Uganda Approves 10-Year Sentence For Coming Out

March 21, 2023 Civil Rights, LGBT News

Reuters reports:

Uganda’s parliament on Tuesday passed a law that criminalises identifying as LGBTQ, handing authorities broad powers to target Ugandans who already face legal discrimination and mob violence.

More than 30 African countries, including Uganda, already ban same-sex relations. The new law appears to be the first to outlaw merely identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ), according to rights group Human Rights Watch.

Supporters of the new law say it is needed to punish a broader array of LGBTQ activities, which they say threaten traditional values in the conservative and religious East African nation.

The Associated Press reports:



The bill was passed late Tuesday inside a packed parliamentary chamber, and after a roll call ordered by the House speaker, who had repeatedly warned it was necessary to identify those who might oppose the bill.

The bill now will go to President Yoweri Museveni, who can veto or sign it into law. He suggested in a recent speech that he supports the bill, accusing unnamed Western nations of “trying to impose their practices on other people.”

Same-sex activity is already punishable with life imprisonment under a colonial-era law targeting “carnal knowledge against the order of nature,” partly the basis of a report by dissenters on the parliamentary committee that vetted the bill before Tuesday’s vote.

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