Since 2014 there been a running act and planned effort to make homosexuality illegal. The National Resistance Movement and President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni have done as a populist move to regain trust among the faithful people of the Republic. This is to galvanize the conservative Christians and Muslims.
In one of the last sessions of the 10th Parliament there was several of acts passed. One of them was the Sexual Offences Act of 2019. Where there is one stipulation and its very clear with the intent. The state is making it a crime and criminalize it.
The law now has been part of two terms, the 9th and 10th Parliament. It needed all those years to come to pass. The state just enacted at with many other things that makes sense. The rest of bill is sensible and uses common sense.
What the state have no made illegal, which is the anti-gay stipulation of the bill.
“11. Unnatural offences.
A person who-
(a) performs a sexual act with another person contrary to the
order of nature; or
(b) engages in a sexual act with an animal;
commits an offence and is liable on conviction, to imprisonment for
ten years” (Sexual Offences Bill, 2019).
That this happened wasn’t shocking. It was inevitable. Now that the President and his party done this in majority is because they know they won’t loose donor funds or anything. The state is already under fire for other political actions and electioneering of late. The NRM and Museveni knows that their standing is losing elsewhere.
That the anti-gay bill is commenced within 7 years shows the resilience and does it in the final minute of the Parliament. They are not having huge discussions or anything. It is just passed in the middle of 7 bills is one of its Final Acts of the 10th Parliament.
They have made it illegal to be gay and if someone have sex with the same gender. That will be criminalized as an unnatural offences, which can be charged with imprisonment up to ten years. They are doing it now because nobody cares and the human rights violations are already catching up. The state is already using the security organizations to apprehend the political dissidents and secure the majority for the 11th Parliament.
I’m not surprised that this happened. It was inevitable, but that its happening now makes sense. As the 10th Parliament is going out with an bang and finally showing they can pass legislation. Not only approve loans, which have been the most important part of their duties of late.
The bill has been in the progress since 2014 and was finally passed on the 3rd May 2021, Monicah Amoding who wrote this and got it into the Parliamentary Library on the 27th November 2019. It only took about 1,5 years for this to be passed. Still, there been drafted legislation for this since 2014 … and means the state awaited 7 years to make it happen.
To make it illegal to be gay is just winning over some part of the community. While taking away their freedoms and liberties. They are doing this as simple populism and cheap politics. It doesn’t cost them a thing and they have made certain sort of sexual preferences illegal. That being same-sex acts, which only can been as “unnatural offences”. This is how I see this and that’s the mere fact of it all. Now, it just awaits Presidential Ascending and it’s official law of the Republic.
It is sad, though the whole regime is delivering atrocities and horrific acts against the ones who stands in their way. So, now they just have another minority to criminalize as well. Peace.
MinBane 