Brody's Scribbles... 450,000 Signature Avaaz Petition Against Kill The Gays Bill Massively Ignored By Uganda

By Tim Trent (Devon, UK) Mar 30 | It was always going to be ignored. Quite a lot of it is the fault of The British Empire, we can't lay the blame completely at the feet of the asinine US fundamentalist christians who went to Uganda to encourage the idiot David Bahati to create this evil bill. We created the first legislation that outlawed homosexuality there, in our colony. We set the initial agenda. 

Today I received a newsletter from Avaaz telling me what happened when the petition was delivered: 

[Avaaz] delivered, with church leaders and human rights activists, a 450,000-strong petition to the Speaker of Uganda's parliament in an hour-long meeting, in an unprecedented show of public opposition to a proposed law that would sentence gay Ugandans to death.

And the news was covered in several places. Avaaz contrasted two. First, the BBC:

BBC East Africa correspondent Will Ross says the fact that the vast majority of the signatures were from outside Uganda is significant, as the MPs would be more likely to take notice of Ugandan rather than international opposition to the bill. 

He says Uganda, like many African countries, is deeply conservative and Ugandan voices opposed to the bill are few and far between.

(The second paragraph above is the most important.)

Next, the second story is from the Daily Monitor. Significant in it: 

The Speaker [of the Ugandan Parliament] said: "We cannot withdraw the Bill at this stage; it’s already a property of Parliament and MPs on the committee to handle this will give an opportunity to all the sides and a report will be presented for debate."

He added: "It’s perfectly okay to express dissent. Otherwise to accept or to reject this Bill will be decided by Parliament. A lot of time is going to be given to the committee to study and scrutinise this Bill and all your views will be discussed in detail." 

Yeah, right. In other words it's going to go through despite global opposition. And a genocidal event will be created. They could have withdrawn it, of course they could, but they chose not to. And now they are using 'process' as an excuse to push this evil bill through their parliament. 

There's still time. Each individual voice can make a difference. So sign he petition still, write to your elected representative if you haven't done so yet, and by all means at your disposal, oppose this evil bill!