African news. Ugandan MP’s passed an anti-homosexuality bill that imposes the death penalty or imprisonment for anyone engaging or identifying as any part of the LGBTQ+ spectrum.
The legislation, which is supposed to be forwarded and approved by the president, will also call for life in prison for anyone engaging in gay sex and is meant to stifle the LGBTQ+ community’s advancements in this front.
According to nytimes, the law, which was passed late on Tuesday night after more than seven hours of discussion and amendments, calls for a life sentence for anyone engaging in gay sex. Even attempting to have same-sex relations would be met with a seven-year prison term.
The death penalty would be applied to people convicted of ‘aggravated homosexuality’, a sweeping term defined in the law as homosexual acts committed by anyone infected with H.I.V. or involving children, disabled people or anyone drugged against their will.
The legislation passed by the Ugandan Parliament yesterday, known as the Anti-Homosexuality Act, is appalling and abhorrent – no one, nowhere, should have to live in fear because of who they are or whom they love. We strongly urge Ugandan lawmakers to reconsider this legislation. Justin Trudeau – Prime Minister, Canada
Who is a affected by the Ugandan LGBTQ law?
A person commits the offence of homosexuality if the person holds out as a lesbian, gay, transgender, a queer or any other orientation.’
Kenyan news anchor reporting for CNN Larry Madowo said, ‘this is one of the most strict anti-gay laws in Africa and probably anywhere else in the world… the law will also criminalise gay sex, gay adverts and anyone identifying as gay, queer, transgender etc’.
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The law will also subject law breakers to a penalty of up to approximately euros 246,383 on entity convicted of promoting homosexuality. People under 18 who are convicted of engaging in homosexual acts face up to three years in prison with a period of ‘rehabilitation’.
Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni has been a proud pusher of anti-gay monologues where he has in the past called LGBTQ+ members ‘deviants’ and now the decision to ostracise members of the community lays in his hands.
This Uganda LGBTQ law comes in the wake of several African countries like Kenya, Ghana and Zambia debating anti-gay policies and discrimination. Kenya’s Supreme court ruled that the gay community were banned from registering a rights organisation and that gay sex was to remain illegal.
The judges ruled three-to-two that the country’s NGO board was wrong to stop the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (NGLHRC) from registering in 2013.
In their judgement, the judges ruled that “it would be unconstitutional to limit the right to associate, through denial of registration of an association, purely on the basis of the sexual orientation of the applicants” wrote BBC.
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