Is this another “Rolling Stone Uganda” design; Lets get the Homos by social sock puppet Bernard Sabiti!”
by Melanie Nathan, Jan 07, 2011

Bernard Sabiti, a self acclaimed Ugandan social critic has written an article ominously entitled “How the Anti-Homosexuality Bill boosted gays agenda in Uganda” where you would think he is about to  make the  assertion that the Homosexual movement benefited from what has become known as the Kill the Gays Bill.

He fails miserably, losing the title theme before the first paragraph has the grace to complete itself.

Is this the Sabiti who professes to be an OBAMA ? or something like that!  – Is  this article written by a political prodigy who wants to be elected?  Well if he is then he is trying the Kill-the-Gays Bahati Sock puppet ticket….

“Thanks to the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, Uganda’s homosexuals continue to awe the Western media, politicians and human rights groups, no doubt the very opposite of what MP David Bahati intended to achieve when he tabled his Private Member’s bill in 2009.
Their most famous leader Frank Mugisha has won a number of awards, the most recent ones being the prestigious 2011 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, issued to him by the Robert F. Kennedy Centre for Justice and Human Rights in Washington DC on November 10, 2011, and the Rafto Foundation Prize for human rights in Bergen, Norway. “

Perhaps the header was a mere tease or perhaps the critic thought he could make the statement and then simply let it be.  Because his article does absolutely nothing to show how this Kill-The Gays-Bill benefited the gay agenda in Uganda, other than to instill fear, increase the persecution and make enemies abroad.  Does that further the gay Agenda?

Mr. Sabiti ‘s real agenda is seeking to respond to Frank Mugisha’s award for his work as a gay activist and clearly our critic cannot handle this type of ‘honor.’  Perhaps our critic is in the mode of shall we say “homophobe!”

Mugisha did write an article that got a great deal of attention in the New York Times and now our social critic, Sabiti is incensed that the social scene in Uganda is in truth exposed as ‘not that great’ for some. He  wants the world to think that life for gays is not so bad in Uganda, that Kato was murdered in circumstances where ‘he got his due’ and where gay people really have nothing to worry about in Uganda.

Well clearly, he is in the mindset of my dear friend Mr. David Bahati, the Ugandan author of the Anti-homosexuality Bill, otherwise known as the Kill-the-Gays Bill.  Bahati also wants me and you and all the world to think Uganda is a place of great beauty, moral worthiness, while safe for gays and lesbians “as long as they do not engage in that behavior.” (Bahati’s words to me back in 2011.)

In fact our social critic even reveals his discussion with Bahati and although he does not make a direct quotation, in sock puppet fashion, he is using Bahati’s words, verbatim; and I know this because Bahati has used those identically phrased words to me in a conversation, last year.

Our social critic’s bias or delusion attempts to persuade us away from thinking that the religious right winger Evangelicals from the West  (U.S.A.) could have influenced the Bill,but his use of the same American style rhetoric gives him away as well as endorses the belief that the Ugandans were indeed influenced by the American Scott Lively and others.  In fact the Ugandans are now trying to affirm that the Kill the Gays Bill was uninfluenced and that it was an “all” Ugandan endeavor.  What an insult to Ugandans Mr. Sabiti.

We may be clued in though a Face book page photo caption as shown above right.  If this screen shot is from Sabiti the social critic’s page – we can be assured the undisclosed bias is nigh!

Our social critic is mouthing Bahati, and using all the excuses to try and show what? That Gays have benefited their Agenda?

My understanding of the LGBT movement which our unfriendly critic fails to note is that Ugandan gay people are trying to survive ahead of a terrible catastrophe and that is the yet to be passed Anti-homosexuality bill.  While the Bill has drawn more attention to Uganda and the plight of LGBT people it certainly has not helped LGBT people in Uganda.  It has also destroyed Uganda’s image abroad and that is gaining momentum. But do not blame the gays – blame Bahati and those who support him which include Janet Museveni, the wife of President Museveni and sock puppets like Sabiti doing his dirt on the pages of the the Monitor.

