African countries are feeling the rippling effects of growing homophobia and anti-LGBTQ+ laws throughout the continent. George Peter Kaluma, a member of veteran Kenyan opposition politician Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement, is spearheading a campaign to further criminalize queer acts in Kenya.
“We want to prohibit everything to do with homosexuality,” Kaluma told Catherine Byaruhanga for BBC News. Gay sex is already illegal in Kenya.
The move comes on the heels of Uganda’s new anti-LGBTQ+ law that US President Biden called “a tragic violation of universal human rights.” The Ugandan law drummed up international outcry for being one of the harshest anti-gay laws in recent history.
The law, signed by President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, orders the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality,” defined as same-sex relations involving HIV-positive people, children, or other vulnerable people. (And so, if two consenting HIV positive men have sex or if consenting teens have sex, the death penalty could apply.) The vague language apples to those who use “misrepresentation” or “undue influence” to engage in gay sex. Additionally, anyone found guilty of “promoting homosexuality” in the country could face up to 20 years in prison. Gay sex and same-sex relationships were already illegal in Uganda prior to the “aggravated homosexuality” law. So, consenting adults can be imprisoned for gay sex, to be clear.
“The bill will propose a total ban on what the West calls sex-reassignment prescriptions and procedures, and prohibit all activities that promote homosexuality, in terms of… gay parades, drag shows, wearing the colours, the flags, the emblems of the LGBTQ group,” Kaluma told BBC News.
Kaluma recently attended a meeting in Uganda co-sponsored by Christian right-wing organisation, Family Watch International (FWI). Dr Kapya Kaoma, a Zambian priest in the Anglican Church and an academic at Boston University in the US, told BBC that African countries are being targeted by FWI to fuel “militant homophobia.”
Kaluma says he is confident that the bill will become law.
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