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Flood of anti-homosexuality bills in Africa threatens us all

Ugandan lawmakers on Tuesday approved revised Anti-Homosexuality Bill

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(Photo by NASA)

Castration. Banishment. Execution.

This is the fate that a slew of new bills and their proponents in Africa seek for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people: Not only to criminalize adult same-sex sexual intimacy, but to eradicate sexual and gender diversity–including by executing queer people. 32 countries in Africa already criminalize consensual same-sex conduct. The new wave of laws goes much further, enforcing public silence around LGBTQ people’s existence, enlisting citizens as spies, and making every human rights proponent a potential criminal. 

LGBTQ Africans are a fact of life. No law will make them disappear. But by promoting laws that posit queer people’s very existence as a problem to be eliminated, and constructing an unseen enemy that could be hiding around any corner, politicians convince the public to accept shockingly repressive legislation. 

The ideology underpinning such laws is nothing short of genocidal. Under international law, genocide is the attempt to destroy a group of people, in whole or in part, including by ā€œdeliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.ā€ The strict legal definition of genocide only applies to ā€œnational, ethnical, racial or religiousā€ groups, but no other term as clearly captures the depravity of legislation that seeks to eliminate people because of their sexuality or gender. 

Genocidal ideology underlies Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2023, passed by Parliament on March 21. It attracted international condemnation as possibly the worst anti-LGBTQ law anywhere in the world, imposing the death penalty for some forms of consensual same-sex conduct. That bears repeating: 387 members of Parliament in Uganda voted to subject gay people to the firing squad for consensual sex. They voted for the death penalty yet again after President Yoweri Museveni returned the bill to Parliament on April 20, requesting amendments including the removal of the death penalty. The revised bill, passed on May 2, contains only minor changes. Families and landlords will still be forced to turn out queer people living into the streets. Speaking up for the ā€œnormalizationā€ of sexual and gender diversity, or funding work that advances human rights or economic inclusion for LGBTQ people, still leads to a 20-year prison sentence. Prison officials and social welfare agents would be tasked with ā€œrehabilitatingā€ people convicted under the bill in a form of state-sponsored ā€œconversion therapyā€ practices. The law maintains a ā€œduty to reportā€ anyone suspected of homosexuality, calling on everyone in Uganda to support the police state by spying on their neighbors, family members and coworkers.

Uganda is only the tip of the iceberg. Its brand of virulent homophobia appears to be contagious: In Kenya, MP George Peter Kaluma submitted the Family Protection Bill of 2023 to the National Assembly on AprilĀ 7. The bill was a harsh response to a Supreme Court victory affirming that the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission had the constitutional right to register and operate as a non-governmental organization. Kenya’s proposed law follows Uganda’s example in providing the death penalty for some consensual same-sex acts, prohibiting organizations from ā€œnormalizingā€ homosexuality, and penalizing landlords who rent living quarters to persons in same-sex relationships. It copies and pastes language from Uganda’s bill that forces citizens to become thought police:Ā If you ā€œsuspectā€ that someone ā€œintendsā€ to commit an act prohibited by the proposed law and do not report them, you can be fined or jailed. It also prohibits ā€œcross-dressing,ā€ an attempt to specifically legislate trans people out of existence.

Ghana’s Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Act of 2021, currently before Parliament, seems to have provoked less global outrage: It prescribes 3-year prison sentences for offenders rather than life imprisonment or the death penalty. Yet some of its provisions are even more draconian. They criminalize the very existence of diverse identities and orientations: a person can be shut behind bars for ā€œholding outā€ asĀ ā€œlesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, ally, pansexual and any other diverse sexual or gender identity.ā€ Again, an attempt to legislate queer people out of existence.

Other proposed anti-homosexuality legislation looms in Francophone countries that were spared the British colonial heritage of criminializing so-called unnatural offenses. In Mali, Justice Minister and Keeper of the Seals Mahamadou Kassogue described homosexuality as ā€œan unnatural relationship,ā€ stating that it would soon be banned and that the Malian ā€œjustice does not accept this practice of homosexuality.ā€ In Niger, President Mohamed Bazoum made remarks on the intention to introduce a new Penal Code that would criminalize homosexuality. 