Furthermore what our critic fails to note is the fact that gays and lesbians are being used in Uganda to scapegoat the real problems of that country, including poverty, childbirth deaths, rape and pedophilia of young girls, teen pregnancy.  So if anything the anti-homosexuality bill has indeed derogated from the attention that should be placed on those other issues.  Had the Bill not been introduced in the first place, maybe we would be writing this column about the 14 women that died in childbirth in one hospital in Uganda on Xmas day, most under age.

Mr. Sabiti is using the Bahati notion that we in the USA are the same as Uganda, because we have the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).   However Bahati and now Sabiti do not seem to understand the difference between lack of equality under THE CIVIL LAW  on the one hand and criminalization of homosexuality on the other, the latter embracing death and prison sentences, the former being iniquitous.

While nothing justifies DOMA in the U.S. context it is a sad day for a social critic who does not comprehend how vastly absurd it is to even begin to compare the inability to exist under the law (de facto) of one’s country to the lack of equal rights – (de jure) equality. In America we are free to fall in love with members of the same gender and we will not go to prison for having our relationships in private and in the open. And equality is gaining ground in a country the size of 65 plus  Uagnda’s!

And as a matter of further correction DOMA has just passed the Senate Judiciary Committee for repeal, defying the ignorant suggestion that most Americans don’t approve of same-sex marriage. To try and use this as an excuse for criminalization is laughable.

The article ends in an anti-gay tirade with weather torn rhetorical excuses for  everything from the kill-the Gays Bill to the murder of Kato, evading all truth and reality.

But the most audacious moment of the day is when Mr. Critic Sabiti tries to pin  the publication of the infamous Rolling Stone outing of “100 homos” of the Gay community in Uganda on the Gay community itself…, stating he would not put it past the shrewdness of the Ugandans (his own people) to pull off such a stunt, just to garnish international attention.  Mr Sabiti how low can you go to even begin to suggest that.

“Even “credible” newspapers here struggle yet they have been in the market far too long to stage competition against them. But many People here also love sensationalism and gossip and some enjoy nudity. That was what Giles Mahame, the Rolling Stone publisher, was tapping into.

If not, given the shrewdness of Ugandans, it wouldn’t be farfetched to say that the Rolling Stone stunt could have as well been a stunt by the homosexuals themselves to elicit international sympathy and the cash that no doubt followed it.”

I honestly do not have the patience to correct or answer bit for bit, but I will say that this article is as lame as an attempt as one could put forth to discredit Frank Mugisha,and the entire LGBT organization activists and Ugandan LGBT community, with absolutely no ability to see its thesis through.

If indeed there is ever an agenda, Mr. Sabiti  it is for people to live in peace and harmony, for parents not to send children onto the street based on perceptions of sexual orientation, for people to accept all humans on a spectrum of orientations, for governments to stay out of the bedroom and stop criminalizing love between two people of what so ever gender.

The fact of the matter Mr. Social Sabiti critic is that your country has a bill pending, as we speak, still pending a possible vote at any time,  and or not –  that Bill calls for the killing of gay people.

Here is some of the Sabiti Rehtoric :

According to these organisations and popular belief in the West, mainly propagated by liberal and gay-affiliated news organisation and the so-called “Ugandan Gay Community”, there is timeline on which Anti-Homosexuality Bill can be traced. But these are standard talking points one would likely find in a typical SMUG PowerPoint presentation in front of a gay or gay friendly audience which might take place in Connecticut, New York or Los Angeles.

Self-interest gone too far? Many gay rights activists in the West are willing to capitalise on anything at home to paint a negative image of the country just to win them credit. The writer argues, many of them sadly win awards.

Thanks to the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, Uganda’s homosexuals continue to awe the Western media, politicians and human rights groups, no doubt the very opposite of what MP David Bahati intended to achieve when he tabled his Private Member’s bill in 2009.
Their most famous leader Frank Mugisha has won a number of awards, the most recent ones being the prestigious 2011 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, issued to him by the Robert F. Kennedy Centre for Justice and Human Rights in Washington DC on November 10, 2011, and the Rafto Foundation Prize for human rights in Bergen, Norway.
Most interesting are the award citations that normally follow these prizes. If read before the mention of Mr Mugisha or the Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) of which he is the executive director, one might think he is reading the citation for the Martin Luther King 1964 Nobel Peace Prize.

