World
Stolen document highlights homophobia in Uganda
‘If you don’t do something about your gay kid, he’ll end up in a grave with his guts hanging out’
Ugandan LGBT rights advocate Frank Mugisha blames American evangelicals for spreading homophobia in east Africa. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)
By THOM SENZEE
There is a surprising portrait in Uganda’s parliament building. It’s an oil-painted Idi Amin sporting a toothy smile and full military regalia. Amin poses while engaging in his trademark low-down, dual-fisted version of a fist pump.
Normally, it would be no surprise for a tourist to encounter a painting of a country’s former president inside the house of its legislature. But Amin was no ordinary president. He was a brutal dictator. He was allegedly a cannibal who literally ate his opponents and detractors for breakfast. The evidence for Amin’s cannibalism were the corpses of political foes found dangling by their Achilles tendons, after he was deposed, from meat hooks inside of a walk-in refrigerator at his compound.
Earlier this year a British journalist—let’s call him Ian Smith because, as you’ll see, disclosing his identity might preclude him from ever visiting Uganda again—went to the Chamber of Parliament in Kampala and took photos of some of the building’s more interesting features. The place was a ghost town at the time thanks to a special event where members of parliament were then gathered.
“That made it easy for me to steal the document,” recalls Smith.
The document he stole is titled: “Protect our young people from homosexuality: Debate and pass the anti-homosexuality bill now!”
Smith took the document from the Press Office at Parliament when the secretary wasn’t looking. It contains morbid images, such as one that may be posed or altered to depict a human figure lying on a bed with his or her intestines literally extruding onto a bed from his or her rectum.
The photo purports to be of a young man named Turyamureeba Wycliffe, who supposedly died from complications of “fisting” and tuberculosis (supposedly also brought on as a result of his homosexuality).
Mercifully and perhaps manipulatively, the document also includes a photo of Wycliffe in far happier and healthier days sitting in a decidedly effeminate posture. The juxtaposed imagery more subtly drives home the same point the brief hammers out in writing as, “Attention Ugandan MPs and parents: If you don’t do something about your gay (or gay-acting) kid, he’ll end up in a grave with his guts hanging out, just like this one did in Katungu Village.“
Uganda’s relatively newfound hatred for homosexuality is directly traceable to American missionaries who penetrated the country’s mindset by providing assistance in the fight against the east African AIDS epidemic.
A document obtained by the Blade was stolen from the Uganda Parliament’s pressroom and contains shocking claims about homosexuality. (Photo courtesy Thom Senzee)
Uganda, which not so long ago seemed equal to Kenya and South Africa as a symbol of hope that liberal democracies could flourish on the African continent, been indoctrinated into fervent homophobia by American evangelical diehards.
Their efforts have not only won followers in east Africa. Some argue the work of rightwing religious organizations with ties to people like former governors and Fox News celebrities, Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin, has created a murderous environment for LGBT Ugandans.
David Kato, a Ugandan LGBT rights activist, was beaten to death after winning a lawsuit against a Ugandan magazine called “Rolling Stone” (no connection to the American publication of the same name) for publishing a list of names and photographs of 100 LGBT-rights leaders, calling for their execution. The article was a welcomed “calling out of perpetrators” for anti-homosexuality groups in Uganda, such as the Coalition for the Advancement of Moral Values (CAMOVA), which claims authorship of the aforementioned document, and the Family Life Network. While there is no proof that Kato’s death was connected to the magazine article, the New York Times reported that Kato “knew he was a marked man.”
However, Kato’s surviving friend, the officer of a group called Sexual Minorities-Uganda (SMUG), Frank Mugisha, makes no bones about American evangelicals’ role in creating a terrorized environment for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people in Uganda.
“Most of the propaganda can be traced to U.S evangelists,” he told the Washington Blade. “They have been the most visible in Uganda.”
But it wasn’t always this way, according to Mugisha, who in 2011 received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Human Rights.
