Uganda is a small African nation surrounded by several countries and a famous body of water, Lake Victoria. When the world hears about Uganda, it's usually for a bad reason: a crazy dictator, an epidemic, a jungle warlord with an army of glue-sniffing children. The latest bad news from Uganda is that, last month, President Yoweri Museveni signed the Anti-Homosexuality Act, which criminalized being gay. Not only that—the act went as far as to make it illegal for a Ugandan citizen to be involved in a homosexual relationship outside of the country. If he/she is caught, he/she will be extradited and punished. The whole law should be nothing but a bad joke, but the parliament that drafted the act, and the president who signed it, and the people on the street who support it, are not fucking around. They mean business. They want to "kill the gays" (as the act was initially called). But what is really going on here? Why is something as ridiculous as this piece of legislation a fact of life for millions of Africans? I will answer this question in a moment, but first I want to explain my position as a black African who lives in a city that has a gay mayor.
True, I did not vote for this mayor, Ed Murray, but not because he is gay. I didn't vote for him because I thought his opponent in the 2013 election was more progressive. I have no problem with the mayor being gay, and I also have gay bosses, gay bartenders, and the rest of it. I'm heterosexual to the max (admittedly I kissed a guy once, a roommate, but found I did not like it). I was raised by heterosexual parents, and I spent my sexually formative years in black Africa, Zimbabwe. Yet not once in my time back home and here in Seattle have I ever felt that homosexuality is unnatural or that gays work nonstop to bend straight people to their dark and devious ways.
