Box Turtle Bulletin

The real purpose of Uganda’s Kill the Gays bill

As we have noted here many times, homosexuality is already illegal in Uganda. And though the most odious of its several vile clauses would allow for the execution of gay people who have sex twice in their lives, it is unlikely that the primary purpose of this bill was to enact wholesale genocide on gay people. As we have noted, this bill would make it very easy to exact punishment or revenge on political opponents or others whose only connection to homosexuality is an accusation; but that too probably did not motivate the bill.

Rather, I think, this bill shares its purpose with other bills proposed both in Africa and around the world – including the referendums to be on the ballot in North Carolina and Minnesota to ban marriage equality; it is an effort to hold back, or at least delay, a change in social beliefs and values.

Neither Uganda’s Rep. Bahati nor North Carolina’s Sen. Brunstetter want kill gay people, necessarily, or even incarcerate them for the rest of their lives. In fact, neither of these men probably care much at all about ‘the act of homosexuality’; what someone does in their bedroom in secret doesn’t really much interest anyone else. But Bahati and Brunstetter do very much care about what that person – and society around them – believes about homosexuality. Refusing to see homosexuality as vile is the real offense and it is towards that offense that these restrictions are driven. (AFP)

Bahati said the bill was now focused on stopping the promotion of gay rights, and retains a proposal to criminalise public discussion of homosexuality with a heavy prison sentence.

It is not sex that is the crime, it’s disagreeing. The feared act is not using one’s penis in a way that they find objectionable, rather it’s daring to do so without feeling shame or suffering rejection.

Both Bahati and Brunstetter see a future that is coming in which their values are rejected and gay people are treated with the same respect as heterosexual people. And both hope that by acting quickly – before public sentiment turns against them – that they can establish or further entrench official rejection of gay people. While the provisions are dissimilar – imprisonment is not in the same universe as denying marriage rights – the motivation and the purpose are the same. What Rep. Bahati and Sen. Brunstetter want is a world, a society, a culture in which all people agree with them that homosexuality is inherently bad.

Sadly for them, neither of these legislative efforts will hold back the social change that is coming.

Anyone Can Be Gay

Uganda’s proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill has been re-introduced into Parliament and is currently in the hands of the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee. As the Committee considers what to do with the bill, there has been considerable confusion over what would happen if the bill were to become law. Most of the attention has focused on the bill’s death penalty provision, but even if it were removed, the bill’s other seventeen clauses would still represent a barbaric regression for Uganda’s human rights record. In this series, we will examine the original text of bill’s eighteen clauses to uncover exactly what it includes in its present form.

To begin our examination, let’s skip past the introductory material and go directly to the first clause of the bill:

1. Interpretation.

In this Act. unless the context otherwise requires –

“authority” means having power and control over other people because of your knowledge and official position; and shall include a person who exercises religious. political, economic or social authority;

“bisexual” means a person who is sexually attracted to both males and females;

“child” means a person below the age of 18 years:

“currency point” has the value assigned to it in the Schedule to this Act;

“disability” means a substantial limitation of daily life activities caused by physical. mental or sensory impairment and environment barriers resulting in limited participation;

“felony” means an offence which is declared by law to be a felony or if not declared to be a misdemeanor is punishable without proof of previous conviction, with death or with imprisonment for 3 years or more.;

“gay”” means a male person who engages in sexual intimacy with another person of the same sex;

“‘gender”” means male or female;

“HIV” means the Human Immunodeficiency Virus;

“homosexual”‘ means a person who engages or attempts to engage in same gender sexual activity;

“homosexuality”‘ means same gender or same sex sexual acts;

“lesbian” means a female who engages in sexual intimacy with another female;

“Minister'” means the Minister responsible for ethics and integrity;

“misdemeanor” means an offence which is not a felony;

“serial offender” means a person who has previous convictions of the offence of homosexuality or related offences;

“sexual act” includes –

(a) physical sexual activity that does not necessarily culminate in intercourse and may include the touching of another’s breast, vagina, penis or anus:

(b) stimulation or penetration of a vagina or mouth or anus or any part of the body of any person, however slight by a sexual organ;

(c) the unlawful use of any object or organ by a person on another person’s sexual organ or anus or mouth;

“sexual organ” means a vagina, penis or any artificial sexual contraption;

“touching” includes touching—

(a) with any part of the body;

(b) with anything else;

(c) through anything;

and in particular includes touching amounting to penetration of any sexual organ. anus or mouth.