“The religious propaganda is traced back from the late ‘90s—especially in Uganda where missionaries came in to do HIV/AIDS work,” he said. “But they became more visible in 2000.”
Mugisha said the first time he saw the CAMOVA brief was when the Blade supplied it to him via email. He found it disgusting, but not surprising. In fact, he says, Uganda’s powerful, American-connected religious right has a firm grip on the ears of members of parliament.
“Our members of parliament go to church a lot. They interact with our church leaders. Politics in Uganda are centered around the church. So yes, the politicians unfortunately believe all these things.”
For journalist Ian Smith, the CAMOVA brief begged to be snatched for exposure in the media.
“I didn’t feel disgusted when I saw it sitting there in the press room,” Smith recalls. “I genuinely thought it was comical. Then, of course, you think more deeply into it and you realize, these people really believe this absurd rubbish.”
Multiple attempts to obtain comment about the document via the email address noted as contact information for the document’s author(s) yielded no response. Attempts to obtain reactions to the document from members of the Ugandan Parliament were also unsuccessful. According to Mugisha, there is little support for LGBT people among Uganda’s parliamentarians. But, he says, there is some.
“Yes there is,” he said. “But it’s very minimal; and most of the members of parliament are not comfortable giving us support in public. If they do support us they would rather it remains quiet.”
That means his and his colleagues’ work is lonely and dangerous. Most support comes from outside the country—from Americans and Europeans. What little support Sexual Minorities-Uganda gets from allies inside the country comes cloaked in secrecy.
“We do advocacy every day,” he says. “It happens at different levels. I spend half of my time in Uganda in meetings with different political leaders at all levels—from local leaders to national leaders. I lobby government, non-government organizations and civil society, trying to encourage them to work with SMUG.”
LGBT-rights advocates in Uganda and outside of the country blame the most recent, most radical and most violent anti-LGBT propaganda and homophobic activity in east Africa on a seminar organized by Ugandan Stephen Langa.
According to the New York Times, in 2009, Langa invited three prominent American evangelical Christian ministers to speak to Ugandan parents about the supposed threat of recruitment of their children by leaders of the so-called homosexual agenda for all kinds of terrible purposes.
At least one of the three was associated with discredited and recently shuttered “conversion-therapy” purveyor, Exodus International.
Another of the American evangelists blamed for setting in motion Uganda’s anti-gay hysteria with the 2009 seminar, entitled “Exposing the Homosexuals’ Agenda,” is Scott Lively.
Lively is author of a “gay-proofing” book for parents who fear having a gay child, which has been panned by mainstream psychology practitioners as “psychobabble” and “quackery.”
Mugisha says LGBT people in his country still live in constant fear and danger as a result of the seminar held more than four years ago.
“What I can say is that the Family Life Network and the anti-gay groups in Uganda have spread so much propaganda, which in turn has caused fear within the Uganda people,” he said. “This fear has brought hatred toward known and openly gay persons in Uganda, hence increasing the homophobia and hate crimes.”
The good news is that the anti-homosexuality bill, which the CAMOVA brief implored the Ugandan Parliament to pass last year, has not passed. If it had passed in its original form, homosexuality would have been punishable by death (the law was later rewritten to specify life in prison as the penalty for some convictions of homosexuality).
Further good news, according to Ian Smith, is the possibility that even the document presented to MPs by the homophobic Coalition for the Advancement of Moral Values in December 2012 may itself represent a silver lining of sorts.
“You would have thought all of their work of sewing hate was well done by now,” says Smith. “You wouldn’t think they would feel the need to go to such lengths as creating and passing about such a load of rubbish as this document.”
Perhaps, he says, the document in question is a sign of a cracking at the seams of the anti-homosexuality lobby in Uganda.
“Clearly there’s a feeling among them that they have not succeeded in convincing people that gay people are bad for Uganda.”