The tabling of legislation has been accompanied by a barrage of comments from politicians calling for atrocities to be perpetrated against LGBTQ people. On March 21 during Uganda’s Parliamentary Caucus on the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, MP Sarah Opendi made statements to the effect that life imprisonment upon conviction for homosexuality is inadequate, adding that the most appropriate sentence would be castration. In Tanzania, a senior ruling party member Mary Chatanda also called for castration of people in same-sex relationships in March. Like Uganda, Tanzania already has a life sentence on the books for ā€œunnatural offensesā€ and while no new law is pending, Chatanda’s comments were followed by a spike in anti-LGBTQ violence and raised fears that new laws might be tabled. Still within the same month, Burundi President Evariste Ndayishimiye urged citizens to “curse those who indulge in homosexuality, because God cannot bear it.” He added that “they must be banished, treated as pariahs in our country.” Queer people are already denied other fundamental rights in Burundi, where the law lists homosexuality as a basis of expelling students from secondary schools, thus interfering with the right to access education.

From the death penalty to elimination of safe access to housing, health care and education to calls for castration, banishment and mandatory ā€œconversion therapyā€ practices, these laws and statements share one characteristic: They seek to destroy LGBTQ lives and livelihoods. Outright has documented how even before such bills are passed, they contribute to increased violence by members of the public as well as by law enforcement officials. These bills are deadly, and while legislating the elimination of queer people from public existence may not legally constitute genocide, it is genocidal thinking. Politicians who call for the execution, castration or banishment of queer people should also be aware that they are advocating crimes against humanity. The implementation of such laws could be tantamount to gender persecution — persecution on the basis of gender as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population — which is prohibited under the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court.  

Meanwhile, not only queer people but also the general public in countries passing such bills will see their rights eviscerated through provisions that regulate what opinions they can express, what human rights causes they can support and to whom they can provide goods and services. Internet users, medical providers, artists, well-wishers, allies and creatives will find themselves in conflict with these laws.

Human rights are universal, inherent, inalienable and indivisible. Outright not only recommends that these bills are not affected into law, but also urges all civil society to condemn such moves to curb the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the name of eliminating LGBTQ existence. 

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Trans rights have reached a crisis point

We should fear DeSantis more than Trump

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Michael Knowles speaks at CPAC. (Screen capture via Vimeo)

Trans rights have reached a crisis point. There’s no other way to say it. 

On March 4, CPAC speaker Michael Knowles plainly stated that ā€œif [transgenderism] is false, then for the good of society, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely – the whole preposterous ideology.ā€

To liken transness as a mere ideology is problematic on many different counts, but that paled in comparison to Knowles’s need for us to be eradicated. Eradication rhetoric is a genocidal tool, to ask and plead for an entire subpopulation to go away in one fell swoop is murderous and brutal. Genocides begin with this kind of rhetoric, then escalate to dangerous politicians being elected to office, then escalate even more to harsh policy, then escalate yet again when those harsh policies force humans to have to do many things — be locked in a cage, move out of the country, or even detransition, in this case. 

Look no further than what happened at the southern border during Trump’s years in office, when images of migrants and their children surfaced at maximum security facilities, lying on the floor with nothing but a meager blanket and barbed wire surrounding their bodies. 

Indeed, a lot of the CPAC conference was dedicated to engaging in these culture wars — but Knowles’s statement of eradication goes beyond the normal cultural bickering. This is why trans politics are at a dangerous turning point. 

Adding to this chaos are bathroom bills and sports policies that prevent trans high schoolers from accessing the bathroom they need, or playing on the right side of their sports team. 

In conversations with professionals, academics, and friends, I like to mention the fact that Republicans take peoples’ rights away when they notice that those people have gained more freedom. Think of it this way: when I was in high school, in 2010, far fewer trans people were out with their identities. Transness didn’t take a center stage in culture — be it on the left or on the right. And as a result, trans students were only attacked by bullies and in locker rooms, not by state politicians. 

