Uganda's New Anti-Gay Law: Part of a Broader Trend in Africa
Homophobia is on the rise across much of the continent.
"EXPOSED! Uganda's 200 Top Homos Named," the headline of a popular Ugandan tabloid, the Red Pepper, screamed on February 25, the day after President Yoweri Museveni signed the country's Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
The Red Pepper's witch hunt and fearmongering was predicated on a conflation of homosexuality and pedophilia—the idea that nefarious homosexuals are out to groom and recruit Ugandan children.
The new law and the largely positive welcome it's received left members of Uganda's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community fearful.
"It's inciting violence against anyone who's assumed to be gay," said Pepe Julian Onziema, a transgender rights activist and program director at Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), who was among those named by the paper. "It's getting out of control."
The crackdown isn't
