THE PASSING OF THE ANTI-HOMOSEXUALITY BILL 2013 PRESS STATEMENT BY THE GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL AND TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY

23RD DECEMBER 2013 KAMPALA, UGANDA. BACKGROUND: On Friday 20th December 2013, the Parliament of Uganda decided to unwisely pass the long contested Anti-Homosexuality Bill that was introduced in October 2009 by Hon David Bahati as a private member's bill. The grounds on which we have always contested this bill are that it is blatantly unconstitutional, is against international human rights standards, is redundant for the most part, and would wreak havoc on the fight against HIV/AIDS and other public health priorities in Uganda. Furthermore, that it would be used to strip ordinary Ugandans of their freedoms and rights. However despite our protests, the bill was passed by Parliament and is awaiting President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni to sign it into law. We call on the President to reject discrimination and reject this Act. HARSH REALITIES OF THE NEW ANTI-HOMOSEXUALITY ACT. This is A smokescreen to divert focus away from issues of national and political concern and importance. Freedom of knowledge, speech, association, assembly, expression will all be curtailed as result of this Act. Social scientist, medical and psychological researchers, academicians, health practitioners, teachers, and counselors will not be able to freely research on or even discuss the topic of homosexuality unless in a biased way. HIV prevalence is higher among gay men and other men who have sex with men, and they face widespread lack of access to prevention and treatment services. Uganda cannot tackle its AIDS crisis without an expanded investment in men who have sex with menbut those efforts would be criminal under this Act. Human rights organizations that attempt to defend the rights of ALL Ugandans as stipulated in the Ugandan constitution will be understood as promoting homosexuality and will therefore be de registered and its workforce rendered jobless and purposeless. Government and private health sector attempts at curbing the increase in HIV infections and in curbing deaths due to AIDS will all be rendered useless because health practitioners, researchers and funders of the health sector will all be criminalized once they mention gay people as beneficiaries of their services. This will inevitably drive them underground and it will become near impossible to ever know or help the most at risk groups among which fall men who have sex with men and women who have sex with women. The law will be misused for blackmail, extortion, political malice, career ruining, and general rivalry because it will become easier to accuse people of being homosexual because they have never married, are not in any heterosexual relationship by choice or condition, or because they share a room or a house with a friend or relative of the same sex.

The Anti-Homosexuality Act will enable the state to interfere with your very intimate private life, expose you to public shaming and ridicule as a parent/friend/sister/brother to a known gay person, bring strife in families, and lead to the psychological torture and even suicide of persons born and raised hiding feelings of same sex attraction because they will be criminalized and socially outcast. CONCLUSION: Being gay is not a curse, a shame, or a condition. It is part of the natural diversity in which God created living things. There are animal species apart from humans, where homosexual behavior has been observed. Gay people are not against procreation. Gay people can procreate if they choose to but not all people were meant to procreate. That is why we have people who have never had any biological children of their own and who we choose to stigmatize and call mugumba. There are also people who choose not to procreate. Gay people are not any more likely to be child molesters, rapists, or defilers, wholly infected with HIV than the general populationcontrary to what Ugandans have been led to be believe. Gay people are just as able to be the above things as heterosexual people are. As the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender family, we stand against these vices but we affirm our right to be who we are in terms of our attractions, love, sexuality, and gender identity. Just as you are capable of love and sexual feelings, so are we, only that ours are for the same sex or both. We are asking, not for much, but to be set free to contribute to Uganda as responsible citizens in our various capacities as doctors, lawyers, engineers, social workers, economists, lecturers, ministers, farmers, carpenters, parliamentarians, servicemen/women in the army, pilots, businessmen and women, without criminalizing us. The constitution of Uganda guarantees Human rights for everyone, even homosexuals. We do not recruit children into homosexuality, for parliament to pass this bill and declare war on homosexuals basing on unfounded beliefs is unacceptable. Only criminalize us if: We rape We defile We molest a child We harass sexually But do not criminalize us when we fall in love or have mutual, consented, adult relations and sex. Thank you. Press Contacts Kasha Jacqueline Tel:+256772463161 Email: jnkasha@gmail.com Pepe J Onziema Tel: +256772370674 Email: onziema@gmail.com