But the rise of Gen Z has witnessed many high schoolers now flouting gender norms, going by nonbinary pronouns, and being proud of their gender variance. Moreover, society is filled with many more trans models and celebrities. When our presence becomes celebrated and known, Republicans will then take the necessary tools to push us back into the closet. 

What’s adding to the concern is the rise of smarter Republican candidates for the 2024 election who have exactly the same feelings of Trump but with higher intellects. Ron DeSantis is an example of a presidential contender who mirrors Trump’s bigotry and policies but is far more targeted and intelligent in his approach to public speaking and politics. Indeed, Democrats should be more afraid of DeSantis than of Trump. 

On an end note, I like to summon an old saying by the late Martin Luther King. ā€œThe arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.ā€ No matter how much cruelty Republicans will put us through, they won’t succeed in the long run. More and more of society is catching up to the fact that trans people deserve respect and fairness. There will come a day when we have to sigh less and less about the state of our rights. 

Isaac AmendĀ (he/him/his) is a trans man and young professional in the D.C. area. He was featured on National Geographic’s ā€˜Gender Revolution’ in 2017 as a student at Yale University. Amend is also on the board of the LGBT Democrats of Virginia. Find him on Instagram @isaacamend.

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The ā€˜Find Out’ generation: A new generation for a new America

We are willing to face down the forces of status quo

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(Photo by Ben Gingell/Bigstock)

In an op-ed I wrote in April entitled ā€œOn Gun Violence, the New Generation Will Not Be Silenced,ā€ I wrote about Tennessee State Representative Justin Thomas and Justin Pearson being expelled from the Tennessee Legislature.

Since then, both have been reinstated by local county governing boards that sent them back to the legislature unanimously. Let’s recall they and the remaining legislator Gloria Johnson’s ā€œcrime,ā€ was deciding enough was enough by protesting against gun violence on the legislative floor. The national support they have received since then has been enormous. 

Similarly, in Montana, Zooey Zephyr, the first transgender legislator there, was silenced by the Republican majority legislature there, being censured (prevented from public speaking) for saying there would be ā€œblood on the handsā€ of members that voted on an anti-trans piece of legislation.

Zephyr and the ā€œTennessee Three,ā€ as they’ve come to be called, are part of a new generation of leaders in America, or the ā€œfind outā€ generation that won’t settle for business as usual and are willing to face down the forces of status quo that want to maintain a system built on White supremacy and assimilation. 

They follow a lineage of resistance of those willing to cause ā€œgood trouble,ā€ as the late Congressman John Lewis once said. As the former head of the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee in the 60s, Lewis was arrested multiple times and was part of the Tennessee sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in Nashville. (He would later, in 2016, bring Congressional House proceedings to a halt in a protest against gun violence.)

Justin Jones himself has been arrested 13 times for non-violent protest and jokes that one of the reasons he ran for the state legislature is that ā€œmembers of the Tennessee Legislature can’t be arrested,ā€ which is true, at least while in session. But Justin’s arrests are part of the tradition of the civil rights movement in the South. Tennessee was indeed the home resistance. 

In May of 1960, over 150 students were arrested by the police for attempting to desegregate lunch counters in downtown Nashville. During the trial, the students, including Diane Nash, were defended by a group of 13 lawyers, headed by Z. Alexander Looby, a Black lawyer from the British West Indies, whose house was later bombed by segregationists. Looby and his wife were thankfully unharmed.

Later that day, 3,000 protesters marched to Nashville City Hall to confront Mayor Ben West to demand something be done about the violence. He agreed the lunch counters should be desegregated but that it should be up to the store managers.

The city later reached an agreement to desegregate numerous stores before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited desegregation altogether. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. later came to Nashville, saying he ā€œdid not come to bring inspiration, but to find it.ā€ 

Meanwhile, in Montana, Zooey Zephyr, the first transgender state legislator in Montana, follows in the footsteps of early LGBT activists/officeholders like the late Harvey Milk of San Francisco. Zephyr’s courageous stance against a majority of the legislature who voted for an anti-trans bill prohibiting gender-affirming healthcare for minors resulted in Zephyr being censured and prohibited from giving speeches on the House floor. Since then, there has been a tremendous national backlash against such fascist tactics both there and in Tennessee. 

