That Coming Debate

There is a debate taking place on November 18 in Uganda (when in England a medic will look at my leg without charge as part of the Welfare State) to discuss whether a class of people ought to be imprisoned for life (removed from society for good) or get killed by law (saves on the expense).

This will be at The Makerere University Human Rights and Peace Centre, set up because it analyses continued human rights violations in Uganda that it thinks have led to economic decline and collapsing State and public institutions, with such a falling away of civil society that it leaves people depressed and incapable.

So I thought that the prospect of a good debate over potential mass killings and imprisonment could be looked at in advance. We can all guess what people might say. Here's my toss of a few coins...

Hon. David Bahati, MP Ndorwa East and Sponsor of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill:

Death would be a release for them, should they recruit the disabled and young towards their ways of behaviour. We could be compassionate - we could always set up concentration camps. But we are leaders in the field here, showing the world, bringing attention to Uganda, attracting evangelical Christians from all over the world to this moral crusade.

Assoc. Prof. Sylvia Tamale, Coordinator, Law, Gender & Sexuality Research Project, Faculty of Law:

It's all a bit more complicated than the proposer thinks. International involvement? Well, people are the same, whatever borders are crossed. There is much to learn and this proposal carves people up too easily about those who can live and those who would either die or vanish forever.

Rev. Canon. Aaron Mwesigye, Provincial Secretary of the Anglican Church of Uganda:

No need to actually kill anyone. The Ugandan Church is compassionate. We could put them on an island. Yes, that's a possibility. They could be worked in a camp, earning their own keep while alive, and then we wouldn't actually kill them - if they died they would then have killed themselves, a sort of evangelical Christian self sacrifice through work! Work makes you free! We could put that into law. That would make us feel good, whilst the corruption, the economic chaos, and the rotten government is something we can bother about later, some time. But we are a Church and wish to save people's souls. And the HIV/ AIDS activists can still treat the heterosexuals if there is any of that disease left once we remove the polluted. It's only the homosexual polluted we want to incarcerate or advise to look heterosexual and pure and stay on the narrow path. We don't need Gender Studies when we can read all about sexual activity in the Bible, and every single story in the Bible is about healthy relationships, isn't it, or at least how to get saved through sex. Thank goodness for GAFCON and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, to which the Ugandan Church is completely committed.

Maj. Rubaramira Ruranga, Human Rights and HIV/AIDS Activist:

I would actually like all people to come forward for sexual education and treatment. The Bible is full of the kind of polygamy, rape and incest that helps spread HIV/AIDS. Pass the bill into law and the whole of Uganda becomes a concentration camp.