Brody's Notes... Ugandan Bill Condemned By The White House

Photo By Brody Levesque

By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) Dec 12 | In a statement issued late yesterday by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs in direct response to ADVOCATE.com senior White House correspondent Kerry Eleveld's query, regarding the Obama Administration's position on the pending "Anti-Gay" legislation, Gibbs is quoted as saying:

"The President strongly opposes efforts, such as the draft law pending in Uganda, that would criminalize homosexuality and move against the tide of history."

In the past few weeks, there has been an outpouring of world-wide condemnation including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who reportedly met with Uganda President Yoweri Museveni face to face at the recent Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and denounced the proposed Anti-Homosexuality Act.

U. S. Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton had said in remarks made during her speech on World Aids Day last week,

"We have to stand against any efforts to marginalize and criminalize and penalize members of the LGBT community worldwide." 

However, Secretary Clinton did not specifically mention the Uganda measure which left some LGBT activists angry as to what was being perceived as indifference on the part of the administration.

Prominent North Carolina journalist and blogger Pam Spaulding in her op-ed today said this,

"Seriously, this is a step that the White House and the President needed to take a long time ago. It's one thing to leave condemnation of this kind of action to your Secretary of State -- you don't wait until the hate is so obvious, even to some Republicans (and Rick Warren) before you speak out on this human rights issue, particularly as a "fierce advocate" for LGBT rights.

Cynically speaking, the tardiness and timing of this appropriate response almost makes you believe there was a target level of opposition to this bill that needed to be reached before the President's statement would be deemed not a political risk.

However meaningful this statement may be, a real test of this President related to human rights in Uganda would be to call for a halt to aid until the institutionalized homophobia is stopped. After all, our taxes are going to fund bigotry."

In the blogosphere a heated and concerted campaign to oppose and prevent this legislation's passage, had created such an outpouring of world-wide condemnation, it caused ultra-conservative anti-gay minister Rick Warren to issue a recorded-televised statement denouncing it late yesterday. Warren had attracted the ire of activists due to his high profile visits and friendship with Uganda government ministers and fellow religious leaders, with whom he had made several anti-gay statements.

Eleveld also reported that in an op-ed published Friday by Jim Burroway, editor of the LGBT News Analysis website 'Box Turtle Bulletin,' the tide of opinion world-wide expressing extreme disapproval has apparently affected the thinking of at least one senior Ugandan official, a confident to President Museveni. Burroway writes that,

"This is not the sort of column one would expect to find in the Ugandan government-owned New Vision. It’s by John Nagenda, a senior advisor to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. After the usual paragraphs to establish his personal disdain for all things gay (this is something of a ritual in Uganda for anyone who is about to say something remotely positive for LGBT people)"

According to Burroway, Nagenda states:

"And that is where same-sex lovers’ haters will do their nut! The recent month I was away a parliamentarian introduced a Bill of hugely draconian measure, including heavy penalties on those who wouldn’t report same-sex lovers they knew about! In the US there was a man whose name, McCarthy, is now a synonym (as mccarthyism) for cruel witch-hunting. For him Communism was the hot issue, although he would doubtless have looked at same-sex love as a product of that political system.In the Inquisition period, evil prelates tortured people who deviated from current beliefs, including by saying the world was not flat but round! Now we all laugh about these odd characters. Lower down the scale, people were tortured for being left-handed (indeed called sinister for it) or being very short, or being blind: in short for not being normal. I believe, and I am raising the bar, that we must laugh at this MP and others like him: laugh and stay sane. What crime have same-sex lovers committed, per se, by being who they are? Would those who believe God made mankind exclude them, and on what grounds?" [ Full Op-Ed here ]