Bonus Pod: A Human Rights Crisis: Uganda's New Anti-LGBTQ+ Law

At the end of May, Uganda’s president signed into law a piece of legislation that criminalizes the LGBTQI+ community it includes that death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality,” creates new crimes around “promotion of homosexuality,” and 10 years in prison for attempted same-sex conduct. Ophelia Kemigisha, human rights lawyer and feminist activist from Uganda, and Beirne Roose-Snyder, Senior Policy Fellow for the Council for Global Equality, sit down to talk with us about Uganda’s new anti-LGBTQI+ law and what human rights advocates can do to work against it.

 Many evangelical, conservative American organizations and activists have been working in Uganda to plant the seeds for this recent, horrific law. An anti-homosexuality bill in the country in 2013 (which included the death penalty provision) began a U.S.-discussion on human rights and American involvement in Uganda. The law was repealed due to technical language— not substance—and since then, conservative American and Ugandan actors have continued crafting anti-LGBTQI+ legislation and contributing to extreme stigmatization. For a deeper dive on the global anti-gender movement, find the past podcast with Beirne here.

New to this bill, though, include the criminalization of the “promotion” and “normalization” of homosexuality; this includes, for example, seven years in prison for providing housing to those who you know are gay. The law also lumps in the ability to love a partner of one’s own choice with harrowing crimes, including sexual assault. Misinformation surrounding this bill has been rife, and real harm is currently taking place in Uganda. People are afraid to speak and live openly; patients with HIV are scared to approach healthcare providers for treatment; healthcare professionals are scared to interact with the LGBTQI+ community. It is the responsibility of human rights advocates to hold the line and clearly communicate that this legislation is unconscionable.

Legislation like Uganda’s is not happening in a vacuum; pushes for similar laws are happening across the African continent and across the world. As a human rights activist, make noise about how urgent it is to fight this bill—it is a domino.

Links from this episode

Convening for Equality Twitter
Convening for Equality’s Statement after Uganda’s Passage of The Anti-LGBTQI+ Law
The Council for Global Equality on Twitter
The Council for Global Equality on Facebook
A Deep-Dive on The Global Anti-Gender Movement
Ophelia Kemigisha on Twitter
Beirne Roose-Snyder on Twitter

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Transcript

Jennie: Welcome to RePROs Fight Back, a podcast on all things related to sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice.

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Jennie: Welcome to RePROs Fight Back, a podcast on all things related to sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice.

Jennie: Hi RePROs. Welcome to a special bonus episode of RePROs Fight Back. I'm your host Jennie Wetter, and my pronouns are she/her. So y'all, I am back from the conference I was at. I had so much fun getting to connect with friends I hadn't seen since before the pandemic. It was so lovely to catch up on them and what's happening with their lives and just to see them in person, it was so nice. It made my heart just so full and happy. Also very delightful was for three days I got to man a booth and talk to people about the podcast, so, introduced a lot of new people to the podcast. Also got to talk to some listeners who love the podcast. Got a lot of amazing suggestions for topics we should cover or people we should talk to. I'm so re-energized and rejuvenated by all these ideas and the love for the podcast to, like, go forward and start making a bunch of new content. I'm so excited, y'all. It was just, it was just what I needed. It really, it was really recharging. And I think maybe we'll stop there 'cause this is a little bit of a longer episode and I wanna make sure that we have time for all of it. And I am so excited and lucky to have two wonderful guests with us today. We talked to Beirne Roose-Snyder with the Council for Global Equality and Ophelia Kemigisha, who is a queer feminist activist from Uganda. And we are talking about the new anti-LGBTQ legislation in Uganda and what it means and what we are seeing and we tie it to the broader anti-rights, anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender movement. Which honestly you can see happening in the U.S. too, right? So we try to make those connections while keeping it in the context of what is happening in Uganda right now. So, with that, let's turn to my interview. Hi Beirne and Ophelia. Thank you so much for being here today.

Beirne: Thanks for having us, Jennie.

Ophelia: Yeah, thank you. I'm excited.

Jennie: I'm so excited to have you here for Pride Month to talk about a really important LGBTQ issue that I wanna, like, just jump into, but I've had a really bad habit lately of like getting so excited to talk about the topic that I have forgotten to have people introduce themselves and, like, let's not do that today. So, would you like to take a second and introduce yourselves and include your pronouns? Let's go with Ophelia.

Ophelia: Okay. Hi, my name is Ophelia Kemigisha. I'm from Kampala, Uganda. I came to live in DC. My pronouns are she/her. I am a feminist activist and queer rights activist from Uganda. I was trained as a human rights lawyer but I like to say that I'm just a feminist with two law degrees. So yeah, I'm interested in movement building and in, you know, liberation for all people, especially people who are like me, who are queer, Black, African, because I believe that, you know, we set at the margins and then everybody gets free. So, yeah, I'm really excited to be here. I'm, yeah, I'm looking forward to the conversation.