“victim” includes a person who is involved in homosexual activities against his or her will.

These definitions may seem innocous as they stand alone, but as we go through the bill, I want you to keep them in mind because they have the effect of broadening the bill far beyond the scope that most people would assume. To see how this works, we only have to go into the second clause which specifies “the offence of homosexuality”:

2. The offence of homosexuality.
(1) A person commits the offence of homosexuality if-

(a) he penetrates the anus or mouth of another person of the same sex with his penis or any other sexual contraption;

(b) he or she uses any object or sexual contraption to penetrate or stimulate sexual organ of a person of the same sex;

(c) he or she touches another person with the intention of committing the act of homosexuality.

(2) A person who commits an offence under this section shall be liable on conviction to imprisonment for life.

It should be noted that Ugandan law already provides lifetime imprisonment under § 145 of the Penal Code, which reads:

Any person who— (a) has carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature; (b) has carnal knowledge of an animal; or (c) permits a male person to have carnal knowledge of him or her against the order of nature, commits an offence and is liable to imprisonment for life.

The phrase “against the order of nature” has been interpreted throughout the English-speaking world as including homosexuality. But because the British Colonial-era law which Uganda inherited doesn’t provide precise definitions, it has been common practice to require evidence of penetration (for men) or direct genital contact in order to prove an individual’s guilt under this law.

But the new definitions provided by the proposed legislation would greatly open the possibility for conviction to just about anyone who has simply bumped into or brushed up against an accuser with an axe to grind. Look again at Clause 2, 1.c. A person, under this clause, can be sent to a Ugandan prison for life for merely “touching” someone, which under the definition provided under the first clause which includes touching “any part of the body” “with anything else” (a finger? a foot? a ten foot pole?) “through anything.” All of which means that someone can “commit homosexuality” even if they are fully clothed and there is no actual skin-to-skin contact. All that is required is “touching” with the perceived “intention” of committing the act of homosexuality, and that act, in turn, is defined as any same-sex “sexual act”, which itself is broadened so as to “not necessarily culminate in intercourse.”

Ugandan anti-gay activists (and Ugandan police) have previously complained that Ugandan law currently makes conviction of homosexuality difficult. The wording on this bill obviously lowers the bar considerably. Just about anyone can be accused of committing a homosexual act without actually, you know, committing anything close to a homosexual act.

With the bar thus lowered, it will conceivably be very difficult for anyone who is falsely accused of being gay — one can easily imagine rival politicians, business owners and pastors falling prey to such accusations — of proving their innocence. With these two clauses alone, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill already poses grave dangers for virtually anyone in Uganda who has ever acquired an enemy. And to think we still have sixteen clauses to go.

Clause By Clause With Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill:
Clauses 1 and 2: Anybody Can Be Gay.
Clause 3: Anyone Can Be “Liable To Suffer Death”
Clause 4: Anyone Can “Attempt to Commit Homosexuality”
Clauses 5 and 6: Anyone Can Be A Victim (And Get Out Of Jail Free If You Act Fast)
Clauses 7 and 14: Anyone Can “Aid And Abet”
Clauses 8 to 10: A Handy Menu For “Victims” To Choose From
Clauses 11, 14, 16 and 17: Nowhere To Run, Nowhere To Hide
Clause 12: Till Life Imprisonment Do You Part
Clause 13: The Silencing of the Lambs
Clause 14: The Requirement Isn’t Only To Report Gay People To Police. It’s To Report Everyone.
Clauses 15 and 19: The Establishment Clauses For The Ugandan Inquisition

The Daily Agenda for Monday, February 13

TODAY’S AGENDA:
New Jersey Senate To Vote on Marriage Equality: Trenton, NJ. The New Jersey Senate is scheduled to vote on a bill providing marriage equality for same-sex couples this afternoon. The session begins at twelve noon, but it’s unclear when the marriage bill itself will be brought to a vote. The New Jersey House is expected to vote on the measure Thursday. Republican Gov. Chris Christie has vowed to veto the bill when it reaches his desk.

