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American author claims Ugandan MP is a member of an organisation known as The Family
Uganda
'US fundamentalists finance Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill'
Ugandan MP David Bahati, the proposer of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill now going through Uganda's parliament, is being financed by a fundamentalist religious organisation with powerful political allies, according to an American author.
Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, said in an interview with America's National Public Radio on Tuesday that Bahati was a member of The Family and had received millions of dollars in funding through the organisation's African outreach programmes.
He also said that Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni, who earlier this month claimed that "European homosexuals" were "recruiting" in Africa, had cultivated a "deep relationship" with the organisation. According to Jessica Stern of Human Rights Watch, Museveni's government "routinely threatens and vilifies lesbians and gays, and subjects sexual rights activists to harassment".
Bahati's bill, which has been condemned by the embassies of France and the United States, is intended to intensify Uganda's already draconian legislation. Presently, male homosexuality is punishable by life imprisonment and in 2000 lesbianism was criminalised. Under the new law anyone repeatedly "caught" having sex with someone of the same sex would face the death penalty, while people who touch each other in a "gay way" could be jailed.
It would also create a new offence of "aggravated homosexuality", with those convicted of having homosexual relations with disabled people or those under the age of 18 also facing the death penalty, criminalise any public discussion of homosexuality and penalise any individual who rented property to a homosexual. A clause in the bill punishes anyone who fails to report an offence within 24 hours of witnessing or finding out about it.
