The anti-gay lobby is back | Monitor – Monitor

Dear activist,
After the passing of the Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA) in 2013 and its subsequent nullification by the Constitutional Court in the famous, or infamous, case of Prof Oloka Onyango & nine others Vs the Attorney General, many activists decided to retreat thinking the war had been won. 
Contrary to that, AHA was just one of many battles that we had to fight. The war was going to involve many such small battles and would have to be protracted. It would entail the battle generals to think through and have both tactic and strategy.

Tactics to move us from A-D or O-R and strategy from A-Z. In this case the court as an arena for this battle was only supposed to be tactic and not strategy, dear activist and ally.
Far from our adversaries, not enemies (with an adversary you persuade but you must exterminate or kill an enemy) haven’t wearied. In this case they have been recalibrating, strategising, and restlessly seeking to re-introduce the Bill in some new form or shape.
The Bill is like a proverbial Damocles sword those that are non-conforming, and queer have too perpetually bare. They clad the fight as a moral one and the claim that we are a threat to the values of the nation and want to use the youth for some heinous actions which is a threat to the “natural” family as ordered by God the Almighty.

Whichever way you see it, this moral framing strategy is not innocent and is caught within the global web of religious fundamentalism and its nexus capitalism. Much as they claim to be fighting for the proverbial soul of the nation against us who they claim are being funded by the West to promote acts of homosexuality. 
Evidence is legion for all and sundry to show that this is a movement sponsored by Western evangelicals. Why I write to you today, dear activist, is to let you know that my sources indicate that with the quashing of Roe V Wade. 

The battlelines have been drawn in America and Uganda will be a pawn. There’s surely more money for morbid acts such as conversion therapy. Conversion therapy dear activist is the pseudoscientific practice of attempting to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity or gender expression to align with heterosexual and cisgender norms.
Funding for conversion therapy is thrown mostly at hospitals and schools as the Open Democracy journalist Soita Khatondi revealed last year in her story “Anti-Gay Therapy offered at Uganda’s Health Centres run by aid funded groups”. 
They force and elicit confessions from these gullible folks that they were “recruited” and is meant to bolster confidence among donors that there’s work being done on the ground. I write this letter against a backdrop of frivolous accusations that have become pervasive mainstream and social media. Not to mention the attacks, threats and mudsling that has been thrown our way. 

I find solace, therefore, in the words of Botswana Judge Amissah JP in the famous case of Unity Dow Vs Attorney General in which he stated that: “Today, it is universally accepted that discrimination on the ground of race is an evil. It is within the memory of men still living today in some countries that women were without a vote and could not acquire degrees from institutions of higher learning, and were otherwise discriminated against in a number of ways. 
“Yet today the comity of nations speaks clearly against discrimination against women. Changes occur. The only general criterion which could be put forward to identify the classes or groups is what to the right thinking man is outrageous treatment only or mainly because of membership of that class or group and what the comity of nations has come to adopt as unacceptable behaviour.” 

As a Roman Catholic, I remember reading a passage in Ephesians 6:10-18 in which Apostle Paul tells the church in Ephesus to wear the Armour of God and be always ready. Dear Activist, this letter is an alarm that they are back and be ready. Please copy this letter to our friend the ally as time is of essence. As the trek by the anti-gay lobby seemed to have renewed energy and fresh spirits.

The author, Dr Frank Mugisha is a human rights and peace advocate