Sat 23 Oct 2010 In: International News View at Wayback View at NDHA
US evangelical Christians are believed to be behind a Ugandan newspaper's outing of the first installment of what it calls "Uganda's 100 top homos" with the headline "hang them." Most of the people "outed" by Rolling Stone newspaper - which has no connection to the US culture magazine - as being gay are now targets of harassment, a human rights activist says. Activist Frank Mugisha told the BBC that one woman on the list was nearly killed when neighbors started throwing rocks at her home. Rolling Stone editor Giles Muhame says he is urging the authorities to investigate and prosecute people "recruiting children to homosexuality", before executing anyone found guilty. He also said he was acting in the public interest, saying Ugandans did not know to what extent homosexuality was "ravaging the moral fabric of our nation", and he vowed to continue to publish the names and photographs of gay Ugandans. Questioned intensely by BBC World Service radio he could offer no evidence for his allegations. US evangelicals were behind the Ugandan government's attempt last year to have homosexuality subject to the death penalty. Only concerted effort and threats by aid donor nations such as the USA and Britain convinced the prime minister to reluctantly withdraw that bill. American religious activist Scott Lively has admitted, in his own words, a “nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda.” He has publicly blamed glbt people for the 1994 Rwandan genocide, equated homosexuality with Nazism, and more generally asserted that gay people are both predators and a foreign infiltration that undermines local values. In The Guardian a gay man on the list has described the fear stemming from being outed in Uganda.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Saturday, 23rd October 2010 - 10:13pm