Why queer sex can be deadly in Uganda

(source: change.org (Opens in a new window))

Since the end of May, just two days before the beginning of Pride Month, consensual sex in Uganda might be punishable by death – if it's the wrong kind, namely queer sex. Meaning that, since a few days ago, a bit of consensual rogering between men (or any other form of sexual intercourse) can mean that you face the death penalty. Anyone "recruiting, promoting and financing" queer "activities", faces up to 20 years in jail, and anyone convicted of "attempted aggravated homosexuality" faces a prison sentence of up to 14 years. The law was passed in Uganda's parliament by a North-Korea-style majority of 387 to 2 and signed by President Yoweri Museveni on Monday the 29th of May. It has since become law and supposedly represents the majority will of the people in Uganda. The consequences for queers in Uganda will be disastrous.

To be sure, lest anyone be tempted to fall into colonial patterns of thinking, in the sense of "well, sure, these uncivilised savages, they've always been like that!": not only is queerhate in sub-Saharan Africa a direct result of English colonial legislation; the wave of anti-queer legislation that has swept parts of Africa for the last 20 years is directly driven by US American evangelical donors. Still, this East African country is at the forefront of a transnational counteroffensive that seeks to roll back decades of queer liberation struggles. This is an experience that other progressive movements, such as feminism or environmental and climate movements, are also going through.

So what the fuck is happening? Why this highly repressive, inhumane law, given that it is surely not queer sex or feverishly imagined "recruitment attempts" by clandestine queer brigades that constitute the central social problems in a country where 41% of the population live below the poverty line? After all: while this law certainly represent an extreme escalation of queerhate, this question also arises in other countries. In the US, a country facing enormous societal challenges, where the obscene proliferation

of firearms rather than drag queens reading to children are the leading cause of death for children, there is a massive culture war going on right now against these very drag queens, a staged "moral panic" projecting any and all reactionary social fears onto men in women's clothes who teach children about fluid genders and open sexual identities.

To be sure, it's a long way from the culture war to the death penalty, but the reason for these two absurd developments is the same. Societies exhausted by crises and transformations are looking for scapegoats onto whom they can project their fears. Those scapegoats aren't always queers and trans, but more and more often they are. In Germany, we love to hate what the right calls queer linguistic "gendergaga", while Russia, Hungary and many other countries simply go after queers in general.

The answer to this must not remain limited to symbolic foreign policy moves by Northern government. Instead, firstly, queer movements must be as transnational as the evangelicals are, not remain stuck in the somewhat narrow-minded methodological nationalism of the past decades. Secondly, progressive movements must finally recognise that they all have a common enemy - the right-wing backlash.

(This text is a translation of a piece that is appearing in today's Der Freitag - thanks to Ebru Taşdemir for permission to publish it here).