Uganda pushes severe anti-gay legislation

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

UPDATED BELOW.

It's Uganda. So, honestly, what do you expect?

Still, I'm all for the leaders of the Commonwealth, which happen to be far more liberal countries, doing all they can to pressure that severely repressive country to rethink its move to adopt such appalling legislation:

Britain and Canada protested yesterday over a proposed law that would result in gays in Uganda being imprisoned for life or even executed.

Gordon Brown followed Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister, in telling Uganda that the legislation was unacceptable.

Mr Brown made his views plain in a breakfast conversation with President Museveni of Uganda on the margins of the Commonwealth summit.

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The Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 is going through Uganda’s Parliament after receiving its first reading last month.

According to Clause 2 of the Bill, a person who is convicted of gay sex is liable to life imprisonment. But if that person is also HIV positive the penalty — under the heading "aggravated homosexuality" — is death.

The Bill has not been endorsed by the Ugandan government but it has allowed it to proceed, and some top officials are said to have praised it.

A Canadian government spokesman said: "If adopted, a Bill further criminalising homosexuality would constitute a significant step backwards for the protection of human rights in Uganda."

I'd say that's an understatement.

I understand that a country -- and especially a liberal democratic country in the West -- ought to be careful not to meddle too much in the domestic affairs of another country. While we may desire that other countries respect, and enshrine in law, the same values we do, there is something to be said for promoting diversity -- and for respecting the particularism of other countries. One could argue, for example, that the U.S. itself did not, under Bush, respect the values of other liberal democratic countries, and one should appreciate the fact that other countries do not necessarily see our values as worthy of emulation, let alone as universal. In other words, who is to say? Besides, pushing our values on non-Western countries can come across as, and may well be, bullying, arrogant self-righteousness. And when it comes to Africa especially, it can come across as neo-colonialism.

And yet.

There is no defending Uganda here even if you accept this argument, which I address here only to show that what Uganda is doing is well across the line.

Canada and Britain are right to make their views known, and I would encourage them, their Commonwealth partners, and all decent counties around the world to do what they can to pressure Uganda to back down.

Freedom and human rights are worth fighting for, after all, and sometimes you just have to meddle in defence of basic principles, of your own fundamental values, if they are to have any meaning at all.

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UPDATE: Pensito Review provides context, noting that "The Family" (aka The Fellowship), the extremist theocratic group that includes high-ranking Republicans like Mark Sanford and John Ensign (and that runs the infamous C Street House in Washington), is behind the legislation in Uganda. Indeed, it was a member of "The Family" who introduced the bill in the Ugandan Parliament.

Make sure to read the Pensito Review's full post, which includes comments from Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.

It's telling that a major force behind the Republican Party, and American conservatism generally, backs such appalling legislation. These people seem to have more in common with Uganda, Saudi Arabia, and other such illiberal places that they do with their own country and its liberal democratic principles. But then, for all their pro-American jingoism, they're actually quite un-American in terms of what they would like to do to America, and to the world, which is to remake it in the image of their own fundamentalism, including at the expense of basic human rights.