Acccording to Bloomberg, but curiously so far no other news agencies, Uganda to Drop Death Penalty, Life in Jail for Gays.
Uganda will drop the death penalty and life imprisonment for gays in a refined version of an anti- gay bill expected to be ready for presentation to Parliament in two weeks, James Nsaba Buturo, the minister of ethics and integrity, said.
The draft bill, which is under consideration by a parliamentary committee, will drop the two punishments to attract the support of religious leaders who are opposed to these penalties, Buturo said today in a phone interview from the capital, Kampala.
As Warren Throckmorton notes here,
Not enough but a start…
Counseling to be added. Now the ex-gay ministries will come into even sharper focus. Evangelicals who promote change as a political exercise will need to really think through whether the data supports them because real lives are in the balance.
UPDATE: On the other hand, some clergy seem resolute to maintain the bill.
From that last link, Church leaders back govt on anti-gay Bill note the following (emphasis added):
“The Bill is ok. But it has been misunderstood. We need to educate people on this proposed law,” he said.
Bishops from the Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, Seventh Day Adventist churches as well as Muslim kadhis agreed to defend the Bill in their centres of worship.
Meanwhile, Time has these reports by Zoe Alsop:
And at MSNBC Rachel Maddow continues her series on this. For links to the latest episodes from her show, and other material, see Warren Throckmorton’s reports:
gug, my gay Ugandan contact, has reported the same in an email to me this morning:
“Apparently, the Minister Buturo is taking away the Death Penalty and Life Imprisonment aspects of the bill. And, I hear there is intense pressure from the ‘Family’ in America to withdraw the bill. So, the pressure is working. Keep it up.”
If the withdrawal of the death penalty is true, then why am I not relieved?
Perhaps we should ask Alan Turing how well “therapy” worked.
Even if GLBT people are no longer subject to life imprisonment or death under the bill, it should still be opposed and condemned. It violates basic civil norms, violates freedoms of association and speech, violates patient/doctor confidentiality or religious minister/congregant confidentiality, makes guilt by association the law of the land, and turns people into informers to protect themselves.
I know of a newspaper editor who scoffs at the notion of fundamentalist or evangelical Christians being a serious threat to anyone. I think I’ll ask him if he knows about Uganda.