The Ugandan Morality Crusade

In 1999, General Museveni, Uganda’s autocratic leader, ordered police to arrest homosexuals for engaging in behavior that he characterized as “un–African” and against Biblical teaching. A state-sanctioned campaign of harassment of LGBT people followed. With the approval of sections of Uganda’s clergy (and with the support of U.S. evangelicals) harsh morality laws were passed against pornography and homosexual acts.
The former law disproportionately affected urban women, curtailing their freedoms. The latter—known as the “kill the gays bill”—called for life imprisonment or capital punishment for homosexuals. The author weaves together a series of vignettes that trace the development of Uganda’s morality laws amidst Machiavellian politics, religious fundamentalism and the human rights struggle of LGBT Ugandans.

Deborah Kintu is an Ugandan-born writer who now lives in Georgia.

Deborah Kintu
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 200
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2018
pISBN: 978-1-4766-7068-3
eISBN: 978-1-4766-2953-7
Imprint: McFarland

Preface 1
I. The Rise of the Anti–LGBT Crusaders 5
II. Myth of a Ugandan Sexuality and Gender Identity 24
III. Legislating and Policing Morality Over the Years 43
IV. The Uganda Church and Homosexuality 70
V. The General’s Impunity and the Politicization of Sexuality 96
VI. From the Closet to a Kuchu Identity 118
VII. Unraveling of the ­Anti-Homosexuality Law 140
Chapter Notes 167
Bibliography 182
Index 187