Beirne: And I'm Beirne Roose-Snyder, I use she/her pronouns. I'm the Senior Policy Council for the Council for Global Equality. Nope. I'm the Senior Policy Fellow for the Council for Global Equality. And I work on LGBT rights and U.S. Foreign Policy and also the intersections of sexual and reproductive health and rights and the HIV movement. And I'm so happy to be here, Jennie.

Jennie: I'm really excited 'cause this is such an important conversation—to talk about what is happening in Uganda right now—but I think before we can have that conversation, I think we do need to take a bit of a step back and talk about how did we get here, right? Like, this didn't just come up out of nowhere. So, how did we get to this place?

Beirne: So, the place we're at is with a new criminalization law in Uganda and several pending in other East African countries. But we got here…first, it starts with colonialism…um, but we got here sort of more recently in the last decade and a half with a lot of help from American actors, which is why I'm gonna start with sort of where we are. Because, you know, there is homophobia and transphobia in most countries in the world, um, at this point, um, I don't wanna, uh, steal the glory of Ugandan homophobes who deserve credit for their own hate. But also, we need to talk about money. We need to talk about power. And Jennie, you've had me on before to talk about the anti-gender movement, and this is what we're talking about, right? We're talking about these pretty powerful actors who have been collaborating and coordinating over the last 30 years to build this anti- worldview to what they call the gender ideology, which is what we would consider bodily autonomy, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and LGBTQI rights. And we're seeing their successes right now. So, we're talking about a lot of the same actors that we talked about on that podcast. We're talking about Family Watch International. We're talking about a lot of church groups. We're talking about the U.S. Alliance Defending Freedom groups that we're now starting to see how they're pushing the same type of legislation in U.S. states. They've been exporting the same, the same stuff for 15 years or so to countries like Uganda. And in particular, Uganda has a very religiously conservative First Lady who has built long relationships with white evangelicals from the U.S. So, we had…2009-2014, we had a really sort of slow push for this anti-homosexuality bill that included the death penalty. U.S. actors like Scott Lively—who was subsequently sued by a Ugandan group in U.S. courts for the harm and the persecution that he was creating in Uganda—we had actors like Scott Lively who were very visible. And then we have a lot of longstanding U.S. Evangelical actors who are less visible. So, we have members of what is called The Family, which is a Netflix doc a lot of people recommend. We have, we have sort of longstanding folks connected to The Family who have been living or working in Uganda, creating a National Prayer Breakfast there with the First Lady, creating this sort of mirror image of white evangelical conservatism within the political movements in Uganda. And those folks have been there for a long time, and they've been building their power, their momentum, and their networks. And as we've talked about before, Jennie, like, it's very hard for us to track the money because a lot of it's going through U.S. Churches and U.S. Churches don't have to report their spending. And so, it's very hard for us to know exactly how much and for how long, but this culminated in the anti-homosexuality bill in 2013-2014. It included a death penalty provision—we just wanna help them, we just wanna put them in psychological rehabilitation camps so they can come in line with African values—and you're like, hmm, no, no, no.

Ophelia: How generous.

Beirne: But the part that I'm hoping, if we get a couple- if we can get, like, Al Jazeera 'cause this is Al Jazeera fault lines, so they have to be focused on the U.S. link. And so, and Jennie as we've talked about before, because a lot of this money and a lot of these actors are working with U.S. Churches and the money is coming through U.S. Churches, that money is not reported in a way that makes it possible for us to really understand the full length and scope of U.S. involvement in countries like Uganda and changing both their legislative and social environments on LGBT rights. With the 2013-2014 bill, that culminated in its passage, which included a death penalty and then kicked off a huge international outcry. We had weeks’ worth of reporting in the United States about it. We had the…President Obama announced a 360-degree review of all of our aid and all of our relationships with Uganda. Other countries and multilaterals did the same. We had a lot of pushback from multinational corporations about the sort of inhumanity of this bill, the fact that it creates a hostile environment for Ugandans, but also for people wanting to do business in Uganda and wanting to sort of continue relationships with Uganda in a myriad ways. So after the bill was passed, and Ophelia, you can give, like, the more technical version, but after the bill was passed, um, and there was a very speedy court review that basically found a technicality in process—the lack of quorum, if I remember correctly—that took the bill away, in a- but not on substance, on procedural grounds, which was seen as a politically expedient way to respond to the international pressure without losing face. So, that's sort of what happened in the last time. It culminated with both the bill going away, but also, yeah, a lot of hostility remained. A lot of those U.S.-based actors remained and continued to build their relationships with parliamentarians, maintain their relationship with the First Lady of Uganda, and continue to be part of a lot of the development programs that are there as well. And so, I can kind of leave it there in terms of the U.S.-based groups and how they brought us through the first bill. And I think there's probably a lot of sort of legal and cultural stuff that happened in the interim, but I think with this bill, we still have a lot of U.S.-based actors and a lot of religious actors involved also sort of pairing Ugandan parliamentarians with conservative, anti-LGBTQ parliamentarians from Ghana and Kenya and other countries in the region to sort of build boldness, frankly, in building and writing and pushing worse and worse and worse bills. And there's still a lot of American actors involved in that. I will say, I think this time around the U.S.-based groups and actors are a little bit more aware of their legal risk, not their moral risk, just their legal risk, and are being a little bit more careful about their words publicly.