Washington Governor to Sign Marriage Equality Bill: Olympia, WA. Gov. Chris Cregoire is expected to sign a bill into law making marriage equality the law of the land today. Her signature, however, doesn’t mean that gay c0uples can begin taking out marriage licenses right away. The bill would take effect June 7, ninety days after the end of the legislative session. But if opponents can gather at least 120,577 signatures by June 6, they can block the law from taking effect and place the issue on the ballot in November. Anti-gay opponents of marriage vow to do just that. And as luck (or planning) would have it, GOP presidential candidate Sen. Rick Santorum will be campaigning in Olympia and Tacoma today as Gov. Greguire signs the bill.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

The Daily Agenda for Sunday, February 12

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Celebrations This Weekend: Whistler Ski Week, Whistler, BC.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Premiere of “Making Love”: 1982. Starring Michael Ontkean, Charlie’s Angels star Kate Jackson, and Harry Hamlin, Making Love opened in theaters as the first mainstream film to tackle homosexuality in a nonjudgemental way. That’s not to say that the story wasn’t without drama when Zach (Ontkean) and Claire (Jackson) dealt with a crumbling marriage as Zach struggled to deal with his attractions to other men. When he meets gay novelist Bart McGuire (Hamlin), their professional relationship (Zach was a doctor, Bart a patient who was in for a check-up) turned into a lunch date, then a dinner date, and then a full-fledged relationship, which over time, ends in a divorce for Zach and Claire. Claire handles the news badly, but over time comes to understand that gay people can live happy lives.The film’s happily-ever-after ending had the feel of a made-for-TV movie which critics hated. Gay critics, however, were overjoyed that the film was a positive portrayal where the gay characters didn’t all die in the end.

In real life however, the film demonstrated one significant difficulty in making mainstream movies about gay men: it seemed to confirm the fear that taking such a role would be career killers. Tom Berenger, Michael Douglas, Harrison Ford, William Hurt and Peter Strauss were all approached to play Zach; they all turned the role down. After the film’s release Ontkean and Hamlin had trouble living the film down. Hamlin’s promising career stalled for the next four years until he landed a role in NBC’s L.A. Law. Ontkean meanwhile tried to prevent clips of his role from appearing in Vito Russo’s 1996 documentary The Celluloid Closet.

SF Mayor Grants Same-Sex Marriages: 2004. It was a stunning announcement when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom declared that the California Constitution’s equal protection clause gave him the authority to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Between February 12 and March 11, 2004, an estimated 4,000 joyous couples lined up at City Hall to take part in what was quickly dubbed “The Winter of Love.” But the weddings came to an abrupt halt when the California Supreme Court declared that the mayor lacked the authority to bypass state law. All of those marriage licenses were voided, and same-sex marriage would remain unavailable until 2008 when the state Supreme Court found that “equal respect and dignity” of marriage is a “basic civil right” for all couples in California, gay or straight. That finding was overturned by Prop 8 in 2008, which itself was ruled unconstitutional in 2010. That ruling was upheld by a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last week. But a stay against the resumption of marriages remains while the case continues to wind its way through the appeals process, a process which may not end until the case reaches the U.S. Supreme Court.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

NOM Commits Sodomy

I mean genuine sodomy, as described in the Bible:

Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy.

Arrogance? The National Organization for Marriage takes legal action to ensure the entire country abides by their personal religious belief that our relationships our inferior to theirs. Yeah, they got arrogance.

Abundant food? NOM pulls in $10 million a year and pays their top staff 6-figure salaries. That’s a lotta bread.

Careless ease? Well, they do work hard, but they work hard to make sure gay folks don’t get married — in other words, to make sure people do nothing.

Not helping the poor and needy? NOM hampers our ability to provide health insurance for our partners and kids. Furthermore, they don’t care. In fact, Maggie’s even crusaded against private employers offering domestic partner benefits. And if that’s not convincing enough, I’ll refer you to this video I made a while back.

My verdict? NOM is an arrogant and wealthy group that does harm to those in need.

Sounds like sodomy to me. I’d love to see someone call Maggie Gallagher or Tony Perkins a sodomite on one those cable news debates. And by the way, what was God’s punishment for that sin?

The Daily Agenda for Saturday, February 11

TODAY’S AGENDA:
World Premiere of “Call Me Kuchu”: Berlin, Germany. “Kuchu” is the word LGBT Ugandans use to call themselves, although some think it is derogatory. Sort of like “queer” elsewhere. And as with “queer,” “kuchu” is an all-encompassing term which embraces all of the Ls, Gs, Bs, Ts, and everything inbetween. Hence the title of the documentary premiering today at the Berlin International Film Festival. Call Me Kuchu “explores a community that is at once persecuted and consoled by the Christian faith, and examines the astounding courage and determination required not only to battle an oppressive government, but also to maintain religious conviction in the face of the contradicting rhetoric of a powerful national church.”