As we look ahead to Junteenth and Pride next month, Jones, Pearson, and Zephyr are visible symbols of the rise of a new generation coming up, the ā€œfind outā€ generation that refuses to accept the status quo and who is willing to put everything on the line to face injustice in the name of service to their communities.

Whether it is gun violence, housing, or hate, leadership like this will create the multigenerational, intersectional leadership we need at the local, state, and federal levels in the Halls of Congress to bring about solutions to the issues we have been facing. To create a new America that works for everyone. And I’m here for it. 

A millennial based in Los Angeles, Steve Dunwoody is a veteran, college educator, and community advocate.

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Pride month should be every month

Let’s not keep supportive CEOs and LGBTQ police out of our parades

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(Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

I find it interesting we celebrate our Pride only one month a year. I take pride in being gay all year long. I am not opposed to celebrations in June; parades and festivals are great fun. I appreciate Capital Pride naming me a Pride Hero in 2016. Those magnetic signs decorating the convertible I rode in, now adorn my refrigerator. But for me Pride in being gay is something I have all year long.

It took me many years to feel that way. I was 34 when I finally came out, sharing who I was with others. One of the factors keeping me in the closet as a young person was the desire to run for public office. That wasn’t possible as an openly gay man, even where I grew up in New York City. It was only moving to Washington, D.C., away from family and childhood friends, that finally focused me on my true self, allowing me to come to grips with who I was, a gay man.

In 1978, D.C. was a place people could feel comfortable taking those first steps toward coming out. Many people were away from their family and old friends, ready to take a step into their own reality. You could go to a bar like Rascals in Dupont Circle, meet congresspersons, congressional staff, government officials, non-profit and business CEOs, teachers and reporters, all still in the closet and not afraid they would be outed. Back in the late ā€˜70s and early ā€˜80s, before AIDS, many of us were still in the closet.

Thankfully, there were some who were not. In the 1978 D.C. mayoral race, won by Marion Barry, the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the gay Democratic club in D.C., played a major role in his victory. Barry openly thanked them. He was a four-term mayor who supported the LGBTQ community. It wasn’t until the end of his career, when he was a Council member from Ward 8, that he came out against gay marriage. I remember how jarring it was for so many when he stood on Freedom Plaza with some homophobic ministers, and told us he opposed our right to marry. But he was the anomaly in D.C. The work of activists over the years, I was proud to be one of them, won. The D.C. Council passed marriage equality.

In today’s troubling times the rights of women, the LGBTQ community, the African-American community, and all minorities, are at risk. With white supremacy on the rise, and anti-Semitism once again rearing its ugly head, it’s important to celebrate our Pride all year long. I want every month to be a Pride month, so people in Florida will know they cannot deprive us of our rights, or erase us from their schools. So, a young boy or girl in Mississippi or Montana, who struggle with who they are, and who they love, will be able to see they are great and loved, and can live their life fully, and safely, being their true self.

I hope by the time we celebrate World Pride in D.C. in 2025, inviting the world in to see who the United States really is, we can be proud of who we are. Today that is not the case in many ways. I want a transgender person to come to the United States for World Pride and feel comfortable, not only on the streets of D.C., but anywhere in our country. I want us to be able to show off and say, here you are safe. I want the feeling I had, as a privileged white cisgender man, coming out safely in D.C., to be the feeling everyone has. To do that we will have to fight not only homophobia, but racism, and sexism. It is all interconnected and we must recognize that and join hands, if we are to be successful. While today in D.C. we have African-American Pride, Transgender Pride, Youth Pride, and Latino Pride, maybe we can all join together for World Pride. Let us have pride in each other, as well as ourselves. Let us have that pride every month, every day, and every hour, all year long.

We can do this and still have fun in June. Let’s not keep LGBTQ police, and military, out of our parades. Let us be as proud of them, as they are of themselves. Let us invite the corporate entities that support us. I would be proud to march with Disney CEO Robert Iger. We will only make progress if we do so together.

Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist. He writes regularly for the Blade.

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