Jennie: I just, this takes me back to when we had the conversation around the anti-gender movement and, like, how nebulous and, like, talking about it feels like you're going down this, like, web of, like, crazy, and hearing The Family come into it just feels like upping that even more.

Beirne: Yeah, [laughs] yeah. I mean, I've said it before, I'll say it again. It's very hard to talk about a shadowy multinational conspiracy without sounding like you're talking about a shadowy multinational conspiracy. So, it's tough, though.

Jennie: Okay, Ophelia, do you wanna, like, take it from there and talk about the 2013 bill and the previous versions before we get to, like, where we're at today?

Ophelia: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think Beirne did a good job of laying out the basics. So, I mean there are many studies about this. People have written about this for many years. It's really confusing for me that people, like, many people, like, just don't acknowledge the work that has been done in this area. As early as, I mean, 2010 even, people were writing about these links about the ways that U.S. evangelical groups had kind of honestly colonized the media space and were peddling these narratives about LGBT people. Like Beirne said, it's not, it's not that Uganda societies are not or were not homophobic. They definitely are. And, and you know, in their own, you know, they have their own ways of conceptualizing it. But there's this particular version, the one that gets into the law that is definitely, that has very strong links to U.S. churches. And some studies actually say that it was a way of the U.S. churches, you know, moving the fight outside, you know, they lost the fight in the U.S., and they were like, okay, let's go see what we can do elsewhere. Others say that it's this laundering of their image as—you know, some of these groups are linked to apartheid and things like that—so laundering their image as: now, we care about Africans. But that's neither here nor there. What we know is that in- around maybe 2002-2003, there was this big anti-gay push that was linked of course to HIV as well. You know, this idea that homosexuals were spreading HIV and were pedophiles and none of these narratives are new because they're also still very much alive in U.S. conservative media. And so, that led to the 2005 constitutional amendment where they included a constitutional provision that says marriage has to be between a man and a woman because at the time they thought that LGBT groups were pushing for marriage or maybe they believe that this would somehow stop people from being gay if they can get married. [laughs] So that got passed, then people were like, yeah, we don't, we just wanna not be discriminated against, um, but good for you. And so, in 2009, there was this, you know, infamous kill-the-gays Bill. Then it, so it didn't go, it didn't pass the first time because of the outrage, and then in 2013, it passed. The speaker of parliament at the time gave it as a Christmas present so, it passed very quickly and she was like we have to get this done because the session was closing, and so it passed and, like Beirne said, people went to court and said this law is unconstitutional for all these many, many, many reasons. And court was like, what's that first thing you said again? And they said, oh, it was passed without quorum. Because there were not enough MPs in the House to pass the law. And they said, okay, yeah, that's a good enough reason so it was checked out. And interesting circumstances. So, the court dodged, I mean, refused to look at the rest of the petition, you know, the arguments that we're making about discrimination, about the right to health, about LGBT people's existence, about the conflation of LGBT identity with pedophilia. They just, you know, they tried, they decided to ignore that question because they said, you know, I guess they thought, what do they, let's say, you're not ready for this conversation. So, so that, that died down. Around 2021, 2020, there was sexual offenses bill that started out in the women's movement as a bill to strengthen laws, you know, that relating to violence against women and sexual assault and things like that, which I mean, as an abolitionist, can't really say I was supportive, but, you know, it was, it was well meant, right? And then, somewhere along the way, they started trying to introduce this provision about homosexuality and put it, you know, to sneak it in as like, this is another way that we can, um, in, you know, ‘cause you say it's about sexual offenses. And so, in lobbying some of the people in the women's movement were like, this LGBT thing is not, it's not as important. You know, let's just stick what you can get. That didn't end very well. The bill passed, but it was highly contested, you know, the MPs who are homophobic are also misogynists. So obviously they want provisions about consent. It was a big mess. It didn't end well for anybody. No one was happy, so that bill kinda died like that—the sexual offenses bill, I think that was 2021. But it was obvious to us who work in the space that many of the members of Parliament who had been involved in previous attempts, including people like Nsaba Buturo, who was Minister of Ethics and Integrity, like in the early 2000s, were really still interested in passing another gay law and they were offended that their previous attempt had failed. And so, we have this iteration of the bill, I mean it's a new bill, but it's not a new bill. It's more or less the same. They just kinda copied and pasted and they said, this time we're passing it with quorum, the MPs were in Parliament, some of them joined on their iPad, it was this big [inaudible] with like some sexual harassment involved. It was, it’s hard to watch honestly. So we have this iteration of that bill. It passed the first time. The president sent it back and they said, yeah, we, we still wanna pass this. They took out the death penalty and then they, and they took out the provision that criminalizes identifying as LGBT, I think, and that's it.

