‘I have to lie low. I’m totally on edge’: Uganda’s club scene fears anti-gay law

Kampala’s wildly innovative underground music scene has become a home for queer east Africans. A proposed law change not only endangers them, but an entire cultural movement

Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni, in his 38th year of increasingly authoritarian rule, has declared that his people will never embrace homosexuality and that the west’s “deviations” are not to be normalised. Instead, Ugandan MPs have approved an anti-LGBTQ+ bill which recommends heavy sentences – including the death penalty – for acts of homosexuality in a country where it is already illegal. It awaits the president’s signature to become law.

The 2023 anti-homosexuality bill criminalises those touching another person “with the intention of committing the act of homosexuality” and any person who identifies as “a lesbian, gay, transgender, a queer” with up to 10 years in prison. Up to five years in prison is deemed adequate for the vague act of “promotion of homosexuality”. Only two out of 389 MPs voted against the bill, which has been broadly welcomed across Ugandan society.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/N05cDxb