The film follows veteran LGBT advocate David Kato as he works to prevent Uganda’s proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill from becoming law. The film shows his own struggles against a vicious public vigilante campaign marking him for death, and a rare legal victory for gay Ugandans against that campaign — just three weeks before Kato’s brutal murder in his home. It the film is one tenth as intense as its trailer, it is a powerful documentary indeed. Call Me Kuchu premieres today at 5:00 p.m. at CineStar 7, Potsdamer Straße 4, 10785 Berlin. There is a another screening tomorrow and Monday.

Celebrations This Weekend: Belgian LGBT Film Festival, Brussels, Belgium; Regenbogenball (Rainbow Ball), Vienna, Austria; Whistler Ski Week, Whistler, BC.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

The Daily Agenda for Friday, February 10

TODAY’S AGENDA (Ours):
Celebrations This Weekend: Belgian LGBT Film Festival, Brussels, Belgium; Regenbogenball (Rainbow Ball), Vienna, Austria; Whistler Ski Week, Whistler, BC.

TODAY’S AGENDA (Theirs):
Journey Into Manhood Weekend: London, England. Well now this will certainly be interesting: British men from the land of the stiff upper lip going into the woods to bare their souls with each other and indulge in a few cuddling sessions — all on the premise that that will make them straight! But that’s what’s happening this weekend. Built on the theory that all gay men really want is to connect with their fathers, Journey Into Manhood is a hodge-podge of psychobabble and Richard Cohen-style cuddling in the wilderness designed to caress the gay right out of them poofters. That’s the premise anyway. When Ted Cox, a straight journalist, went undercover for a JIM weekend in Arizona, he found that during one of those cuddling sessions, well…

I don’t remember exactly when I felt his erection pressing into my back. It might have been while he whispered in my ear, “Long ago, you were the Golden Child. But, somehow, that Golden Child was hurt, and you put up a wall to protect yourself.”

…I sat on the floor between the outstretched legs of a camp guide, my head leaning back against his shoulder. The guide sat behind me, his arms wrapped around my chest. This hold was called “The Motorcycle.” Five men surrounded the two of us, their hands resting gently on my arms, legs and chest.

And for all of that and US$650, JIM claims a 79% success rate. Well okay then. If that’s success, sign me up. But hold on a minute. One of JIM’s life coaches, Alan Downing, was accused by two of his clients of inappropriate behavior and sexual impropriety. A staffer at an Arizona JIM weekend was none other than Lee Caleb Brundidge, one of the three American extremists who travelled to Kampala in 2009 to host the explosive ex-gay conference that set the stage for the proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill. I think you get the picture. The manly-man’s he-man butchout and cuddle camp starts today at an undisclosed location somewhere in southern England, and goes on through Sunday. Matching boots and belts are strongly discouraged.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

Again anti-gays blindly and gleefully shoot themselves in the foot

Anti-gay activists in Virginia are dancing with delight. They stood up to Teh HomoSEXshull Agenduh and showed them librulls that they don’t cotton to Teh Ghey so much in the Old Dominion State. The Virginia Senate Republicans, who have a strong majority in that red red state, just passed a bill allowing adoption agencies to deny access to gay couples or individuals on religious grounds.

Except, of course, they couldn’t just say “No gays! We hate ’em” so they couched their bill in language of “religious freedom”. And in their arrogance, they never stopped to consider how else this bill could be used. Look at the wording:

No private child-placing agency shall be required to consider or consent to any placement of a child for foster care or adoption when the proposed placement would conflict with the religious tenets of any sponsor of the agency or other organization or institution with which the child-placing agency is affiliated or associated. The Commissioner shall not deny an application for an initial license or renewal of a license or revoke the license of a private child-placing agency solely on the grounds that the agency has refused to consider or consent to any placement of a child for foster care or adoption in such cases. Refusal of a private child-placing agency to consider or consent to any placement of a child pursuant to this section shall not form the basis of any claim for damages. [emphasis added]

Now I’m sure that all those good ol’ Southern Baptist boys thought that this gave them the power to discriminate. It did. And further more, with the people’s money. Praise Jesus*

But it also empowered others to find that certain cultural views are repressive and dangerous to children and that their faith prohibits the exposure of children to that element. For example, Quakers may find that military families are unfit based on their religious beliefs. Atheists affiliated with an established freethinkers organization could point to the tenets of their organization and decide that church goers rely on superstition and bronze age notions that hinder a child’s development. And we know that Mormons will be automatically disqualified from most taxpayer-funded but church-administered adoption or fostering programs.