Was there ever a time in east Africa when LGBT people could live without fear of harassment, beatings and murder? According to Mugisha, there were indeed far better times.
“I would say all the way back before the British came and colonized us,” Mugisha said. “LGBT people were free. But more recently, before the coming of the evangelicals—especially the U.S. evangelicals.”
Recent events notwithstanding, Mugisha is hopeful about Uganda’s future.
“With the dialogue now and people talking about gay rights, we hope that things will change,” he said.
Even without passage of the anti-homosexuality law, homosexual acts are still against the law in Uganda, though Mugisha remains optimistic that change is coming.
“I think that there is a possibility that homosexuality will be decriminalized soon,” said Mugisha. “And the sodomy laws may be removed.”
Until then, Mugisha and myriad others in Uganda and across east Africa simply focus on surviving while working for change.
“SMUG can exist,” he said. “We are doing nothing illegal [and] we can exist in Uganda as an association. But we have to be careful. As an openly gay man, I can exist. But also, I have to be careful and take precautions some times.”
CAMOVA Anti-homosexuality Brief Uganda – Washington Blade exclusive
India
Few transgender people benefit from India’s low-income housing program
Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana launched in 2015
The Indian government on Dec. 15 informed parliament that only one transgender person in Jammu and Kashmir has been recorded as a beneficiary under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana since the housing program was launched a decade ago.
PMAY is a federal government program aimed at expanding access to affordable housing for low- and middle-income households, including through credit-linked subsidies. The parliamentary disclosure indicates that trans beneficiaries have been virtually absent from the program’s records in the union territory, despite official guidelines listing trans people as a priority category.
In a written reply to a question in the upper house of parliament, known as the Rajya Sabha, the Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry said Jammu and Kashmir recorded zero trans beneficiaries under the program in each financial year from 2020–2021 through 2025–2026, with the cumulative total since inception remaining at one.
The Indian government launched the program on June 25, 2015, and the Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry implemented it.
The parliamentary reply came in response to a question on whether trans people are being included under the housing scheme and what steps have been taken to address barriers to access. The ministry said both PMAY and its successor, PMAY 2.0, are demand-driven programs, with responsibility for identifying and selecting beneficiaries resting with state and regional governments.
The ministry said the program lists trans people as a priority group, alongside widows, single women, people with disabilities, senior citizens, and other socially disadvantaged categories. It added that actual implementation depends on housing proposals and beneficiary lists submitted by state and regional governments.
According to figures the Indian government cited, a total of 809 trans beneficiaries have been recorded under PMAY and its successor, PMAY 2.0, since the programs were launched, with the vast majority concentrated in a small number of states. The southern state of Tamil Nadu accounts for 222 beneficiaries, followed by Andhra Pradesh with 186, and Odisha with 101. By contrast, several other states and federally administered regions, including Jammu and Kashmir, have reported either negligible or no coverage. India is administratively divided into 28 states and eight federally governed territories.
According to India’s 2011 national Census, Jammu and Kashmir recorded 4,137 trans residents. The same census counted 487,803 trans people nationwide, providing the most recent official population baseline for the community in India.
The ministry also said it has not conducted a specific survey to assess barriers faced by trans communities in accessing the scheme’s benefits. Instead, it said lessons from earlier implementation phases informed the design of the second phase of the program, launched on Sept. 1, 2024, which aims to support an additional 10 million urban beneficiaries over the next five years.
The parliamentary reply reveals an even more severe gap in Ladakh, India’s northernmost federally governed territory bordering China and Pakistan-administered areas and considered strategically critical to national security.
Official records show that Ladakh has not reported a single trans beneficiary under the housing scheme, either in recent years or cumulatively since the program began, with zero coverage recorded across all financial years listed in the Annexure. By comparison, Ladakh’s trans population stands at six, according to a written submission made to the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir in 2024.
