Rage Time: Uganda Edition

I love Current tv. It's entertaining and partially run by the viewer. It can be funny, serious, and comment on society. One show that takes the last two traits and throws them together is Vangaurd, which does in depth documentaries about certain things. They do a really good job and try and keep a fair bias. However, there are certain issues that they can't do that with. Example? Uganda and the proposed anti-gay bill.

This makes me soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo angry. I know that's a long 'so' but I have lots of rage. Very rarely do things get me all angry and such. Generally I can keep a distance on things in the political and social world, but this, this is craziness.

In case you didn't hear about this story at all, I'll recap it. Uganda wants to put in place a bill that makes it illegal to be homosexual. That's right... illegal. Not only do they want to make it illegal, they want to be make it a death worthy crime. Now there is some debate about how serious they're going to make it, but whatever. It comes down to this.

Uganda is a primarily Christian nation so it's not weird that American pastors would come and speak to the people. (Well, it might be. How many Ugandan pastors do you see in America?) But that's not the point. The point is that some Evangelicals decided to deliver a sermon on the "Gay Agenda." They claimed that the homosexuals were trying to corrupt the children and make them gay by bribing them with electronics and money and other such things.

A couple things wrong with this...

#1. Maybe I'm being stereotypical here, but how many Ugandans have money to buy these high tech electronics (laptops and iPods) in large enough batches to 'convert' enough children to make it an issue? Ok, so they claim Ugandans aren't doing it, but the Swiss and American (not cheeses, btw) are the evil people behind this. Could it be that the homosexual couples from Switzerland and America merely want to help the world and don't have families to raise in their countries? Maybe they want to help the local students by providing them with technology... no, wait, that's silly. They must be trying to convert the children.

#2. What would be the purpose of converting children to homosexuality? Some big gay army? Some homosexual take over of the world? I'm thinking that that is what's running through Parliaments minds, but what if they just want to help children (teenagers, really) who are homosexual. What if they want them to be able to have a safe place to be? Well, if you're homosexual and in Uganda, there is no safe place.

Attacks have been made on homosexuals in Uganda for years. It's the way of the world. It even happens in America (Day of Silence). However, since the Evangelicals spoke they've been getting worse. Homosexuals are now being imprisoned for crimes such as sodomy and general gayness (not the official term, but it works.) In the bill, they want to make loving a person of the same gender a crime punishable by death. Death.

This just makes me very angry... almost as angry as I was at the UN for the Rwanda thing during freshman year of high school. But anyway... it's late, and I need to rest.

But seriously, inform people that this is going on because as Americans, we don't always get world news, and this is important. If Uganda passes it, what are the odds that it could spread to more parts of Africa, and then to other countries? That's a worst case scenario, but you get my meaning, right? Injustice like this must be stopped because if we don't stop it, we're letting fellow homo sapiens suffer for being themselves and that isn't right.