The funny thing about religious beliefs is that everyone has them. Some firmly believe in a structured and pageanted theology, some firmly believe that deities are nonsense, and some believe they have no idea and couldn’t care less. And no matter what you believe, there’s a church or organization for you. If your entire faith system consists of nothing more than “I hate those people over there”, I promise you that you can find others who agree and who will happily join together, form a church, and say that God told them so.

Only a pack of fools would look at that reality and decide that the widely ranging, vastly differing, and often irrational beliefs and rules about a subject which is, by its very nature, unknowable is the basis on which adoption and fostering policy would be based.

And let’s be real. Who works in the child advocacy field, anyway? Sure, there are a few good family-first quote Leviticus fire-brands, but it’s mostly a bunch of bleeding heart liberals. And you know, you just know, that the real losers in this deal are going to be the idiots who just voted for the thing.

* (The risen and gone to Heaven with nothing left to say about it Jesus, that is. Not the Love your Neighbor Jesus; he said things that are embarrassing and we try not to quote him too much).

Rep. Walsh leads with her heart

During the marriage debate, State Representative Maureen Walsh (R – 16th) said that she doesn’t wax eloquently but she is guided by her heart and her mind. And as you’ll see, that can be very powerful.

Advocate, WaPo, AP Get it Wrong On Anti-Homosexuality Bill

Why oh why can’t the mainstream media — or even the LGBT media — get this one right? Here’s the Advocate:

The measure was originally introduced in 2009 by David Bahati and called for same-sex sexual activity to be punishable with the death penalty or life imprisonment. Bahati reintroduced the bill on Tuesday without the death penalty provision, according to the AP, but left life imprisonment in as the maximum sentence for what he calls “aggravated homosexuality.”

And here’s the Associated Press (via Washington Post):

Bahati now says he has rewritten the bill to remove the death penalty provision, leaving life imprisonment as the maximum sentence for what he calls “aggravated homosexuality.”

This follows a similar false report from the BBC which claimed the same thing. The BBC has since made a slight modification to their report (which still carries the false headline “Uganda MP revives anti-gay bill but drops death penalty”) which now tells the real story:

Mr Bahati told the BBC’s Joshua Mmali in the capital, Kampala, that for procedural reasons, the bill had been reintroduced in its original form but that the provision for capital punishment would be removed at committee stage. [Emphasis added.]

The original form, which includes the death penalty, is here. As for the “committee stage”, the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee recommended a sly change to the bill. They recomended removing the explicit language calling for “death by hanging,” and replacing it with a reference to the penalties provided in an unrelated already existing law. That law however specifies the death penalty. Which means that the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee recommended that the death penalty be retained through stealth. Bahati then went on to claim that the death penalty was removed even though it was still a part of the bill.

The bill currently is back in the hands of the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee, the same committee that attempted that sleight of hand trick last May.

Bahati has proven himself an excellent spinner, and writers reporting on the Anti-Homosexuality Bill have consistently failed to verify his words. Until they do, Bahati’s false statements will continue to be presented as though they were facts, and it will be the work of others to demonstrate again that his statements are manifestly untrue. Maybe someday writers for news outlets will begin to behave as journalists and not stenographers. But that day has not arrived.

Uganda Executive, Parliament Tussle Over Anti-Homosexuality Bill

The Uganda Media Centre, which serves as something of a press office for Uganda President Yoweri Museveni, has issued a statement distancing itself from the Anti-Homosexuality Bill which was reintroduced into Parliament this week.

ANTI-HOMOSEXUAL BILL

***Wednesday 8th February 2012***17:00 hour
***No Embargo***
RESPONSE TO INTERNATIONAL CRITICISM OF DEBATE ON ANTI-HOMOSEXUAL BILL.

Uganda has today been the subject of mass international criticism as a result of the debate on the Anti-Homosexual Bill at parliament. What many of these critics fail to convey is the bill itself was introduced by a back bencher. It does not form part of the government’s legislative programme and it does not enjoy the support of the Prime Minister or the Cabinet. However as Uganda is a constitutional democracy, it is appropriate that if a private members bill is presented to parliament it be debated.