Beirne: They put back in death penalty.

Ophelia: Ah, yeah. So they, so they removed the provision about identifying as LGBT, but they put the death penalty back in. And so that's what passed this time. And so they are now- we're now going back to court and hoping for- to see what happens at that, at that level.

Beirne: I, I think Ophelia is, um, is being too used to how terrible the bills are-

Jennie: Yeah, like, can we just, like, lay out exactly what this bill does 'cause it is pretty horrifying.

Beirne: Yeah. I, I'm, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna unpack it a little cause I think, I think you're so used to the dehumanization coming from your parliament that it, like, it doesn't even-

Ophelia: It doesn't really register.

Jennie: Listen, I work in abortion in the U.S., I get it. [laughter]

Beirne: At a certain point, you get like a shorthand of, like, the terrible ideas they have. But I do think there's some important pieces here, because, especially for U.S. listeners to really hear, because there are some components that frankly come from some of the anti-gender folks in Eastern Europe around sort of propaganda and speech. And it's sort of a Frankenstein's monster of a lot of the worst ideas that anti-LGBT, anti-gender folks have tried in Eastern Europe and Russia, in the United States in Florida, and other places like that. And then sort of the core of this traditional Ugandan sort of criminalization with a death penalty for aggravated offenses. And a lot of conflation of sexual abuse of children, which is already illegal in Uganda and frankly needs a lot more enforcement. Because it's, it's-

Ophelia: The numbers are egregious.

Beirne: The numbers are egregious, but you don't need a new bill for it, which is one of the arguments being made that…those pieces are redundant. The new pieces are this criminalization of the promotion of homosexuality and the normalization of homosexuality. And that also includes providing housing for people that you know are gay. So, it criminalizes familial relationships up to seven years in prison, if you are renting a space or providing a home for someone that you know is gay. I think it's really important for U.S. listeners to understand that one, because these broad definitions of promotion and normalization of homosexuality are things that we should be prepared for. They're, they're gonna, they're gonna try it. They're gonna try it first with children. They're gonna try it in schools. We're gonna start seeing the same language because it's the same actors. But you really are talking about something where they are criminalizing allyship. They're criminalizing comprehensive sexuality education. They're criminalizing renting to an organization that supports the human rights of LGBTQI people. And that—sort of a mishmash of that propaganda and speech restrictions that we've seen in places like Russia, and the sort of criminalization of the act, acting on homosexuality—that has already been sort of true in Ugandan law, increasing penalties. I think in particular, to me, there's this really specific thing that happens several places in the bill where something that you go, “oh yeah, well that's, that's wrong, you know, like raping children, that's really wrong,” is stacked right next to something that you go, “what?” So, so, you know, it's, it's a death penalty offense now to be a “serial offender.” So, it's a death penalty offense to have a homosexual act towards children, which as someone who doesn't believe in the death penalty is, you know, all of this is outrageous and a life sentence for homosexuality is outrageous and clear human rights violations. But then to also lump raping children as a death penalty offense next to “serial offense,” which could mean being found guilty twice of having sex with your partner of 25 years, like, that would be a serial offender who is subject to the death penalty. And so, there's a lot of this lumping and conflation of things that are already illegal and include, you know, people who cannot consent. And then, what we, what is just sort of the most rudimentary ability to love and be loved and have a right to privacy and a right to bodily autonomy and a right to choose your sexual partners in consenting adults that is criminalized at the same level.

Ophelia: Yeah, and if I can, if I can pick up something from that…so that's a very important, so that links to human rights in general, I guess, because another problem that we have is that many Ugandans, especially parliamentarians, conceptualize LGBT rights as these special things that, I dunno, they think we're, we wanna live, like, in palaces or something, but LGBT people need access to the same exact rights as everybody else—the ability to organize, the ability to live and to rent and to have jobs—and, you know, it's not anything special. So, offenses like promotion of homosexuality or I think in the previous bill they used to call it having a brothel, I think they said that having LGBT people rent your premises is similar to owning a brothel, which I thought was hilarious.

