The President of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, has finally bowed to pressure and signed the controversial anti-gay bill into law on February 24, 2014, Monday, which allows life sentence to gays, lesbians.
This decision caused big attention of both local media and the international community.
One
of the first to react was President Obama, who described the adopted
anti-gay law as “a step backwards for all the Ugandans,” expressed fear
that the bilateral relations between two countries may suffer.
The leader of Uganda replied almost immediately, defended his stance on the issue of homosexuals.
Read the full message below:
I
have seen the statement President Obama of the USA made in reaction to
my statement that I was going to sign the anti-homosexual Bill, which I
made at Kyankwanzi.
Before
I react to Obama’s statement, let me, again, put on record my views on
the issue of homosexuals (ebitiingwa, bisiyaga in some of our dialects).
Right from the beginning of this debate, my views were as follows: Cut...
1)
I agreed with the MPs and almost all Ugandans that promotion of
homosexuality in Uganda must be criminalized or rather should continue
to be criminalized because the British had already done that;
2)
those who agreed to become homosexuals for mercenary reasons
(prostitutes) should be harshly punished as should those who paid them
to be homosexual prostitutes; and
3)
exhibitionism of homosexual behaviour must be punished because, in this
part of the world, it is forbidden to publicly exhibit any sexual
conduct (kissing, etc) even for heterosexuals; if I kissed my wife of 41
years in public, I would lose elections in Uganda.
The
only point I disagreed on with some of the Members of Parliament (MPs)
and other Ugandans was on the persons I thought were born homosexual.
According to the casual observations, there are rare deviations in
nature from the normal. You witness cases like albinos (nyamagoye),
barren women or men (enguumba), epa (breastless women) etc.
I,
therefore, thought that similarly there were people that were born with
the disorientation of being attracted to the same sex. That is why I
thought that it was wrong to punish somebody on account of being born
abnormal. That is why I refused to sign the Bill and, instead, referred
it to our Party (the NRM) to debate it again.
In
the meantime, I sought for scientific opinions on this matter. I am
grateful to Ms. Kerry Kennedy of the USA who sent me opinions by
scientists from the USA saying that there could be some indications that
homosexuality could be congenital. In our conference, I put these
opinions to our scientists from the Department of Genetics, the School
of Medicine and the Ministry of Health.
Their
unanimous conclusion was that homosexuality, contrary to my earlier
thinking, was behavioural and not genetic. It was learnt and could be
unlearnt. I told them to put their signatures to that conclusion which
they did. That is why I declared my intention to sign the Bill, which I
will do.
I have now
received their signed document, which says there is no single gene that
has been traced to cause homosexuality. What I want them to clarify is
whether a combination of genes can cause anybody to be homosexual. Then
my task will be finished and I will sign the Bill.
After
my statement to that effect which was quoted widely around the world, I
got reactions from some friends from outside Africa. Statements like:
“it is a matter of choice” or “whom they love” which President Obama
repeated in his statement would be most furiously rejected by almost the
entirety of our people.
It
cannot be a matter of choice for a man to behave like a woman or
vice-versa. The argument I had pushed was that there could be people who
are born like that or “who they are”, according to President Obama’s
statement. I, therefore, encourage the US government to help us by
working with our scientists to study whether, indeed, there are people
who are born homosexual. When that is proved, we can review this
legislation.
I would
be among those who will spearhead that effort. That is why I had refused
to sign the Bill until my premise was knocked down by the position of
our Scientists. I would like to discourage the USA government from
taking the line that passing this law will “complicate our valued
relationship” with the USA as President Obama said. Countries and
societies should relate with each other on the basis of mutual respect
and independence in decision making.
“Valued
relationship” cannot be sustainably maintained by one Society being
subservient to another society. There are myriad acts the societies in
the West do that we frown on or even detest. We, however, never comment
on those acts or make them preconditions for working with the West.
Africans
do not seek to impose their views on anybody. We do not want anybody to
impose their views on us. This very debate was provoked by Western
groups who come to our schools and try to recruit children into
homosexuality. It is better to limit the damage rather than exacerbate
it.
I thank everybody.
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