Uganda to kill gays

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing," while the ever popular quote is usually misattributed to the English politician Edmund Burke its true origin is mostly unknown.

What is known, however, is that despite an origin truer words have never been spoken or for that matter written.

We go about our daily lives ignorant of the goings on that may need our intervening, or at the very least voicing, whether it is in our own backyard or an ocean away we continually allow for 'evil' acts to be perpetrated with little less than an opposing whimper.

Though sometimes there are shouts.

One such instance occurred 10 months ago and will reach its triumph within the next month and yet only a very small amount of us even know of it.

In April of last year the African nation of Uganda proposed the 'Anti-Homosexuality Bill' a bill which if passed calls for the imprisonment and even execution for those breaking the British colonial law, implemented more than 48 years ago, prohibiting homosexual acts.

If passed, a highly likely conclusion, the law would broaden the existing anti-gay laws to, as already stated, allow for the execution of those found having same sex relations.

More than that the bill will also retroactively allow for the execution of those previously convicted of homosexuality, anyone who is diagnosed as HIV positive or found guilty of having performed same sex acts with anyone below the age of 18 as well as provisions for extradition of any Ugandan found to be committing same-sex acts outside of the nation.

As if that weren't enough the bill goes as far as allowing for the prosecution and punishment of anyone, individual, media organization, company, etc., in support of gay rights.

This bill is nothing short of monstrous and would stand amongst historically inhuman laws like the Third Reich's Paragraph 175 and even the South African laws that resulted in the Apartheid that caused the imprisonment of former South African President Nelson Mandela.

If passed Uganda will be signing into its legislation a state sanctioned genocide something most Westerners will do little more than blink at. With a well known history and even a current genocide occurring in Darfur we have, like so many other things, grown genocide and even Africa fatigued.

Here's a little perspective according to the BBC gay rights groups in Uganda and South Africa believe that of the 31 million Ugandans, 500,000 of them are homosexual. All of which run the risk of being arrested, prosecuted and then executed. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS states nearly 5.4% of the Ugandan adult population is currently HIV positive. If passed these victims of deadly disease will be executed.

The organization believes that not only will testing cease but prevention and treatment may cease altogether for fear of being arrested and executed.

For many of us Americans the idea of genocide in a far off country few of us have ever visited, and others likely never to, is none of our concern. What business is it of ours anyways? America has nothing to do with this except this would be wrong.

A month prior to the inception and announcement of the bill three American evangelical Christians, Scott Lively, Caleb Lee Brundidge, and Don Schmierer visited Kampala the Ugandan capital and held an anti-gay workshop.

Though since the announcement of the bill all three speakers have stated they were horrified with the bills execution.

However gay rights groups in Uganda have stated that the visit from the American Christians was the push needed towards the bill.

Despite their flaccid objections Lively admitted on his blog that the speakers in fact spoke with lawmakers regarding the bill during their visit.

While violence and aggression towards gays in Uganda let alone most of Sub-Saharan Africa is nothing new to the nation the bill is a step towards an insurmountable increase in the existing horrors ravaging the continent and its people let alone the nation.

What can any of us do? The nation of Uganda is halfway across the globe and in reality we're just a single person. Not to mention that there are people more powerful than us and that's the rub.

There are people of greater strength, power and influence than us the individual and it is therefore their responsibility to do so. However as Rick Warren, a religious figurehead who pastors in Uganda have stated they look up to, it is not there responsibility to 'interfere' in the political process of other nations.

The religious theme of this coming genocide is more than obvious and yet other than object these all powerful institutions, who definitely have political clout in the area in question, have done little more than state their displeasure with the bill.

So here's the question I pose you if you sit and watch a person be murdered and make no attempt to stop the murder are you a morally good person? I say no.

In fact you're as guilty of the persons murder as if you had done it yourself. The only difference here however is that not just one person will die but thousands. The better question then is will you sit idly by and watch hundreds of thousands of people be murdered?