Beirne: [laughs]

Ophelia: But, so having, so having this- so these wide offenses have the effect of shrinking the rights in general of everybody, and not to say, like, oh, my fight is your fight, which it is, but it's also true that when LGBT people's rights are restricted, then everybody's rights get affected because like what Beirne is saying it's, it, it would be a crime to be an ally. So, if I have a practice, a legal practice, and I have LGBT people come to my practice to seek help about a contract, that could be promotion of homosexuality because I'm helping these people who are, I guess, known homosexuals, exercise their rights and these, you know, these, you know, things like having a death penalty for someone who has HIV, you know, that's a way of further criminalizing people with HIV in…which we know from the very beginning is, you know, counterproductive and not, you know, useful. So things like speech, you know, so trying to restrict speech so I can't say that I actually support LGBT rights because- and that affects everybody. But also criminalization—the function of criminalization is not necessarily for them to actually, you know, prosecute anybody to the full extent of that law but it's to further marginalize people and to make people think that their very existence is illegal, but people can't be illegal. You know, people are people, they can't be illegal. So, even with the pre-, with the colonial-era law that Beirne kind of mentioned in passing, there have been very few prosecutions under that law, also, because it's a victimless crime. You can't, you know, you can't criminalize, I mean, you can try to criminalize adults’ same-sex consensual relations, but there's no complainant. And so, what this does is that it just gives the state the power to harass LGBT people for living. And it gives everyday people who have their low-grade homophobia, a reason to, you know, to carry out more "justice" to "better" people, to expel children from school, to refuse to give people, you know, to refuse to give people premises to rent, to evict people unfairly when they've paid their rent. So this just has the effect of making LGBTQ people's lives difficult and not necessarily the effect of- obviously it's impossible for you to stop people from being, you know, homosexual. So, I wanted to kind of contextualize this in wider pattern towards fascist ways of an authoritarian regime. And that's, I think that's also why some of these bills thrive in places which have a bad attitude towards human rights in general.

Beirne: Yeah. The links between the anti-gender movement and authoritarianism are deep and wide. And as Ophelia said, it's core human rights: the right to gather, the right to speech, the right to housing, the right to health, and just core human rights that the Ugandan government is attempting to deny to a whole portion of their population. And knowing that this really public marginalization and fight will get normal, typical people, whether they're doing it from vitriol—like some of the mob violence that we've seen in the last several months since the bill started getting debated—or whether it's just, it's out of fear, like some of the forced evictions that we've been seeing since the bill was signed on Monday, June, what date was that? Is-

Jennie: Was it May?

Beirne: It was Monday…no, May, it was May 29th. It was. So since it was signed on Monday, May 29th, we've also been seeing this surge of forced evictions that started that very day from people who maybe weren't necessarily homophobic or transphobic or, or sort of viciously so, but who are faced now with seven years in jail and certainly don't wanna take that kind of risk upon themselves. So it's sort of…it feeds a culture of harassment and marginalization, in addition to creating the atmosphere for huge amounts of state violence and non-state violence, I'll say. We also have six that I know of at this moment—we have six drop-in center workers who are in jail and still like awaiting even a hearing. So, the state is gonna do their thing. They are starting to do their thing around this. And, and these are people who were arrested before the bill was passed, but they're really going with this grooming-promotion kind of criminalization. So, it's not that everyone will get prosecuted, but the state is gonna use their tools to go after people that they disfavor.

Jennie: And right? Just like a couple high profile ones is, like, enough for, like, a massive chilling effect and like to cause a huge reaction among other people.

Beirne: Yeah, yeah, certainly without any similarly high-profile consequences or pushback either within Uganda or within, in the international community.

Jennie: Okay. So, now we know about this terrible new law. So what, what needs to happen? Like what, where, where can action be taken? And like the big picture—we'll get to like what the audience can do, but like, as a big picture thing—like what needs to happen right now?

Ophelia: What a, what a good question. How can we end homophobia forever around the world?

Jennie: [laughter] You have- nothing like a small question with a real easy answer, right?

Ophelia: Yeah. Your questions are so easy. So, I think that the first thing we need to do is—I mean, as a feminist, my first instinct is to resist. Like, I'm just, it's, it's simply, like, it's a no for me, it's going to be a no for me, to resist this push towards rejecting human beings, you know, ability to live and to love and to live their lives the way that they want to. I think that it's important for us to highlight where this comes from. And that's why this conversation is really important because it's about power. We know that everyday people can have biases and prejudices, but we also know that the fact that this is a law means that there is, there is a power dynamic that's going on that we need to resist. And we need to…this is the time for allyship. LGBT movements in Uganda have been working around this issue for many years. We have some [laughs] experience with this, with this kind of wave of homophobia. But I also know that this is a thing that's happening across the continent, so, first we need to pay attention to what's going on across the continent, and across the world, really. And to push for more active, you know, citizenship—to say this is not a good use of state resources to harass people for existing. And I think that it's important that we don't obscure the fact that these things are, these rights are highly contested across the world. So casting places like Uganda as uniquely homophobic or like the worst place to be gay—I think these are really harmful narratives that don't do much for the fight. I think that it's important to make these links to say what's happening in Florida is happening in Uganda, is happening in Russia. And we as people who believe in human rights for all and believe in liberation for everybody, have to, you know, kind of show up with the same energy for each of these fights. I dunno if that's a, if that's, like, the ultimate solution, but I think that's a good place to start—paying attention and, you know, holding leaders accountable because what we really need is well, [laughs] you know what we really need—housing, employment, joy, [laughs] money, not laws. I, I, this, this is a law that doesn't really serve anyone except the power interest of those who are interested in further marginalizing a group that is already marginalized. And is, you know, just trying to live.

