MURDER ON THE UGANDAN anti-LGBTI ACTIVIST EXPRESS: ¨It is not just the international community that is suspicious about the murder investigation of Anglican David Kato!¨ Part Eleven

There are ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ reasons to kill gay activist Kato

This article is likely to upset, so if you are thin-skinned, don’t read it. According to the Uganda Police, Sydney Nsubuga has confessed to killing Ugandan gay rights activist David Kato in his home in Mukono last week. Nsubuga had, according to the story, been having an affair with Kato and killed him in anger when the latter failed to give him the glittering presents he had promised.

Many don’t believe that account. First, because of the Uganda government’s rabid anti-gay views. Second, because a gay-hating tabloid called Rolling Stone was allowed to publish names of alleged gays or their supporters and call for them to be hanged, until a court stopped it. The government wasn’t going to lift a finger. In fact, it was suspected that some homophobic elements in the state might have been secret backers of Rolling Stone.

Because of this, the prevalent view in most of the international media is that Kato was assassinated for his gay activism. Even US President Barack Obama doesn’t seem to fully believe that there was nothing sinister.

However, in all this those who support gay rights and believe that Kato was assassinated, and the homophobes who think he was the Devil and Nsubuga was doing God’s work in allegedly killing him, are the same in several respects.

Some of the gay rights supporters don’t want to consider that Kato died in a normal lover’s quarrel that got out of hand because, privately, they probably don’t believe that a homosexual relationship is emotive enough to kill over.

And the anti-gays folks think it is unnatural. That gays should be got rid, or that we pray to God to turn their sexual orientation in the “right” direction. Both the pro and anti forces, therefore, don’t think that gay love is normal.

If, particularly those who support gay rights, saw it as equal to a heterosexual relationship then they would treat it as such (the specific hostile environment that Kato worked and lived in notwithstanding). Kato’s death demonstrates the complex situations that progressives on many issues in Africa face, and why the general state of our individual freedoms and rights are in such a shameful state...¨ read it all, HERE

· Thanks to The Daily Monitor, Uganda
· Thanks to  Charles Onyango-Obbo
· Thanks to The African Activist, sidebar
· Thanks to Amplifying Africa's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) Voices