By Godfrey Olukya 20-3-2013
Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni has said that exhibiting sexual acts in public is an affront on African traditions.
He said that the issue of homosexuality and lesbianism has been totally distorted leading to the wrong public debate.
Museveni said this yesterday while meeting a delegation of USA human rights activists led by Kerry Kennedy, the President of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. Kennedy who was accompanied by several lawyers, actors and religious leaders expressed concern with what she described as harassment of the Gay and Lesbian
Community in Uganda including exposure of the pictures by publications such as the Red Pepper and the Rolling Stones tabloids saying it is a violation of people’s rights to put pictures of sexual minority groups in the papers.
She also said the pending bill on homosexuality works against the international law treaties that Uganda has signed. Kennedy cautioned against the misconceptions that equate paedophiles with homosexuals.
Museveni said, ‘In our society, there were a few homosexuals. There was no persecution, no killings and no marginalization of these people but they were regarded as deviants. Sex among Africans including heterosexuals is confidential. If am to kiss my wife in public, I would lose an election in Uganda. Western people exhibit sexual acts
in public which we don’t do here.’
He added on that Africans do even punish heterosexuals who publicly expose their sexual acts.
The President said that what is new is the way Europeans and other western people handle the issue of sexuality in general including public flaunting which is a problem and luring young people into acts of homosexuality for money. He said attempts to promote homosexuality as an alternative way of life has led to engagements in running battles with the church.
‘You have a lot of room in your house, why don’t you go there. Sex is a bilateral issue, not a multilateral one,” he said.
Kerry Kennedy is the author of The New York Times best seller “Being Catholic Now: Prominent Americans talk about Change in the Church and the Quest for Meaning,” published by Crown Books/Random House in September 2008, and “Speak Truth to Power: Human Rights Defenders Who Are Changing Our World,” (Random House, 2000).
Reacting to various issues raised by the team, the President said he would investigate claims of violence against homosexuals, adding that for a viable solution, activists must respect the confidentiality of sex in our traditions and culture.
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