Beirne: I think that's the, the really beautiful big movement answer, I think. And it's all completely right, right? We need to build community, we need to learn from everybody. I think in the age of...we are being, we being movements are really struggling with overcoming misinformation and very, very highly skilled misinformation campaigns. We've been doing a lot of reflecting on how this bill is worse than the 2013-2014 bill, and yet it's gotten less traction in terms of outcry. And I think there's a lot of reasons that we can self-reflect on that, reflect on the way, you know, the frog's in the pot, in the boiling water. The water's gotten a lot hotter in the last 10 years. So, people are fighting fights they never thought they'd be fighting in Oklahoma. Things that weren't normal in 2013 and 2014. Saying this bill is gonna have the death penalty for LGBTQ people, which could create outrage in 2013-2014. We're under such sustained pressure and the heat has gone up in the pot so much in 10 years that it's hard for people to focus and feel like this is a new wave of combination: death penalty, loss of housing, loss of ability to advocate for LGBT rights, speech rights, all of this stuff. So, you can sort of say, okay, the environment's changed. This is really scary. But we also have to acknowledge the way tech has changed, and tech since 2016 has been very actively manipulated and used by bad actors. And we've seen it in elections, and it is a tool of authoritarianism. It's a tool of amplifying hate and shifting conversations and online norms. And for people who are saying, I need to fact check this, or this is, let me tell you in, in excruciating lawyer detail about every piece of this bill—that person is me—my ability to cut through the combination of misinformation and algorithms is nearly impossible. And it's not just a personal messaging failure, it's also a structural tech difference in how the type of messages that we are sharing are treated differently within social media platforms. So, so that's like a slight thing, but to say, like- the reason I'm bringing that up is because the moment we're at is that the harm is already happening. People are being hurt in Uganda. They're not waiting until the bill is gazetted or, you know, there have been court cases now filed in the Ugandan courts. Mobs are not waiting to see if this bill will become- like, if it will get officially gazetted, it's been signed and assented to by the president, and people are being evicted and healthcare workers are being detained. That's happening now. So, we have to, like, we have to support the movement in Uganda to deal right now with the harm that is happening to the community—the evictions, the shelter raids, the loss of health services, particularly HIV services. People are scared to go get their meds. If people are scared to go get their meds, their HIV gets a lot worse. We're, we are...And that's okay for the government of Uganda. They are, the government of Uganda, the president is saying, it is okay with me if those people die. And, and as movements, as human rights defenders, we have to say no, we're not going to let these people die. That's the most urgent thing, right? But from a political movement standpoint, we also really have this moment where there's going to be these pending court cases and courts are political everywhere, and courts are looking at the law in a context everywhere. I'm not gonna pretend that this is a Uganda-specific problem or unique. We have an obligation to support the movement in Uganda and to support global movements to create as much pressure, as much outrage, as much drawing the line and saying absolutely not. This kind of bill absolutely is not constitutional in the Ugandan context. It does not align with international human rights norms. It does not, uh, it doesn't align with Uganda's own human rights commitments that they have made in treaty. And it's just, it's absolutely we have to hold the line with outrage, with clarity, and with actual consequences and consequences for the actors who are responsible, not necessarily average Ugandan people—this is not a call for economic sanctions or cuts to HIV funding—but that funding should not be going to government ministries that are promoting the criminalization of LGBTQ people. And so this is the time- this- while listeners are listening, this is sort of the moment in which we have to change the political environment and the sense of consequence in which the courts are working in Uganda. And that's what we've been asked to do by Uganda civil society. And as you're thinking about yourself as an American listener or a listener in another country that has a foreign policy or a development relationship with Uganda, that's our obligation right now. We have some longer-term obligations around what we're exporting there in terms of Evangelical Church people too. But our immediate responsibilities are quite urgent.

Jennie: Okay. So, because I know you can handle it, I do have something that this made me think of. What are the implications for this and PEPFAR, like, what is this gonna mean?

Beirne: So, Jennie's talking about the president's emergency plan for AIDS relief, which is our largest global, the US' largest global health program and the world's largest sort of single disease global health program. Uganda has long been a focal point for PEPFAR, for the people living with HIV, and for the needs of people living with HIV. And since the very beginning, there has been cycles of conflict between the Ugandan president, Museveni, and public health and, like, facts. And so he had a big thing back in the early 2000s where he burned a lot of condoms. He sort of goes through cycles of relationship, but he really loves his reputation as being on the vanguard of the HIV response. He loves his HIV reputation and he has just destroyed it. And that kind of destruction, like it needs to stick to him just in terms of his brand, his, uh, what he, what people perceive of him as. Because this bill is incompatible with PEPFAR and it is incompatible with the AIDS response and any kind of statement by the Minister of Health in Uganda saying, "this won't affect it at all, we'll keep doing just what we, we've been doing," is bullocks. Like, it's, it's just absolutely not true. It's already not true.