Cultural attitudes in Africa are very different to elsewhere in world, 2/3 of African countries outlaw homosexual activity and 80% of east African countries criminalize it. Whilst on a global level more than 80 countries outlaw homosexual acts. Contrary to reports, the bill before parliament even if it were to pass, would not sanction the death penalty for homosexual behavior in Uganda.

Many international governments and politicians, who have criticized Uganda for debating this private members bill, remain mute in the face of far graver and far more draconian legislation relating to homosexuality in other countries. One might ask for example, if Uganda enjoyed as close a relationship with the US and European countries as Saudi Arabia (which sentences homosexuals to corporal and capital punishment) would we have attracted the same opprobrium as a result of allowing this parliamentary debate.

Unlike many other countries, no one in Uganda has ever been charged with the criminal offence of homosexuality. Moreover the main provisions of this bill were designed to stem the issue of defilement and rape which in the minds of Ugandan’s is a more pressing and urgent matter that needs to be addressed.

As a parliamentary democracy this process of debate will continue. Whilst the government of Uganda does not support this bill, it is required under our constitution to facilitate this debate. The facilitation of this debate should not be confused for the governments support for this bill.

For God and my Country
Minister of State for Ethics and Integrity Hon. Lokodo Simon

There are a couple of points that must be addressed in this statement. First, if the bill is passed, it most certainly does include the death penalty “for homosexual behavior in Uganda.” Despite numerous false reports to the contrary, that provision is still in the bill. We now have confirmation that it was the original 2009 language of the bill which received its first reading on Tuesday. Throughout this saga, there have been numerous conflicting claims that there are agreements to remove the death penalty provisions (claims which have now been going on for more than two years’ running), but the closest we’ve come to it has been a proposal to make minor, inconsequential changes in the language which keeps the death penalty in place.

Second, the statement also says that “main provisions of this bill were designed to stem the issue of defilement and rape.” I’ll leave you to inspect the actual text of the bill itself, along with its proposed changes. The issue of “defilement and rape,” at most, occupies perhaps a dozen or so words in the entire eighteen clauses of the bill.

But let’s return to the bigger question: what’s going on here? The Ugandan Government has repeatedly tried to “reject” the bill, but Parliament, despite the ruling party’s nearly complete dominance over the body, continues to push it forward. Parliament’s motivation appears to be twofold. First, there is a genuine backlash brewing against what is seen as foreign meddling in Uganda’s sovereignty, a backlash which is fueled by the perceptions that Uganda is being treated as a colony of rich white Europeans and Americans.

But that doesn’t tell the whole story. One Ugandan observer who writes the blog SebaSpace believes that the dynamics are as much internal as external. Corruption is endemic in all branches of government, and with the Ugandan government signing oil contracts right and left while keeping Parliament in the dark to exploit recently-found deposits in western Uganda, and with members of Parliament also scrambling to seek their own piece of the public pie, and all of that coupled with a general dissatisfaction with an autocratic president who has sat on the executive throne, as it were, for more than a quarter century, and what you now have is a classic power grab:

Parliament is still smarting from the humiliation President Museveni dealt them on this bill in January 2010. Bahati had mobilized them, led them up the hill and then brought them back down with tails between their legs when Museveni told them in his characterically condescending manner that the matter was a foreign policy issue that only he dealt with. They have never forgiven him for that slight.

Parliament has thus been seething in a state of pique at having been publicly shown to be impotent in the face of a dismissive executive. It wasn’t the first time he had done that, of course, but this one rankled especially because Museveni made no secret of the fact that he was acting at the behest of foreigners.

Such is the hunger for Parliament to show that they matter in Uganda that, at the time in 2010, even Beti Kamya, a friend of the gay community if there ever was one, waded in and lectured the donor community about Parliament’s independence in Uganda.

