Melanie Nathan – May  08, 2011- 11.50 AM.
This weekend, I issued a call for statements from LGBT organizations about the impending passage of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.  I also published and sent out a call for action yesterday.  South African organizations are starting to send out their Statements and we have agreed to publish them here on LezGetReal. Here is the first of a few that have come in and more will be published too.

Time To Hit UGANDA Hard – there is not much to lose at this point.  Some activists from within Uganda are reporting that if  the AHB makes it to  a vote it will probably pass in this current 8th Parliament. It will be heard in committee tomorrow, Monday 9th  for a second day. Parliament sessions end for 8thy Parliament on May 12, 2011.

Grassroots and LGBTI Organizations worldwide it is time to mobilize; to protest  outside buildings of prominence.  Call on President Museveni to stop LGBTI persecution through street savagery and now impending legislation.   Call on Museveni to Stop killing and torturing all Ugandans.   Do Not allow the LGBT community of Uganda to be scapegoated – that is why we must mention all oppression in Uganda when we speak of this Bill.

South Africa GLAAD is the first such organization to condemn the Uganda Government and call for Sanctions by the UN.

SA GLAAD condemns the Kill-the-Gays Bill’s new momentum.

The South African Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (SA GLAAD) condemns in the strongest possible terms the Ugandan parliamentary hearings on the Anti-homosexuality Bill of 2009.

Recently it seemed that the Bill was to be shelved and declared officially dead, but new Parliamentary hearings appear to be a fast-tracking mechanism to pass this heinous piece of legislation, whose existence is an affront to human rights values – as well as the “family values” Bahati and his associates claim to represent. The right thing to do in this case would be to permanently shelve this odious and morally reprehensible bill and to place it in a museum of Crimes Against Humanity where it could join reminders of past horrors such as the Holocaust, and the Rwandan and Baltic genocides of the 1990′s.

Mr Bahati carps that “the gays recruit our children” and considers being gay a “lifestyle choice”, thereby perpetuating what has by now become a stereotype which denotes how ignorant and out of touch with reality those are who hate some people so much that they demand they be killed for who they are, while simultaneously denying their humanity and individual worth.

Gay people do not recruit children. Mr Bahati displays his contempt for gay people by fabricating claims so absurd that any right-minded individual who has taken the trouble to read up on these topics would see right through it. There are reams of studies conducted by numerous authorities to completely disprove this insulting and totally false accusation. There is also a vast difference between pedophilia and homosexuality – pedophilia is the sexual attraction of an adult to a child and is non-consensual abuse, not a loving consenting adult relationship – and to confuse the two is to confirm to the world their ignorance and to lay bare this hate mongering propaganda for what it is.

Being gay is not a lifestyle choice as Mr Bahati claims, it never was. So much research has been conducted on this issue over the past 30 years, delivering so much substantiating evidence that only brute stupidity, willful ignorance and blatantly malicious bigotry would sound such blind judgment. The only driving force behind this bill is pure, unadulterated hatred driven by personal discomfort and religious fundamentalist fervor. Which is precisely why so much of the information and tactics employed in the Ugandan campaign is akin to the tactics employed by the likes of the Nazis.

We call on the government and parliament of Uganda to stop this legislative process before any more harm is done to the lives of the citizens of Uganda. We call on the judiciary of Uganda to stand firm against such draconian legislation. We call on the people of Uganda to hold their government to account and to demand the basic human rights of all Ugandans. The right to equality is not a privilege and sole preserve for those who happen to have been born straight.

SA GLAAD calls on the governments of the free world, including the South African government to decisively condemn this action by the Ugandan parliament. We expect South Africa to do more than talk. We expect South Africa to live up to our Constitution and to intervene and also to immediately recall the homophobic High Commissioner, Jon Qwelane – regardless of any pressure brought to bear by the Ugandan government or demagogues like Bahati or Martin Ssempe.

We call on multinational companies and South African companies to divest and withdraw from Uganda if this abhorrent legislation is passed. We understand that businesses and investors need to make money, and that South Africa clearly would like to extend our assistance to fellow African states in the spirit of ubuntu – but money made at the cost of human rights, human dignity and human lives is blood money that will stain their hands for all time.

We call for UN sanctions and the toughest measures possible to be implemented. This debate around the implementation of the state-sanctioned oppression and murder of the Pink Community in Uganda has raged now for almost 2 years with no end in sight, and little action if any taken against the country. It is time to put this issue to bed.

SA GLAAD sees the Bahati-bill for what it is, a ploy. A scapegoat mechanism to detract attention from the civil unrest currently manifesting in Uganda.

ABOUT SA GLAAD:

The South African Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation – fighting for the rights of the entire LGBTIQ community
Follow us on Twitter: @saglaad

The SA Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (SA GLAAD) is an equal civil rights advocacy group that documents and responds to homophobia and heterosexism in the South African popular media and society. Responses to defamation range from letter writing campaigns to direct action activism and protests.The goal of SA GLAAD is the elimination of anti gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and intersex bias in reporting, television and film.

Uniting the LGBTIQ community Unity in diversity An injury to one is an injury to all Silence gives consent Anything less is not equal Right Wing Watch of South Africa Fighting the reparative therapy fraud Political lobbying Protection and expansion of civil rights.

By Melanie Nathan
nathan@privatecourts.com
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