First They Came For The Homosexuals

David Bahati's Anti-Gay Bill has been kicked around the back benches of the Ugandan parliament for two years now. Despite widespread condemnation and campaigns against it, it has remained viable; and by the time you read this, it may already have become law. But why now? The answer is one that should remind us all, regardless of sexuality or personal moral beliefs, why lgbt equality is a cornerstone of wider human rights.

To understand the development of this bill it's important to understand a few factors about Ugandan history and culture. Chief among this is the poor access to education faced by many Ugandan people and the prevaling awareness, despite this, that the country has been screwed over economically by Western interests (though several other problems contribute to its financial difficulties today). This means that people are largely unaware of historic attitudes to homosexuality in the area (a fact also true of British people if we go back more than a few hundred years). Whereas same sex relationships existed in the past in various socially accepted forms, it is widely believed that traditional Ugandan society was intolerant of homosexuality, and that it is a form of behaviour that was imported from the West. This means it is associated with decadence and exploitation.

Where Ugandan children from poor families do have access to education, it is generally through the Church. Missionary groups from America provide many schools and their importance in improving children's prospects cannot be underestimated. A considerable number of them, however, perpetuate existing ideas about homosexuality and describe it as an abomination. It has been suggested that this is a political strategy, a means whereby the West can play out its culture wars at a distance. In this case, the word 'war' threatens to lose its metaphorical status.

The Anti-Gay Bill emerged from a context in which homosexuality was stigmatised but ordinary Ugandans were not yet ready to consider taking aggressive action against it. What changed this was a religiously-inspired crusade by Martin Ssempa, a pastor whose tactics have since been widely discredited within the country but whose influence remains. His strategy involved positioning gay people as a threat to children (this, of course, worked for many decades in Britain). He also showed graphic videos of certain types of gay activity and focused on presenting anal sex as damaging and disease-spreading. This created an apparent emergency which an ambitious politician like Bahati could easily recognise as an opportunity.

That was two years ago. An international outcry at the time – hard won, because much of the mainstream media chose to ignore what was happening – eventually persuaded President Yoweri Museveni to withdraw his support and the bill was quietly sidelined 'into committee', as civil servants put it. This didn't stop a vicious newspaper campaign against lgbt people (though Uganda's rather more effective version of the PCC reined it in to an extent); and it didn't stop riots, occasional murders, or the exhumation of the bodies of gay people so that they could be dumped outside relatives' houses – but it did mean that the state itself stood apart from the violence. Until now.

What has changed? The answer is, again, rather complicated, but it centres on an increasing shift toward the kind of contempt for human rights shown in the bill itself. If we look at the bill in more detail we can see that it was never intended simply as an instrument for criminalising lgbt people. Because it's very difficult to prove a person's sexual orientation – certainly if they haven't had anal sex (which supporters assume, incorrectly, isn't practised by straight people) – homosexuality is something that anybody can be accused of. This provides an easy way of framing and disposing of political opponents (or those who simply fall foul of corrupt officials). And there's more. Simply knowing that somebody else is lgbt and failing to report it can lead to a prison sentence. This would criminalise parents who fail to turn in their children, but it is also, again, an easy means whereby to frame people.

The Anti-Gay Bill was always an attractive political tool to corrupt factions within government. What has changed is that the Ugandan government has now reached a point where it has more need of such measures to control an unhappy populace, and where it also needs a distraction. Those opposing the bill around the world need to think carefully about what that means.Yes, it is important to challenge the bill, but how many other stories do you see about Uganda in the Western news? With the focus on this piece of legislation it is all the easier for Museveni's government to get away with the other human rights abuses it is perpetuating and to keep foreign eyes off the protests and riots. Because ultimately, the suffering of lgbt people is unlikely to lead to sanctions or other serious forms of intervention.

When you want to be free to deal with a population using violence, you start by dehumanising them. That was easy for the Ugandan government and its allies to do with gays. Once that happened, ordinary people became more comfortable with the idea of lynch mobs. Some will have joined in, perhaps thinking they had to do it to protect their children, and once one has been involved in something like that it is harder to convincingly express moral outrage when one sees the same tactics used against other groups. Dehumanisation spreads. Police officers, too, become more comfortable with using violence against the population they serve. Yes, lgbt people are at serious risk in Uganda, but not just because of their sexuality or gender identity (little distinction is made there between the two); they are at risk because all Ugandan citizens are at risk in a rapidly deteriorating situation.

Yoweri Museveni has been president since 1986, popular partly because of the role he played in taking down the tyrranical dictator Idi Amin. Yet things have deteriorated so badly now that Ugandan sources are beginning to compare the two. There's talk of serious financial corruption and despite the country's new-found oil wealth little money seems to be reaching the country's poor. It's a difficult situation which requires a hard line. The Anti-Gay Bill is a good tool for the job at hand. Its day has come.

So what can concerned people in the West do? Don't neglect the petitions and the writing to representatives, but remember that there's a lot more to express concern about than the fate of lgbt people alone. Ugandan lgbt activists are now standing side by side with others defending wider human rights issues.

Read the African press. Follow what is happening in Uganda. And write to the Ugandan government to let them know what you think.