…Parliament is in a such a mutinous mood that they will thumb their noses at Uganda’s donors to pass this heinous bill – just to prove to themselves that they actually matter, even if the consequences for Uganda’s foreign aid could be dire – a classic case of cutting off their noses to spite their faces

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, February 9

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Celebrations This Weekend: Belgian LGBT Film Festival, Brussels, Belgium; Regenbogenball (Rainbow Ball), Vienna, Austria; Whistler Ski Week, Whistler, BC.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
AIDS Employment Discrimination Declared Illegal in California: 1987. In the first such case in the nation, the California Fair Employment and Housing Commission unanimously ordered that the defense contractor Raytheon pay damages of about $6,000 to a Santa Barbara employee who was denied reinstatement to work following hospitalization due to an AIDS-related illness. John Chadbourne was given medical leave in December 19983 when he was hospitalized with pneumonia. He was diagnosed with AIDS one month later. He recovered from pneumonia and his doctor said he healthy enough to return to work, but his employer would not reinstate him without assurances that other employees would not be endangered. Instead, Raytheon kept him on medical leave, which meant that he retained his benefits (including medical insurance), but was living on significantly reduced income from his disability insurance. The Commission ruled that AIDS is a disability under the law and employers may not discriminate against people with AIDS who are able to work. With that ruling, Chadbourne was vindicated — or at least his estate was. Chadbourne died in January 1985, two years before the Commission’s ruling.

Raytheon went on to significantly improve its policies toward LGBT people and people with AIDS, becoming the first defense contractor to earn a 100% rating on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index in 2005.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

Something I’d Like to Know, But Never Can

Our opponents love to compare the physical and emotional health of straights versus gays. Our typical response, when those numbers go against us, is to point out that those very critics are part of the problem. I was raised in a conservative home, and when I left western Pennsylvania for Stanford grad school, just south of San Francisco, my father warned me, “Watch out for the homosexuals” (and I did). I grew up barely knowing there was a culture of men attracted to men — many cultures of men attracted to men — and the little info I had was execrable.

Ultimately, though, comparing straights and gays is meaningless to me because I’m gay. Even if it truly is a harder row to hoe, that doesn’t matter, because I don’t have a choice. We make the best of of what we have, and now that I’m 50 I can see that my character, with its strengths and with its weaknesses, would bring me the same joys and sorrows no matter what my sexuality.

But there is a comparison I would like to see, a comparison that by its nature is impossible to make. I’d like to see a study that takes gay men who accept their sexuality and who find love with other men, and compares them to homosexuals who never even try, who never admit their sexuality, who live alone in the closet, or who drag poor, unsuspecting wives with them. That’s the comparison that matters.

Or perhaps even that’s irrelevant. Even if the best sociologists could prove that closet cases are healthier and happier, I still wouldn’t send my partner Will packing. Would you? But the next time some bigot (or one of their well-meaning sheep) start tossing out statistics on gay vs. straight, I’m going to tell them it doesn’t matter. Because that’s not my choice. My only choice is to be authentic or not, and being my only choice, it’s the only choice that matters.

The Solicitor General impact

If you are like me, you have but the vaguest idea of what the US Solicitor General does and probably can’t name who currently holds the office.

The Solicitor General is a member of the Department of Justice and answers to the Attorney General. But the Solicitor General’s role is specific: he is the person appointed to represent the federal government of the United States before the Supreme Court of the United States.

Outside the beltway, this is not a position that is situated to get much press, nor is it one in which the issue of same-sex marriage would seem – yet – to be of interest. But the nation’s solicitor generals have been integral players in the marriage equality fight and it is, to a large extent, a fight between Republicans.

Charles Fried – Reagan 85-89 – Currently teaching at Harvard Law. Though his contribution has been limited to opining, he has certainly done his share. An advocate for civil unions, in 2007 he argued that marriage (the status) should be determined by the people not the courts. His argument is the counterpoint to our insistence that the government should not deny the social benefits of the marriage designation; he asserts that a legal body should not grant sociatal benefits. In August of 2011, he wrote denouncing DOMA and advising that the Congress should revoke it rather than have the courts broaden the question.

Same-sex marriage is allowed in six states and the District of Columbia. DOMA spells an impediment to what is a legal arrangement in those states. If on no other grounds, federalism concerns militate strongly against it. There is also a strong equal protection claim that some persons legally married in one state should not be denied federal benefits granted to others married there. Ideally, Congress would repeal DOMA before the case reaches the Court, but with the dysfunctional Congress we enjoy today that is most unlikely to happen. Thus a ruling is unavoidable and its outcome is very likely to be invalidation of DOMA. That leaves the question of how the Court will reach the result. Will it rule broadly in favor of a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, or narrowly against the federal discrimination entailed by DOMA? The latter, preferable form of ruling would leave messy Full Faith and Credit issues to be sorted out. I guess that over time, those would become less acute and disappear altogether.