Despite trans people being listed as a priority group in the scheme’s guidelines, the federal government said that as of November 2025 it had sanctioned more than 12.2 million homes nationwide under both versions of the program, with over 9.6 million homes completed and delivered. At the same time, data from Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, and several other regions show little to no recorded housing uptake by trans beneficiaries.
Speaking with the Washington Blade, Meera Parida, a trans activist, former member of the National Council for Transgender Persons in India’s eastern zone, and a former state advisor under the housing and urban development department, said the 2011 Census does not reflect the full size of India’s trans population, noting that public recognition and self-identification were far more limited at the time. She pointed to later government data collection efforts, including the National Portal for Transgender Persons that the Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry launched in 2020, as evidence that official counts have expanded beyond what was captured in the last Census.
“I am surprised that around the country only over 800 people benefited from the scheme, because most of the transgender population is from socially backward classes,” said Parida. “So they do not have a house and no family. Five years have passed since the NALSA judgment and the Transgender Protection Act; even after all these, if only over 800 transgender persons got home, that is a sad situation.”
Parida said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has publicly positioned trans people’s welfare as a priority, but argued that the issue requires greater attention at the administrative level. She said the prime minister’s office should issue clear directions to all relevant departments to ensure trans people receive housing support and that implementation moves more quickly.
“There is still widespread discrimination and stigma against the community. Many transgender people are afraid to speak openly, which is why this issue continues to persist,” Parida said. “If stigma and discrimination are not addressed seriously, the marginalized community will remain invisible and reluctant to come forward. In that situation, the government will also be limited in what it can do. State governments should work with activists and community organizations to build accurate data. The government has decided to resume the Census in 2026, but the enumerators who go door to door must be sensitized to engage respectfully with the transgender community. The government should also improve awareness of housing schemes, because many people simply do not know they exist. A single-window system is needed.”
A Wider Bridge on Friday announced it will shut down at the end of the month.
The group that “mobilizes the LGBTQ community to fight antisemitism and support Israel and its LGBTQ community” in a letter to supporters said financial challenges prompted the decision.
“After 15 years of building bridges between LGBTQ communities in North America and Israel, A Wider Bridge has made the difficult decision to wind down operations as of Dec. 31, 2025,” it reads.
“This decision comes after challenging financial realities despite our best efforts to secure sustainable funding. We deeply appreciate our supporters and partners who made this work possible.”
Arthur Slepian founded A Wider Bridge in 2010.
The organization in 2016 organized a reception at the National LGBTQ Task Force’s Creating Change Conference in Chicago that was to have featured to Israeli activists. More than 200 people who protested against A Wider Bridge forced the event’s cancellation.
A Wider Bridge in 2024 urged the Capital Pride Alliance and other Pride organizers to ensure Jewish people can safely participate in their events in response to an increase in antisemitic attacks after Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported authorities in Vermont late last year charged Ethan Felson, who was A Wider Bridge’s then-executive director, with lewd and lascivious conduct after alleged sexual misconduct against a museum employee. Rabbi Denise Eger succeeded Felson as A Wider Bridge’s interim executive director.
A Wider Bridge in June honored U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) at its Pride event that took place at the Capital Jewish Museum in D.C. The event took place 15 days after a gunman killed two Israeli Embassy employees — Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim — as they were leaving an event at the museum.
“Though we are winding down, this is not a time to back down. We recognize the deep importance of our mission and work amid attacks on Jewish people and LGBTQ people – and LGBTQ Jews at the intersection,” said A Wider Bridge in its letter. “Our board members remain committed to showing up in their individual capacities to represent queer Jews across diverse spaces — and we know our partners and supporters will continue to do the same.”
Editor’s note: Washington Blade International News Editor Michael K. Lavers traveled to Israel and Palestine with A Wider Bridge in 2016.
