UGANDA: Lawmakers To Pass Anti-Gay Bill As "Christmas Gift" To Nation

Via Reuters:

Drafters of a revised anti-gay law want parliament to pass it in time to be a "Christmas gift" for Ugandans, a lawmaker said on Friday, after a controversial earlier version was quashed because of legal technicalities. Legislation passed by parliament almost a year ago, which would have punished gay sex with long prison terms, provoked a storm of international protest and led some donor countries to withhold aid. A constitutional court overturned the law in August. Abdu Latif Ssebagala, a member of a parliamentary committee formed in September to draft a new version, said it had finished the bill and was ready to present it to parliament for debate. In August, President Yoweri Museveni said he wanted the law amended to remove penalties for consenting adults. Ssebagala said however the new version still punished gay sex among consenting adults. In October the president wrote in a newspaper that re-introducing the law risked triggering a trade boycott by the West. Analysts say Museveni - expected to run for re-election in 2016 - is walking a tightrope, trying to appease his conservative domestic constituency while wary of alienating donors who finance about 20 percent of Uganda's budget.

In addition to punishing consensual sex, the new bill makes it illegal to rent homes to LGBT Ugandans.

The new bill includes language which potentially criminalises any landlord or owner or renter of a property where an “unnatural act [gay sex]” takes place. It criminalises anyone who “leases or subleases, uses or allows to be used any premises for the purpose of engaging in unnatural sexual practices.” Jonathan Cooper, director of the Human Dignity Trust, said: “Under this Bill, if a landlord rents accommodation to a gay man or lesbian knowing that they may engage in intimacy in their home, that landlord will face the prospect of a seven year prison sentence. Why would that landlord take the risk? Gay men and lesbians already renting accommodation risk being evicted. If this Bill becomes law, the tyranny against the LGBTI community in Uganda continues. This wanton persecution must stop.”