 Following the RFK award for example, Kerry Kennedy, the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy and president of the foundation, wrote an extensive tribute to Mr Mugisha and SMUG in the Huffington Post, arguably the most read online liberal publication in North America, in which she credited him with the “sacrifices” he is making on behalf of SMUG. In the article, Ms Kennedy repeats the usual inaccurate innuendos the gay community in America has eternally imprinted on Uganda’s image abroad as a “gay killer” country.

The citation from the Bergen-based Rafto Human Rights Foundation also repeated the same inaccuracies. After describing in detail the ‘dire situation’ in which Homosexuals live in Uganda, and describing the key clauses of the Anti Homosexuality bill, the foundation declared thus:

“By awarding the 2011 Rafto Prize to SMUG and Frank Mugisha’s fight for sexual minorities, the Rafto Foundation wishes to underscore that human rights encompass everyone and that it is unacceptable to persecute or discriminate against anyone based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.”

According to these organisations and popular belief in the West, mainly propagated by liberal and gay-affiliated news organisation and the so-called “Ugandan Gay Community”, there is timeline on which Anti-Homosexuality Bill can be traced. But these are standard talking points one would likely find in a typical SMUG PowerPoint presentation in front of a gay or gay friendly audience which might take place in Connecticut, New York or Los Angeles.

The ironic contradictions
As MP David Bahati, the proponent of the Bill has always explained, most of these assertions are purely incorrect. The most absurd of them is that American evangelicals have shaped our beliefs against homosexuality. Really? What these people fail to tell the world is that most Americans are themselves fiercely opposed to homosexuality and the federal government itself, through the Defence of the Marriage Act (Doma), which was passed by a liberal democratic president Bill Clinton in 1996, refused to recognise same sex marriages.

The Doma unequivocally defines marriage as that between man and woman (it should be laughable that Americans would need a congressional fight to be told an age old truth). Proposition 8, which was like a referendum on whether to legalise same sex marriage in California, was roundly rejected by voters. Note that California, is the most liberal state in America, perhaps after New York.

President Obama, who has called the Uganda gay Bill “odious”, has repeatedly stated that he is opposed to gay marriage, even though being a politician with a desire to win the second term he ironically also says he supports “gay rights”.

‘Baseless utterances’
Most of the acts he has done as president to pander to the far-left wing of his party including repealing the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy that banned open expression of same-sex behaviour in the US Military are all superficial acts to win over the gay voting bloc. Hard core senior military generals mounted spirited opposition to his move and the DADT, though ‘repealed’ is essentially still in force.

In a December 22 high-profile New York Times Op-ed titled “Gay and Vilified in Uganda”, Mr Mugisha repeats the same over-recycled allegations against his own country, in which he adds some even more absurd statements that are not true at all. In the article, for example, he writes that: “More benignly, if people are still single by the time they reach their early 20s, what Ugandans call a “marriage age,” others will begin to suspect that they are gay.”

This is hogwash. With more Ugandans spending more time at school and tightening economic conditions, who doesn’t know that marrying in late 20s and 30s is a very normal thing in Uganda these days?

Even after the Uganda Police concluded investigations which failed to link David Kato’s killers to homophobia and court appropriately sentencing them, in the article, Mr Mugisha still insinuates that “…because of this work, David was bludgeoned to death at his home, with a hammer.”

The matter of the Rolling Stone newspaper that published a list of homosexuals which is the basis of the western gay propaganda alleging that “the press” in from page 21

Uganda promotes murdering homosexuals is even too absurd to comment about.
These people know nothing about Uganda’s culture, let alone that of the tabloid, where many journalism students try many stunts to come up with a publication that can sell in a tough media market and a poor reading culture.

Here is the Full  Article if you can stomach it: http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/Insight/-/688338/1301408/-/item/0/-/lwxcr5/-/index.html