Ophelia: I mean, it's especially bullocks because her very first response, the very first tweet she sent out when the bill was signed was like, “oh, thank you so much for this important bill,” and then she kinda backtracked when they were like, “okay, but what about HIV?” kind of, so the- yeah, like, that's a good point. The Uganda government is very happy to take this reputation as, you know, we are the AIDS champ-, you know, anti-AIDS champion, whatever. And when they are doing this programing with PEPFAR and with other funds that support this kinda work, they, toe the line of like, "oh yeah, we are happy to work with gay populations” and things like that, but when it comes to, you know, reality, they're, you know, they're not giving a good picture and that- the fact that this law passed is also a reflection of the fact that they have been doing a poor job and especially for LGBT organizations kind of holding the line there, then, people living with HIV who are also queer, who are also sex workers, you know, it's not a good time for them. So, it's very important for us to, to use this opportunity to pierce through that veil where they like to cover and pretend that when they're in donor meetings, they have a different tone and then when it comes to reality, they are doing something else so that they can maintain their political power.

Beirne: Yeah, so, I mean, Jennie, on a really practical level, PEPFAR, the U.S. Government and the AIDS response gives huge amounts of money every year to sustain the AIDS response in Uganda. These processes in each country happen through something called the Country Operating Plans. And the Country Operating Plan for Uganda is currently on an indefinite hold because it's unclear how you proceed. And the Ministry of Health wants to say, no, this won't affect anything. But that's patently untrue if normalization of homosexuality is criminalized. And HIV response absolutely requires being able to have stigma-free places in which people can talk about their actual risks, why they need pre-exposure prophylaxis or why, who, if you want a sustained HIV response, people have to be able to trust their healthcare providers. They have to be able to tell them who their partners are. They have to be able to talk about what they're scared of. Housing instability is a huge risk with HIV. And you need sort of to be able to be in one place and pick up your meds to stay on medication, you have to not be scared to go pick up your meds because you're going to be known or perceived to be gay and you fear arrest if you go to a place that people perceive to be a place where gay people go—that's already happening. And then, when you criminalize information and speech on top of that, it is very unclear how you have an HIV response that can work. Many of our PEPFAR partners in Uganda are most skilled, who are already trusted in community or in clinical setting. Those groups will be criminalized. They either already are like SMUG, Sexual Minorities Uganda, they're already criminalized and, like, that's- you can't get to marginalized communities except through marginalized communities and their own leadership and their own organizations. PEPFAR has been making slow but steady progress on that and can't go backwards. We won't reach HIV goals. We won't reach human goals. We won't reach the human beings who need their medications this week if they do not have a safe unstigmatized place to go. And that's not something we had won at before this bill. We were already fighting really hard, a lot of huge stigma and discrimination issues in HIV. And again, not just in Uganda, like this is a sustained problem everywhere. Heaping this high-profile criminalization on top of it, where any organization that is meaningfully engaged with the community now risks losing their right to exist as an organization—that's specifically in the bill—and risking criminal penalties. And the Ugandan government and the Ministry of Health has not been able to tell PEPFAR anything other than platitudes about how these things can coexist. And so, the Country Operating Plan remains on indefinite hold right now.

Jennie: Okay. I wanna be cognizant of time. Can we wrap up with what can our audience do? Like, what actions can our audience take right now to support people in Uganda?

Ophelia: I mean, I also ask myself this question every day because I have the misfortune of not being able to be on the ground. I think the first important thing is to pay attention because in these media cycles, these days, they are so short, you know, today it's the smoke in this age or it's the, it’s the...there's also so many disasters happening around us so it's hard, it's hard to pay attention. But these are long fights and we're gonna be in the fight for some time. Beirne mentioned the petition that have been filed, that had to be filed, they have to wait for a response, there's gazetting, there's all these things that are happening. So, to pay attention, I can share with you some accounts that I follow that I trust on social media, in terms of updates—to pay attention, to boost their messages, to retweet them, to boost the GoFund and other fundraisers that they, that they post, to donate if you can. And then also to hold your own people, you know, to pay attention to: what are the links with your own people? Like do you have a representative who happens to be named in these kinds of conversations that you need to call? Do you need to show up to a city hall? Do you need to call Intel and tell them, you know, someone's, your general counsel's wife is in Uganda? So, pay attention to what's going on in Uganda and to see the links between what's happening in the U.S. and to know that, you know, fascism is usually kind of experimented and then brought back elsewhere. I think that's important. And then also to, yeah, just to be in, to be in so in allyship and solidarity with the LGBT people around you, as well. I think it's also easy to be in solidarity with people that you don't know about, you know, these poor Africans, but there are LGBT people around you that you can also be in solidarity with, because we're in a global movement and LGBT groups in the U.S. have been very, I mean, at least many of them have been very vocal about this and are also supporting us. That's another way for you to stay engaged. Yeah. And to, yeah, to stay learning and to stay open to ideas and to, yeah, to be kind to everybody, that's always important.

