海角大神

As Uganda鈥檚 parliament begins discussions once more on an antihomosexuality bill, the Ugandan minister of ethics has accompanied police to shut down a workshop in Entebbe for gay rights activists and to arrest its organizer.

During the raid of the workshop, organized by Freedom and Roam Uganda, Ethics Minister Simon Lokodo told participants to leave or he would order the police to use force.

Public assembly of gay people is not a crime under Ugandan law, although homosexuality itself is. Bans against homosexuality in Uganda, and in many other countries of Africa, go back as far as the British colonial government, which was guided heavily on social issues by 海角大神 missionaries. A few African countries, such as South Africa, have stripped away colonial-era prohibitions against homosexuality, but other countries, such as Uganda, are working in the opposite direction, adding heavier penalties to the laws that currently exist.

The current antihomosexuality bill under consideration would impose the death penalty for 鈥渁ggravated homosexuality鈥� committed by 鈥渟erial offenders.鈥� The bill made its first appearance in 2009, but was withdrawn last year after significant pressure from donor nations such as the United States, Britain and Sweden. President Obama called the bill 鈥渙dious.鈥�

Amnesty International condemned the raid of the gay-rights workshop and called on the Ugandan government to 鈥渆nd its outrageous harassment of people involved in lawful activities.鈥�

In its raid, the Ugandan government attempted to arrest the workshop鈥檚 organizer, Kasha Jacqueline Nabagasera, a prominent gay-rights activist. Her name was among those of other gay-rights activists named in an Oct. 2, 2010, Ugandan tabloid newspaper exposing 鈥淯ganda鈥檚 top homos.鈥� The article called for the 100 named gay activists to be hanged. One of those activists, David Kato, was subsequently bludgeoned to death at home in what some consider to be a hate crime.

There is some speculation that the Ugandan debate over homosexuality is largely an extension of an American evangelical push over cultural values and faith. The anti-gay bill, proposed by parliamentarian David Bahati, came into being shortly after the visit by three prominent American evangelicals at a workshop on confronting homosexuality in 2009. Uganda is also the country that dozens of more conservative American Episcopalian congregations have shifted their allegiances to after the more liberal Church of England allowed the ordination of women and gay people as priests.

But Rev. Scott Lively, who, along with two other American preachers, spoke with the Ugandan parliament about homosexuality in 2009, told National Public Radio that he was merely asked to give background on homosexuality in America, and had nothing to do with the anti-gay bill that his visit supposedly inspired.