Uganda: Help

Museveni publicly waffled over the bill and was aware of its diplomatic repercussions, telling parliament to "also take into account our foreign policy interests." In private, he admitted that homosexuality had always existed in Africa, even as he secretly funded groups that whipped up homophobia. As one Western ambassador said of the president, "He may be mad, but he's not stupid."

But as foreign LGBT activists and western governments pushed to have the bill killed, it became the one Ugandan story making headlines, raising its stakes and transforming what was a potentially popular law into Museveni's political trump card. Distressingly, Ugandans began blaming their gay brothers and sisters for the negative coverage, thereby pushing the hand of the bill's supporters in parliament.

Should activists and Western governments not have decisively lent their support to the beleaguered LGBT community in Uganda? Of course not. But outsiders struggled to grasp that their rancor over the law was inconsistent with a long silence during Museveni's increasingly dictatorial 28-year rule and his flagrant corruption, disregard for human rights and suppression of opposition parties, problems that made life difficult for all Ugandans. None of those issues presented the viral-friendly morality play of an apartheid-esque law...

Ultimately, as Jocelyn Edwards writes, it was the gay bill and Museveni's cynical ploy to "distract from an acute governance deficit in the nation" and build a "flimsy smoke screen for Uganda's more pressing problems" that made headlines.

How LGBT Activists Accidentally Helped Pass Uganda's Anti-Gay Laws, Samuel Oakford, PolicyMic.

By intervening in the heavy-handed way they have done, western governments have helped turn the issue into more than a vote winner for Mr Museveni; he has broadened the row into a nationalist cause, with Europe and the US laying themselves open to the charge of hypocritical bullies.

Not for the first time donors have been outsmarted by a wily politician whose grasp of African geopolitics is far more acute than theirs. Having failed as the world’s policeman, the west needs to think before becoming a self-appointed monitor of Africa’s morality.

The West Lays Itself A Trap Over Uganda’s Anti-Gay Laws: Donors should have shown a better grasp of local politics, Michael Holman Finacial Times.

See also 'Rescuing' gay people from Africa is no answer to homophobic laws - An internet fundraising campaign to help LGBTI people ‘escape’ to the west is at best both palliative and patronising, Melanie Judge, The Guardian.

First Do No Harm.

PS And here's Scott Long on the the latest misreporting of a 'gay' news story about Iran by the American right.