and because of the violent behavior, rioting and threats of his supporters, and who opposes gay rights - has been chosen as "best President in Africa", despite only being in the post for 6 months and impressing everyone with his charms, despite having no formal education and having not actually achieved anything since election day.

A Conversation With Death

For a few days now, debates have been raging on groups on Facebook which support the genocide bill of Uganda. There is much to-ing and fro-ing, with each side presenting its arguments, and each in general criticizing the other.

The administrator of one of these groups came onto the scene to suggest that this support for the Gay Genocide Bill - I call it that because that's is in effect exactly what it is - is because of the "culture" the Ugandan people "believe in" and "you cant fault them because you too have a culture". He also suggested that it is always better for people "to talk" than not to talk. I agree with this second part, because when people stop talking, well - that's when wars happen.

I can fault them, actually - for institutionalized mass murder is not a "culture", it is an affront to civilization - and arguably, God as well.

Waiter, There's A Bigot In My Soup

Setting the scene:

Two new groups have been created on Facebook. Just days old, their numbers have swelled to in the thousands. The topic? The newly proposed anti-gay bill that has been submitted in Uganda. Far from being populated with outraged citizens criticizing this slap in the face to human rights, they are filled with it's supporters, small-minded near-illiterates crying for blood and if anything, by their obtuse rhetoric, confirming the claims that the US religious right have been influencing Uganda for over a decade. And has Facebook removed these hate groups? Nope. Still there - but at least the hate-mongers are getting plastered and the people they oppress are getting some value for their money for a long needed change. Watch them squirm. But even so...

Uganda is on the verge of a state-sponsored genocide on GLBTI people - and Facebook allows such groups to exist?

Diamonds And Glass

At this stage the new Ugandan Bill condemning GLBTI people to death has not been passed yet. I say GLBTI because the very same bill makes it very clear that there will be no distinguishing between any "attempts to legitimize homosexuality" by using the different terms in our collective community. Thus, as far as the Ugandan Bill is concerned, we are all "homosexual" - giving chilling affirmation to my plea for all GLBTI to stop their bickering and in-fighting, and to seek unity as one group, one community - because that is how our enemies see us.

By Their Fruits Shall You Know Them

The draft "Anti-Homosexuality Bill" was tabled in Uganda's parliament on 14 October 2009, and has been slated world-wide by human rights groups concerned for the well-being of gay and transgender people in Uganda. If passed, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill will violate the internationally recognized human right to non-discrimination, to be free from violence and harassment, the right to life, the right to be free from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and freedom of movement.

Fear & Loathing In Uganda

On Friday, news came to me that I didn’t like to see. What was it, you may wonder? It seems that a year after Uganda passed a new law to make criminals out of gay people, they are debating an upgrade to this law that will give them far greater power over the private lives of their own people, including the authority to murder people simply for who they are.

The Anti Homosexuality Bill ensures virtual complete authority of the Ugandan government over what people are, think, say, feel or do, where or why they do it, or who they do it with - or who knows about it and doesn't tell. It goes further to make people who do not act against gay people in a hostile fashion, criminals as well. It in effect makes being born gay, or not thinking the same way bigots do, a very, very dangerous fate indeed.

This obscene and outrageously inhuman law gives flesh to the bones of the meaning behind the saying: “People shouldn’t be afraid of their governments – governments should be afraid of their people.” Reading the wording of the proposed Bill, I cannot stress the irony behind this strongly enough.

Let’s take a look inside this monstrous device: