Stosh, a 33-year-old lesbian, lived a secret life because of a Ugandan law against homosexuality until a newspaper recently identified her as gay.
A law against loving someone of the same-sex. It wasn’t long ago that such laws were exervcised in the US.
That afternoon, people in a cafe started pointing at her. She left in a hurry.
"I went to a shop where I usually buy things," Stosh said. "The woman there wouldn't sell me anything. She was speaking rudely, calling me a f----t."
She hurried away again, growing more frightened as she made her way home.
Nobody should have to live like this.
The newspaper, which has published photographs of dozens of gay people and listed their names and addresses on two occasions - Monday and last month - was ordered Tuesday by the High Court in Kampala, the capital, to stop such publications at least until a hearing this month. Justice Vincent Kibuuka Musoke issued the temporary injunction, saying the publication of the names and photos amounted to an infringement of the individuals' right to privacy.
So do laws against being gay. How about replacing those with laws that protect people rom harassment based on their orientation or the person or persons they love?
African politicians and church leaders have called homosexuality un-African and unbiblical.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has described homosexuals as lower than pigs and dogs. Gays have been jailed in Malawi, Morocco and Cameroon. In South Africa, where gay marriage is legal, lesbians in black townships have been beaten to death.
Gay people in Uganda routinely endure family ostracism, taunts in the street, hate messages, ejection from bars, and firings.
This needs to be change. People around the world need their rights to love, sex, and marriage.
No comments:
Post a Comment
To prevent spam, comments will have to be approved, so your comment may not appear for several hours. Feedback is welcome, including disagreement. I only delete/reject/mark as spam: spam, vulgar or hateful attacks, repeated spouting of bigotry from the same person that does not add to the discussion, and the like. I will not reject comments based on disagreement, but if you don't think consenting adults should be free to love each other, then I do not consent to have you repeatedly spout hate on my blog without adding anything to the discourse.
If you want to write to me privately, then either contact me on Facebook, email me at fullmarriageequality at protonmail dot com, or tell me in your comment that you do NOT want it published. Otherwise, anything you write here is fair game to be used in a subsequent entry. If you want to be anonymous, that is fine.
IT IS OK TO TALK ABOUT SEX IN YOUR COMMENTS, BUT PLEASE CHOOSE YOUR WORDS CAREFULLY AS I WANT THIS BLOG TO BE AS "SAFE FOR WORK" AS POSSIBLE. If your comment includes graphic descriptions of activity involving minors, it's not going to get published.