‘Kill the gays’ bill killed again

The Ugandan Government has finally thrown out the controversial Anti-Homosexuality Bill on the advice of National Resistance Movement party lawyer Adolf Mwesige.

The decision to throw out the Anti-Homosexuality Bill was made at a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday where Mwesige, told ministers that the Bill was unnecessary as there were already laws on the books criminalising homosexual acts.

“We agreed that government should search the law archives and get some of the laws, enforce them rather than having another new piece of legislation,” a source from within the Cabinet told Uganda’s Daily Monitor newspaper.

“[Mwesige] said the Bill is overtaken by events and that donors and other sections of the public were not comfortable [with it].”

The bill sought to criminalise entering into or participation in a same-sex marriage, and virtually any depiction of, advocacy for, or support for gays and lesbians.

The bill also sought to punish same-sex sexual activity with life imprisonment, and repeat offenders and sexually active HIV positive gays and lesbians with the death penalty regardless of whether they practiced safe sex.

However the bill’s author, David Bahati MP, believes the bill could still be passed by a majority vote by the Parliament.