Another vile Facebook page that gets reported only for Facebook to reply that the page doesn’t violate community standards. Oh really? Despite the graphic photographs of mob violence?
Trigger warning, because of the graphic photographs.
The page is Uganda Youth Coalition Against Homosexuality.
It may be just one twisted person, spewing frothing worked-up hatred by the truckload, but it still doesn’t belong on Facebook.
That’s Facebook’s community standards?
Jacques Rousseau points out how far Ugandan MPs will go in their efforts to persecute gay people.
the ministerial task team advising the President on the bill “falsified the information contained in the report given by medical and psychological experts, twisting it to show that homosexuality should indeed be further criminalised“.
Let’s follow that link, to Shaun De Waal’s article in the Mail & Guardian.
Under international pressure, President Yoweri Museveni delayed signing the controversial Bill into law, asking for a panel of experts to be convened to advise on whether homosexuality was “learned” behaviour or an inborn condition.
The experts – including academics from Marekere University and officials in the Ugandan ministry of health – said that, in their view and in terms of the best current medical knowledge, “homosexuality has no clear-cut cause”, though they adduce some limited genetic evidence, and that “several factors are involved which differ from individual to individual. It is not a disease that has a treatment.”
The Scientist Consensus Statement concludes that homosexuality is not a disease or an “abnormality”, but that it “can be influenced by environmental factors” such as “culture, religion, information, permissiveness”. Homosexual behaviour, the statement says, “needs regulation like any other human behaviour, especially to protect the vulnerable”, and concludes: “There is need for studies to address sexualities in the African context.”
By contrast, in the report to the president in the name of the caucus of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), this is glossed as: “Homosexuality is not a disease but merely an abnormal behaviour which may be learned through experiences in life.” It quotes the experts saying that the “practice should be regulated”, following that with the statement: “Presidential Advisor on Science Dr Richard Tushemereirwe stated that homosexuality has serious Public Health consequences and should therefore not be tolerated.”
The statement concludes that homosexuality is not an abnormality, and the report to the president glosses that as ”Homosexuality is not a disease but merely an abnormal behaviour.” The statement says it’s not, the report says it is.
Thou shalt not bear false witness.
Jeff Sharlet said on Twitter a couple of hours ago that the New Yorker did bad, lazy journalism in reporting that Uganda had dropped the death penalty from its anti-gay bill. He said The Family had spoon-fed Peter Boyer that information and that he hadn’t checked it. He said they had another “prayer breakfast” just today and that Inhofe sent them a friendly message. I don’t have any other source for this, so I’m just telling you what Sharlet said. He’s been on this story for years, though, so I figure he has sources and knows what he’s talking about.
At any rate, the Huffington Post did report yesterday that the bill is going ahead and that it’s still bad and scary.
A bill proposing that gay and lesbian Ugandans be executed is coming back to Uganda’s Parliament – it could pass at any moment. Worse yet, rumours are suggesting that the bill has been changed in committee and we may not have a chance to see it before it is rushed through.
President Museveni once promised that he would not sign this bill into law. With pressure mounting on him to support the bill, only a massive global outcry – along with our friends in Uganda – will make him keep his promise.
So sign this. And share it.