On a cold February 8 morning, Upper East Side Democratic Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney led a group of LGBT, human rights, and religious leaders outside Uganda House, that nation's Permanent Mission to the United Nations, in demanding that its parliament abandon efforts to enact a draconian anti-gay law that would impose requirements on citizens to report homosexuals to the government and could result in the death penalty in some cases.

Following a press conference where she was joined by clergy, including the Reverend Dr. Eugene Callender, retired pastor of Manhattan's St. James Presbyterian Church, and representatives from the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), Immigration Equality, Human Rights Watch, and Human Rights First, Maloney hand-delivered a letter addressed to Uganda's permanent representative to the UN, Dr. Ruhakana Rugunda, that described the proposed legislation as "an affront to the universal values of individual liberty and human rights."

Saying she feared the law would incite violence against LGBT Ugandans, the congresswoman wrote, "It is hate in its rawest form."

Callender, a longtime African-American religious leader in New York, four days earlier had attended the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, where President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both condemned the legislation.

"We may disagree about gay marriage, but surely we can agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are — whether it's here in the United States or, as Hillary mentioned, more extremely in odious laws that are being proposed most recently in Uganda," the president told those assembled at the Hilton Washington Hotel on February 4, according to a transcript provided by the White House.

Moments earlier, Clinton told the Washington audience, "Every time I travel, I raise the plight of girls and women, and make it clear that we expect to see changes. And I recently called President [Yoweri] Museveni, whom I have known through the Prayer Breakfast, and expressed the strongest concerns about a law being considered in the parliament of Uganda. We are committed, not only to reaching out and speaking up about the perversion of religion, and in particular the use of it to promote and justify terrorism, but also seeking to find common ground."

The statements followed several issued by the US government in recent months voicing objections to Uganda's so-called "anti-homosexuality bill," which, if enacted, would punish gay men and lesbians with the death penalty or life in prison in some cases. The bill would require doctors, priests, and others to report homosexuals to police. The Ugandan government has said it may remove some of the harsher provisions, and recent reports out of that nation indicate that Museveni has tried to slow down the parliament's scramble to pass the measure.

The bill was introduced at the urging of religious conservatives in Uganda.

Prior to the Washington prayer gathering, Maloney had signed on a letter addressed to Clinton, authored by out lesbian Democratic Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, urging that the US step up its pressure on Uganda over the proposed legislation, and to a second Baldwin letter sent to Museveni.

At Uganda House on February 8, Callender, who mentioned that he has a lesbian niece, said the Uganda bill "sends a terrible message to the world."

IGLHRC's Jessica Stern talked about the spate of anti-gay legislation and violence currently endangering Africa’s LGBT community (see Doug Ireland's report on recent mob attacks in Kenya on page 1), and challenged the notion voiced by many opponents of equal rights on the continent that expressions of gay identity represent a "neo-colonial" incursion into traditional life there.

In fact, anti-gay laws already on the books in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa are remnants of past British and other European colonial rule.

Scott Long, who heads up the LGBT desk at Human Rights Watch, said that the proposed law's reporting burden on citizens "is about dividing Ugandans. It's about turning sibling against sibling."

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