In condemning a law the Uganda Parliament just passed that imposes life imprisonment for gay sex, the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” and makes it a crime to even identify as LGBTQ, the White House this week called the measure from the East African nation “one of the most extreme” anti-LGBTQ laws in the world and said that “no one should be attacked, imprisoned or killed simply because of who they are or who they love.” Uganda President Yoweri Mouseveni is expected to sign the bill into law. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday “there might be repercussions that we would have to take.”
President Joe Biden has passed up previous opportunities to penalize Uganda for other alleged human rights offenses.
But President Joe Biden has passed up previous opportunities to penalize Uganda for other alleged human rights offenses. Last year, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, formally requested that Biden revoke an invitation he’d sent Mouseveni for last year’s U.S.—Africa Leader’s Summit. Not only did Mouseveni attend, but he was also gifted a meeting with U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who says she met with Mouseveni to “reiterate the importance of democratic institutions.”
The relationship between the United States and Uganda is complicated by the political power that American evangelicals have exerted there. Yes, the same political movement that once campaigned against gay marriage protections and is now campaigning against drag queen story time has now spent millions of dollars over the past decades pushing an anti-LGBTQ agenda throughout African countries — and in Uganda in particular.
American evangelical missionaries arrived in Uganda in the 1980s. They built medical clinics and schools as part of a strategic effort to prompt a religious revival in the developing world. The 1980s also marked the start of the…
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