By Enyichukwu Enemanna
A Ugandan lawmaker Asuman Basalirwa on Tuesday brought before the Parliament a bill seeking to prohibit homosexuality in the East African country.
Basalirwa said his bill would punish “promotion, recruitment and funding” related to LGBTQ activities, a bill which attracted the support of other lawmakers in the parliamentary chamber in Uganda’s capital Kampala, as they stood up to show solidarity.
“You are either with us or you’re with the Western world,” Speaker Anita Among said, announcing that legislators would show support by raising their hands when the bill eventually is put to a vote. “We should be counted, and we are going to vote by show of hands on this matter,” she said.
In Uganda, sam-sex relations in Uganda are already criminalized under a colonial-era penal code.
Harsh anti-gay legislation enacted in 2014 later was annulled by a panel of judges amid international condemnation. The bill in its original draft had called for the death penalty for some homosexual acts.
The new bill will be assessed by a parliamentary committee before it is debated in a plenary session. Details of its specific provisions were not yet immediately available.
Basalirwa spoke of homosexuality as “a cancer,” saying his bill is an opportunity to pass a strong law.
“In this country, or in this world, we talk about human rights. But it is also true that there are human wrongs. I want to submit … that homosexuality is a human wrong,” he said.