Malaysia
Malaysian police raids spark renewed concern among LGBTQ activists
202 people arrested at men-only venues in Kuala Lumpur on Nov. 28
In the weeks since a Nov. 28 police raid on men-only venues in Kuala Lumpur, queer activists in Malaysia say they have stepped up efforts to coordinate legal assistance for people detained under state Shariah laws.
Justice for Sisters, Pelangi, and other groups have been providing legal referrals, court monitoring, and emergency support following the arrests, as advocates warn that enforcement targeting LGBTQ communities has intensified.
In Malaysia, a Muslim-majority but multi-ethnic and multi-faith country, consensual same-sex sexual conduct is criminalized under both civil and Islamic law. The federal penal code bans “carnal intercourse against the order of nature,” a provision that applies nationwide, while state-level Shariah laws governing Muslims prohibit same-sex relations and gender nonconformity, including cross-dressing. Together, the dual-track legal system allows authorities to pursue LGBTQ people under parallel civil and religious statutes.
According to Justice for Sisters, 202 people — including venue owners, staff, and customers — were arrested and detained overnight. The organization in a statement said detainees were repeatedly denied access to legal counsel and communication with family members, and that their identities and images were exposed publicly — actions it said led to humiliation and, in some cases, job losses.
According to testimonies collected by Justice for Sisters and several other NGOs, detainees reported multiple procedural violations during the legal process. In a document the group published, detainees said they were not informed of the charges against them, were denied access to legal counsel, and phone communication for hours, and, in the case of foreign nationals, were not given access to embassies or translators. The document also described interrogations that included intrusive questions about sexual practices and orientation, as well as detention conditions in which detainees were repeatedly ordered to sit, stand, and recline without explanation and transported in overcrowded vehicles, with 30 to 40 people placed in trucks designed for far fewer passengers.
Detainees also reported being subjected to degrading treatment while in custody.
Accounts said detainees were denied access to toilets for extended periods and instructed to urinate into bottles, which were later thrown at them. Some detainees said officers suggested using rubber bands to restrict urination. Detainees also said authorities kept them awake overnight and repeatedly ordered them to sit upright or monitor others to prevent them from sleeping.
“We call on the Malaysian Human Rights Commission (SUHAKAM) and the Ministry of Health (KKM) to immediately launch an independent and unbiased assessment and investigation into the actions of the agencies involved during the raid, detention, and subsequent procedures, after the court rejected the remand extension request on Nov. 29, 2025,” Justice for Sisters said in a statement. “This raid has had a serious impact on public health. Many individuals reported heightened mental distress, including suicidal thoughts and severe psychological stress, affecting their ability to carry out daily activities such as eating, working, sleeping, and accessing medical treatment. When safe-sex tools such as condoms or pre-exposure prophylaxis are used to imply criminal activity, it directly undermines progress in the country’s public health response.”
Justice for Sisters also said law enforcement officers must conduct investigations professionally and fairly, while upholding the presumption that detainees are innocent until proven guilty. The organization in a statement said police must carry out their duties in a manner that preserves public trust and confidence in the justice system.
Rights groups say enforcement actions against LGBTQ gatherings in Malaysia have not been limited to the capital.
In June 2025, police in the northeastern state of Kelantan raided a private rented property described by authorities as a “gay party,” arresting 20 men, according to state police statements.
According to Reuters, Malaysian law enforcement authorities said they would review their procedures following the November raid. The report cited Kuala Lumpur Police Chief Fadil Marsus as saying that 171 Malaysian nationals were released from custody after authorities found no evidence to prosecute them.
The Washington Blade reached out to the Royal Malaysia Police for comment, but did not receive an immediate response.
“We do not want a situation where raids and arrests are carried out but, in the end, the evidence is inadmissible,” Marsus said, according to Reuters.
As of Dec. 1, all but one of the 37 foreign nationals detained in the raid had been released, with the remaining person held on an immigration-related matter, according to Reuters. Authorities have not publicly disclosed whether they remain in custody.
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