It was Fried’s comments to Bloomberg News that caught my interest.

“I think it’s hard to avoid,” he said in a phone interview, adding he could see five justices finding in favor of it. Still, such a ruling may be so narrowly drawn that it applies only to the California referendum at issue rather than becoming the law of the land.

“The result is that opponents of gay marriage could keep the issue alive forever,” said Fried, who served as U.S. Solicitor General under Republican President Ronald Reagan.

Ken Starr – GHW Bush 89-93 – Best known for the Starr Report, a sensational summary of his investigation into the Clinton scandals as Independent Counsel, Starr is currently the president of Baylor University, a Baptist affiliated school in Texas.

Starr was the lead counsel in defending Proposition 8 before the California Supreme Court in the debate over whether Prop 8 was an amendment or a revision (which requires 2/3 legislative approval). Starr succeeded in having the proposition held as an amendment, but was not successful in getting the 18,000 marriages that had occurred in the marriage window to be deemed invalid.

John Roberts – GHW Bush 90 – just as acting Solicitor General for one case. Roberts is one of nine people who will ultimately determine the constitutionality of anti-gay discrimination. But he has already some history here. In March 2010, anti-gay activists sued to have the District’s marriage law put to a referendum. They asked the presiding judge to stay the law until their case was heard. Roberts declined and marriage went into effect. But even more interesting and relevant is that Roberts, while an attorney with Hogan & Hartson, did pro-bono work on Romer v. Evans, advising gay attorneys on strategy before the Supreme Court and holding moot court sessions. The Ninth Circuit ruling on Proposition 8 is significantly based on Romer.

Clinton’s three Solicitors General, Drew Days, Walter Dellinger, and Seth Waxman, do not seem to have been significantly involved.

Ted Olson – GW Bush 01-04 – Ted Olson came to the nation’s attention when he squared off with David Boies before the Supreme Court to determine whether George W. Bush or Al Gore had won the presidency. The legislative effort which resulted in this week’s Ninth Circuit ruling that Prop 8 is unconstitutional was born when Olson picked up the phone and called Boies and suggested they join forces to have anti-gay discrimination be subjected to the constitutional scrutiny which it violates. Olson and Boies share chief counsel.

Paul Clement – GW Bush 04-08 – Clement, currently a Georgetown professor, is the special counsel hired by the Republican House Majority Leader Boehner to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court after the Justice Department refused to do so on the grounds that it is unconstitutional. So far, Clement has not had much success, has declined to offer defense in some matters, and seems to be presenting as low-key a defense as can be made.

Frankly, I’m not sure what to make of Clement’s efforts. Perhaps he is aware that DOMA has no legal leg to stand on, is an offense to federalist minded judges and an affront to civil rights minded jurists, and has few legal minds who make any attempt to defend it on anything other than ‘don’t like them gays’ grounds. But for an attorney with such a high profile, his DOMA efforts are surprisingly silent.

Gregory Garre – GW Bush 08-09 – Garre has not, to my knowledge, been directly involved in the marriage debate. However, he has made a tangential contribution. When the Christian Legal Society sued Hastings Legal College over school rules which banned anti-gay discrimination in school groups, it placed the question of religious-based objections to homosexuality before the Supreme Court. In a ruling that delighted our community, but with which I had some misgivings, the court ruled that Hastings was justified in refusing to consider religious objections to the policy. This case gives insight to the feeling of the justices as well as grounds for strategy. Garre was the attorney who successfully defended Hastings.

Elena Kagan – Obama 09-10 – Ms. Kagan will also be one of the nine jurist who determine the eventual outcome. She is considered to be a vote and a voice of support, among other things.

And the current Solicitor General is Donald Verrilli, by the way.

Understanding Maggie

Maggie Gallagher doesn’t hate you. She doesn’t even hate your marriage. Because hate is an emotion, a passionate feeling, and emotion simply doesn’t enter into Maggie’s approach to her work. Hers is a world of thought, of commitment to an ideal, the concept of marriage, and her analytical approach to affirming its unquestionable attributes and values.

Or so finds Mark Oppenheimer in a new Slate article that seeks to understand the motivations and drives of Maggie Gallagher the author and activist and how that person differs from Maggie Gallagher the mother, wife, and friend. This is a valuable look into Maggie’s world, one that each of us should know as we continue our fight for equality.