Jennie: And we'll include links in our show notes of groups that Ophelia thinks that we should be making sure to follow on the ground in Uganda.

Ophelia: Yeah. I think I'll just mention one, Convening For Equality, which is where Social Minorities Uganda and a few other organizations have kind of coalesced right now to coordinate their response. But they usually also boost smaller organizations in Uganda. Many organizations have had to go underground or to- and some of them were closed before the bill was passed, maybe like 30 of them were closed before the bill was passed. So, that kind of umbrella group is a good place to start because they're, you know, they're in touch with LGBT groups on the ground.

Beirne: So, everything that Ophelia said, for sure. And I think resisting despair is probably the most important thing we all can do this Pride. And that includes maybe making a note for yourself to speak out every day. Speak with- whether it's calling your senators or your representatives and just saying, what are you doing on the bill in Uganda? It creates incentive for them to ask that question. We do have- the U.S. has done a pretty- the White House has led a very, very clear statement about reassessing all the parts of our relationship, including PEPFAR, including visa sanctions on some of the human rights violators. We now need them to follow up. We need to maintain this kind of pressure and we need to see this kind of pressure from other multilateral institutions like UN bodies, the World Bank and others. We need to make sure they're all taking this really seriously and understand that this is a domino, this is a test, and the test will come for all of us. Even if you are a tremendously selfish person, it will come for you eventually. So, this is a really important opportunity to speak out. Twitter is small, but it is mighty. It is important to build a drumbeat of solidarity with LGBTQ people in Uganda and to continue to call on your representatives, your White House, if you are in another country, your folks, saying what are you doing? And to say- the very specific thing that Ophelia mentioned is that, you know, for Family Watch International, the head of Family Watch International is Sharon Slater and she travels to Uganda and does a lot of speaking with her husband, who is a, you know, relatively well-regarded, reputable general counsel for the Intel Corporation. So, we're talking about people who aren't just marginalized as, as sort of right-wing actors in the United States. That he is using sort of the power and reputation of Intel to help Ugandans figure out how to, you know, to organize, and peace from other countries figure out how to organize to eradicate the LGBTQ communities in their countries is outrageous. And that's something, as Americans, we need to look at the American actors and make sure that they face political consequences, social consequences—people should be shunned more, I think for, you know, trying to eradicate an entire population. We should maybe bring back some, a little bit of social shunning for that. And the fact that he's able to have this sort of very well-laundered reputation, while causing that kind of harm in Uganda, is something that we all can stand against.

Ophelia: Yeah. And just just to add one, one last note. I think it's also important to know that this is, like, a global effort and the Uganda version just has passed so quickly, but there's a similar bill in Ghana that we've been fighting. That's kind of stalled thankfully, but could pick up momentum with the passage of the bill in Uganda. And Beirne mentioned in passing the meeting of the parliamentarian—so, when Sharon Slater was in Kampala, she hosted some other parliamentarians from other parts of the continent to talk about similar bills and the copycat bill was seen in the Kenyan context only a few days later. So to pay attention to the fight, you know, that's going on in different places. Sometimes it's hard to keep track of because, it's like, they keep coming, but they're part of the same group. So, as we pay attention to one, it's, you know, we can scale that to the rest of the continent. And Florida.

Beirne: And that's a much better place to end. And Florida. That's a much better place to end than just my vitriol towards the general- [laughter]

Ophelia: That is also very important. Very important.

Jennie: Well, Beirne, Ophelia, thank you so much for being here. It was a real joy talking to you about a really terrible law.

Ophelia: Thank you for having us.

Beirne: Thank you, Jennie.

Jennie: Okay y'all, I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. I had a wonderful time talking to Beirne and Ophelia. It Is really important that we are paying attention to what is happening in the U.S., right? And how it ties to what is happening globally and this real trend of anti-LGBTQ legislation. It is so important that we are paying attention and making those connections and seeing that what is happening in Uganda really has ties to what is happening here in the U.S. So, make sure you are paying attention and with that I will see you all next week for our regular episode!

If you have any questions, comments, or topics you would like us to cover, always feel free to shoot me an email. You can reach me at jennie@reprosfightback.com or you can find us on social media. We're at @RePROsFightBack on Facebook and Twitter or @reprosfb on Instagram. If you love our podcast and wanna make sure more people find it, take the time to rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Or if you wanna make sure to support the podcast, you can also donate on our website at reprofightback.com. Thanks all!