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Uganda's president is making the right noises, but Bahati is defiant
By: Stephen Mitchell

David Bahati

Author of Uganda's Anti-Gay Bill to breakfast with Obama

David Bahati MP, the author of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill currently being considered by Uganda's parliament, is expected to attend a prayer breakfast with President Obama in Washington DC on February 4.
 
The National Prayer Breakfast, which is usually attended by the President as a matter of form, is organised by The Fellowship, also known as The Family, which, according to an American author, is a secretive Christian organisation with powerful political, religious and economic members.
 
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 in November 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 had cultivated a "deep relationship" with the organisation.
 
Museveni last week attempted to distance himself from Bahati's bill, saying that Uganda must take into consideration its foreign policy interests, and in December, assured US officials that he would endeavour to block or veto it.
Also last week, Uganda's minister for ethics and integrity James Nsaba Buturo said he believed Museveni did not support the death penalty for homosexuality and that the provision was likely to be removed from the bill.
 
The Anti-Homosexuality Bill 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.
It would also 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.
 
Museveni has come under increasing pressure following international condemnation of the bill and threats of the withdrawal of development aid from the US, Sweden, the United Nations and the World Health Organisation.
 
Last week in Westminster, 20 MPs signed an early day motion calling for the British government and the European Union to press Uganda to abandon the bill. Former minister Denis MacShane, Labour MP for Rotherham, questioned the £72.1m given by the UK in aid to the country.
 
But in an interview about the bill and his breakfast with Obama for Uganda's Sunday Monitor, Bahati said:
"The nature of legislation is such that one cannot have a final version. There are bound to be amendments but the process will go on. We need to protect our children and stop recruitment."