Author of Ugandan Anti-Gay Bill Fears for His Life

The Ugandan lawmaker who authored the controversial bill that would impose the death penalty for gay sex and make it a crime for people knowing abut gay relationships not to report them says that he fears for his life.

David Bahati, the member of the Ugandan parliament who wrote the bill, says that his cousin has vanished and that he has received death threats, reported a story posted at AllAfrica.com on Dec. 28. However, the article cautioned, Bahati's claims had not been authenticated.

The bill has drawn international criticism and protest, with some nations threatening to withhold aid money from Uganda if the bill is signed into law. Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni, was cited in the article as having promised to veto the bill if Parliament approves it. The bill is now in committee and will go through a period of public commentary before lawmakers move ahead with it.

The Speaker of Parliament, Edward Ssekandi, spoke of the bill in a public address on Dec. 25, saying that the bill would be subject to the same legislative process as any other bill. "In Parliament, any member is free to move a Private Member's Bill," said Ssekandi. "Since Bahati's Bill is before the Parliamentary committee, it is going to gather people's views and report back to the House."

Archbishop Lwanga Kizito has spoken out against the bill, citing existing laws that criminalize consensual intimacy between adults of the same gender. Kizito has also encouraged Christians to run for office in the upcoming election.

Another prominent cleric has spoken out to defend the law, despite his history as an opponent of the death penalty. Bishop David Zac Niringiye suggested that foreigners had little place in Uganda's internal legislative debate, saying, "Ambassadors or religious leaders serve us best by not going public, by simply relating to their individual relationships. If they have none, they have no legitimacy to speak. They should just be silent."

However, when asked about media reports that indicate that it was the influence of American religious conservatives that spurred the Ugandan government to draw up such draconian legislation, Niringiye said, "On the one hand, I have no respect for such innuendos because they are suggesting that Christians in Uganda are puppets and so forth. Are there American influences in Uganda? Yes. There is no question that there is a strong homosexual lobby supported by Western groups. That is one of the reasons for the bill.

"We [also] have influences from the Muslim world," Niringiye said. "Let's not give too much credit to the West. This is a global environment. The influences are on either side."

But Niringiye played down the influences from abroad with respect to the bill, saying, "There is a genuine Ugandan call of distaste that seeks to say, 'Our culture is under assault.' There are Ugandans who say we need to stand against a moral tide that seeks to change our ethical, moral values. The decay in Western culture is reflected in its sexual ethics.

"For me, I would like to act here in our culture. We must deal with corruption in our culture as you do in Western culture. They are not the same magnitude, but they still reflect the decay in culture. For us in Uganda, we have to ask, 'How do we act in a way that protects our culture from the decay in sexual ethics that has happened in the West?' That is the challenge for Christian mission in our context. We have a serious responsibility to nurture younger generations. We have a lot of work in our churches to fight the media wars. Media is one huge influence in the cultural decay."