The gay agenda has become a tagline to veil genocides, hate
Noah Mirembe
What you need to know:
- Medical missionaries in the 1908 colonial era heatedly debated the causes of the alarming epidemic of syphilis. Among these causes, dear reader, was a now familiar tale blending religious (role of Christianity), moral (shifting cultural norms), and medical (access to healthcare services within the Protectorate) causal factors.
News of the recently tabled Anti-Homosexuality Bill, 2023 sprang across all the corners of the globe as weeks of state-sanctioned prejudice riled a stream of bile hatred targeting people known or perceived to express gender diversity or sexual fluidity.
Painters refurbishing a playground in Entebbe Municipality had recently encountered the shifting tide around the spectre of homosexuality in Uganda. A beautifully painted sphere-shaped tower was quickly repainted from the splendid rainbow to a ghoulish blend of supposedly sexually neutered colour.
Seeing the remodelled painting, one would easily find that the only evident neutering happened to our imagination. The paint is still offended from the outcome.
Soon thereafter, health care workers (and now by extension healthcare providers of varying degrees) find themselves bound in a socio-medical debate that goes back to long before this nation became a country.
Medical missionaries in the 1908 colonial era heatedly debated the causes of the alarming epidemic of syphilis. Among these causes, dear reader, was a now familiar tale blending religious (role of Christianity), moral (shifting cultural norms), and medical (access to healthcare services within the Protectorate) causal factors. Religion, too, as you can already tell, remains a major driver of these interventions. With ownership over a significant portion of primary and secondary schools, it is not surprising to observe how schools have emerged as a battle ground to curb sexual abuse. But as poor man’s freedom fighter Daniel Kalinaki wrote in his column last week, ‘Uganda has a sex crime problem, but gays are just easy scapegoats’. That article is enlightening on this debate and is worth more public discussion.
When it comes to the prevalence of sexual violence in Uganda, present protagonists in the religious camp fail to mention that the average victim (survivor?) of sexual crimes are young women and girls often which the assailant is a known member of our communities. This is who we all ought to be relentlessly rallying for.
Gays and lesbians, too, are victims of various sexual crimes. Most of these crimes are unreported because victims are almost always assured of further victimisation by those who now so vehemently speak against sexual deviance.
There is nothing more deviant than non-consensual sexual conduct. There is no such thing as consensual sexual conduct between an adult and a minor, no matter the gender of the parties involved.
The gay agenda has become a tagline to veil genocides and currents of hate amidst the already fragile society that is Uganda. Yet the recent decade has finally revealed what the gay agenda in Uganda really is.
With a list of at least 26 legally registered organisations that provide services to various segments of society including self-identified or perceived members of LGBTQ community, the public has a clear insight into what this movement is about.
LGBTQ people in Uganda organise ‘to collaborate with government bodies to increase access to health services for all’, they organise ‘to ensure that ordinary communities have input to government decisions that impact their wellbeing’ (including allocation of resources), they ‘conduct human rights awareness sessions and provide legal aid to indigent and marginalised populations’, and ‘bring together every person of good will without distinction to look for solutions to problems faced by several members of marginalised communities’.
If you have been awake, living in Uganda, it is easy to see why a demand for such things threatens those who are meant to provide answers to these questions.
If nothing else, may this insurrection awaken us to the dystopian reality in which we find ourselves. Rather than meet the pressing needs within our communities, our leaders would rally around the proposition that there just simply isn’t enough dignity to go around.
Instead, we must fight over it, wedging away those who are least worthy of partaking the crumbs of freedom that have left. Indeed, in a country like ours, it is easier to fight against something, than it is to fight for something.
Noah Mirembe is a trans* person and a member of the Uganda Law Society.
