The Biden Administration is calling out Uganda over its anti-LGBT law. This is bonkers

Mathew Otieno

June 16, 2023 5 Reactions

This is rubbish. Like it or not, anti-homosexual sentiments are stable and deeply-rooted in many African societies. The fact that they retained colonial-era proscriptions so long after independence, and even attempted to create new laws, as Uganda did in 2014, proves that.

Western conservative organisations might participate in African debates on the topic, but they are hardly the main sources of opinion, nor even the instigators of the anti-homosexuality sentiment prevalent on the continent. To portray them as such is not only silly, but also denies that Africans have the agency to decide what they believe -- which is the definition of racism, by the way.

But the media have not been alone in their babble. The president of the United States threatened various actions in response to the bill, including potentially withdrawing Uganda from the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which is critical to Uganda’s ongoing fight against HIV.

Once again, this is silly. The homosexual community is one of the biggest victims of the HIV epidemic, even in Uganda. To withdraw PEPFAR would perhaps punish the Ugandan government, but it would hurt homosexual Ugandans the most. It would be a Pyrrhic victory for the American government. PEPFAR has worked because it has largely avoided partisan politics; now is not the time to politicise it.

The US also threatened to withdraw the Peace Corps, a programme that dates back to the Kennedy administration which places American professional volunteers in multiple countries to help out in education and health sectors and to promote global peace and cooperation. The rationale for withdrawing them from Uganda would be that LGBT+ volunteers in Uganda might be in danger.

Once again, this is much ado about nothing. The Peace Corps’s Uganda office already has guidance on its website for how LGBTQIA+ volunteers should conduct themselves, including such common-sense advice as: “for safety and security reasons, [LGBTQIA+] Volunteers are asked not to disclose their identity [and] to refrain from discussing the topic with community members…”

In any case, no sensible LGBT person would even consider serving as a volunteer in Uganda. That would be not only reckless on the part of the American government, but also hubristic on the part of the concerned volunteer.

Mr Museveni is a repulsive skunk. Since 1986, he has ruled Uganda as his personal fiefdom. He has rigged elections; he has harassed, jailed and murdered his opponents; he has weakened parliament and the judiciary; he has muzzled the media; he has backed rebels in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In short, he has presided over one of the most perfidious regimes in the world.

If the United States were sincere, it would have sanctioned Uganda a long time ago. Yet, for 37 years, Musuveni has had the backing of the United States government. It has had no qualms about cooperating with him, supplying him with development aid and using his military to fight jihadists and to keep the peace in several warzones.

American objections to a law against the sexual activity of a vanishingly small number of Ugandans, a law which will almost certainly never be enforced, are bonkers.

The only explanation for this absurd response to an absurd law is that the Biden Administration has been captured by the LGBT lobby.

Mathew Otieno is a Kenyan writer, blogger and a dilettante farmer. Until 2022, he was a research communications coordinator at a university in Nairobi, Kenya. He now lives in rural western Kenya, near the shores of Lake Victoria, from where he's pursuing a career as a full-time writer while concluding his dissertation for a master's degree. His first novel is due out this year.