Panelists Confront Anti-LGBTQ+ Stigma and Discrimination Crisis in Uganda

WASHINGTON — Uganda’s long history of legally-sanctioned violence and stigmatizing of homosexuals and those in same-sex relationships is not just a crisis of human rights, but poses real dangers when it comes to addressing health emergencies and HIV response, according to panelists at a recent symposium on the situation.

In May, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni became the object of global outrage when he signed into law the world’s harshest anti-LGBTQ+ bill, which imposes life imprisonment for anyone convicted of homosexuality and, in some cases, mandates the death penalty. 

In the wake of that action, the Harvard Global Health Institute and Center for Global Health at Massachusetts General Hospital hosted a webinar with health care and other experts to shed light on the health implications of anti-LGBTQ+ stigma and discrimination in the country.

“There’s been a long history of discrimination and prior criminalization of the LGBTQ+ community in Uganda, but this law as it stands on the books is truly one of the most regressive in the world,” said Ingrid Katz, associate faculty director at the Harvard Global Health Institute and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. 

While same-sex relationships have been illegal in Uganda, the Anti-Homosexuality Act goes much further, and appears to be part of a growing trend among African nations.

“We are seeing the same in Kenya, we’re seeing the same in Ghana … and they seem to have a kind of template that is being followed,” said Richard Smith Lusimbo, founder and director general of the Uganda Key Populations Consortium and one of the organizers of Convening for Equality. 

“So we find ourselves with a very Draconian law that has, in a way, been pushed by American evangelicals, and again, of course, with our own leaders using populist propaganda to ensure that they win votes,” Lusimbo said.

The panelists went on to discuss the impact of Scott Lively. The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Human Rights Campaign have both condemned Lively as a propagandist against LGBTQ+ people.

Lively is best known for is being the co-author of the thoroughly discredited Holocaust revisionist book “The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party.”

Among the claims the book makes is that the Nazi party was dominated by gay men who, because of their “savagery,” were able to carry out the Holocaust.

Lively first traveled to Uganda in 2002 and is said to have set about fomenting anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment in that country. He returned in 2009 to headline a conference on “the dangers of homosexuality.” 

“From the early 2000s, he’s been whipping up hostility towards the community and framing the influence of LGBTQ+ people as an assault on the African family; that people from this community are putting the rest of the population at high risk … and must be resisted and dealt with,” said Jennifer Leaning, a senior research fellow at the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights and an associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health.

“He gives permission to a large number of invasive investigations and hauling people from the streets, denying them health care,” Leaning continued. “The rhetoric was extraordinarily followed. [They] were calling on the agencies of government — the police, in particular — to do something about these people who were polluting the public order, undermining the family and tricking children into becoming gay.” 

Leaning, who in 2015 submitted a brief condemning Lively on behalf of Sexual Minorities Uganda in the federal lawsuit SMUG v. Lively, recounted her findings, detailing the dangers that the LGBTQ+ community faced as a result of Lively’s rhetoric. 

“There was abundant evidence about people fleeing, about being deeply abused and assaulted whenever they were brought into custody, people being raped in the streets on the basis of suspicion,” she said.

Panelists also discussed the impact of the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which has invested over $100 billion in the global HIV/AIDS response worldwide. 

According to data from the Joint United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS, 1.4 million Ugandans are estimated to be living with HIV. More than 1.3 million of them are currently receiving PEPFAR-supported HIV treatment.

“Eighty percent of our HIV response is funded by donors, particularly PEPFAR,” said Kenneth Mwehonge, executive director of the Coalition for Health Promotion and Social Development in Uganda. “There is a lot of anxiety as well among recipients of these services. We have what we call drop-in centers, which are specialized clinics that offer specialized services for the LGBTQ+ community. Since the debates of the bill started, we have seen drops in the utilization of these services.”

“The act is going to or is already tying back members of the community from seeking health care services due to being identified and arrested and persecuted,” Lusimbo said, adding later, “As a Ugandan, I would always hope that we will wake up to a moment whereby we are all appreciated and we do not have legislation that takes our rights away because we are different or love differently.”

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