President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni
 State House Nakasero 
email: info@statehouse.go.ug

   Prime Minister Apollo Nsibambi
 email: ps@opm.go.ug

  Chair of the Uganda Human Rights Commission
 Med Kaggwa
 email: uhrc@uhrc.ug

Remember, this is something you can do regardless of the passage of the Anti-Gay Bill. This is something we need to keep up. Because after they come for the homosexuals, they come for other people; and when this sort of process gets started, the human consequences can be catastrophic.

Minority Report

Two days on from Scotland's election, a fair bit has already been written about the gender imbalance in parliament. Only a third of MSPs now are women. Personally this doesn't worry me too much - below a third and I'd start to worry, but variation to that degree is, I think, something we can expect to see from time to time without any special cause. (Of course, only time will tell if it sometimes varies in the other direction.) Any concern I might have is further mitigated by the calibre of our female MSPs. With women like Nicola Sturgeon, Annabel Goldie and Margo MacDonald around, what women may lack in numbers they make up for in talent and force of personality.

What we should perhaps be more worried about is the shortage of representation of key minority groups in parliament. The new intake gives us only two non-white MSPs - 1.5% - whereas 11% of Scotland's population falls into this group. Of the two, one (Humza Yousaf) is only twenty five but already has some impressive achievements to his name and seems a promising new talent. The other is Hanzala Malik. Those familiar with him from his work on Glasgow City Council are not exactly expecting great things. Of course, they shouldn't be obliged to carry any extra burden beyond what we ordinarily expect of MSPs, but the fact remains that young people will look to them for an example if their first impression of parliament is that it's a white people's club they have little hope of joining.

The same issue applies to openly lgbt people. There were four in the last parliament and, so far as I can discern, five in this one (two have left). Patrick Harvie is, of course, a formidable (though very likeable) presence and punches well above his weight, being particularly good at courting media attention, whilst the SNP's Marco Biagi seems likely to achieve big things. Still, their numbers fall well short of the Westminster government's estimate that 6% of the population is lgbt, a figure considered by many lgbt groups and academics to be a considerable underestimate. Again, the impression is given that parliament is for a particular type of person and, among other things, that person is straight.

62% of MSPs are (or pretend to be) straight white men.

As far as age variation goes, the Scottish parliament is fairly impressive, with around 3% of MSPs in their twenties, 12% in their thirties, 30% in their forties, 33% in their fifties and the rest older. That there are no truly elderly MSPs probably reflects on the youth of the parliament itself; the oldest politicians in any such institution tend to be long-serving incumbents. At any rate, this matches up fairly well against positions in industry and academia with comparable levels of responsibility, suggesting that age discrimination isn't something we need to be concerned about.

With this balance in mind, however, it's all the more remarkable how few disabled MSPs there are. Holyrood just got its first blind MSP in Dennis Robertson and Margo MacDonald has spoken extensively about her experiences with Parkinson's disease; there are also a few MSPs with minor sensory and mobility impairments; but this is in stark contrast to the 14% of the general population identified as disabled in official statistics, especially allowing for the fact that people are more likely to be disabled from their forties onwards. Of course, not all disabled people are capable of working outside their own homes, or at all, but it's still evident that something is wrong here.

What can and should be done about this? "It ought to be about merit," many people protest, quite understandably. Of course there is absolutely nothing wrong with any individual MSP being straight, white, male and able-bodied, but when most of them are, that's a big problem. It means that parliament lacks the experience and expertise to be properly representative; it lacks the depth of perspective available to more balanced groups. Parliament is poorer for it - we are all poorer for it - and to make things worse, it's a self-reinforcing problem.

This applies for two reasons. Firstly, as mentioned earlier, young people considering careers in politics are often put off if they perceive people like themselves as being excluded. Secondly, those from minority groups who do want to give it a try are less likely to have useful social contacts who can help them along the way. It would be nice to think that, in modern Scotland, people would socialise across the boundaries or things like race, sexual orientation and disability/able-bodied status, but research demonstrates that this isn't the case; or that, at any rate, it is proportionally a much less successful form of networking than that conducted within such groups. This is something which, one hopes, will change in time, but it may need a few nudges to do so.

This brings us to the big question: what can be done to remedy the imbalances in parliament? Many people shrink in horror from the term positive discrimination, yet the example of Westminster demonstrates its success - numbers of women in the House of Commons have increased dramatically since it was introduced on certain party shortlists. The counter-argument to this is that rushing women through the system means many reach positions of power despite a shortage of experience or talent, and this is indeed a problem, but the short term difficulty (along with the short term unpleasantness of any form of discrimination) must be balanced against the long term gains - the generational difference that is made when newcomers are able to find the role models and make the connections that would otherwise have been unavailable to them. There is, after all, no reason why these newcomers should be lacking in ability.

If it is used, positive discrimination has to be a party thing - it is not something that parliament as an institution can do. This means that parties have to take responsibility for the imbalances among their own MSPs. The Greens have the best record for this (taking into account their candidates as well), but none of the other major parties in Scotland is significantly worse than its opponents. All seem to want to move forward and address the problem. It is a matter, for each one, of figuring out how best to do so within its own party structures.

One final point - it is a notable characteristic of parties which employ positive discrimination to advance women that their ambitious men complain about having to work harder to get to the top. From a party perspective, this means additional gains - not only a better gender balance but more capable, more accomplished male candidates. Any smart party will therefore ask not how can we make things easier for women? but how can we make things harder for men? A tough, competitive party environment that doesn't let anybody cruise by on traditional advantages will result in stronger politicians getting to the top and should improve a party's chances of electoral success.