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Uganda: Parliamentarian revives anti-gay bill
“I’ve rejected it because it does not address Uganda’s homosexuality problem,” said Solomon Male, a Pentecostal cleric who has been dragged to court for accusing another pastor of sodomy. “The system can’t permit any good law to be enforced.”
Male said that an existing law against homosexuality, inherited from the colonial days, had not been enforced.
“It is a big problem-homosexuals are in our schools, in our churches, everywhere, and we don’t even know where to start,” he said. “Sensitization is the best.”
Bahati’s original bill carried harsh provisions. The original bill would mandate a death sentence for active homosexuals living with HIV or in cases of same-sex rape. “Serial offenders” also could face capital punishment, but the legislation did not define the term. Anyone convicted of a homosexual act would face life imprisonment.
Anyone who “aids, abets, counsels or procures another to engage of acts of homosexuality” would face seven years in prison. Landlords who rent rooms or homes to gays also could get seven years.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.
