UNITED NEGRO COLLEGE FUND PRESIDENT: “Non-discrimination is at the heart of what UNCF has always stood for. Our policy prohibits discrimination based on race, color, creed, religion, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status and disability.”

Ugandan Ambassador to The United States of America, Perezi K. Kamunanwire, ¨abruptly withdrew¨ as Martin Luther King Day speaker 

¨Uganda’s ambassador to the United States abruptly withdrew on Friday as the keynote speaker for a Jan. 16 Martin Luther King Day event sponsored by the United Negro College Fund in Greenbelt, Md.

The withdrawal by Ambassador Perezi K. Kamunanwire came one day after United Negro College Fund President and CEO Michael L. Lomax sent him a letter saying UNCF supporters had expressed concern over an anti-homosexuality bill recently introduced in the Uganda Parliament. The letter was triggered by an inquiry from the Blade.

“Yesterday I was asked for comment by the Washington Blade, the oldest and second-largest circulation LGBT newspaper in the country,” Lomax told Kamunanwire in his letter.

“UNCF’s history and mission make us especially alert to violations of human rights, wherever they occur,” Lomax said in his letter. “So while we recognize that these issues are matters of internal Ugandan policy, we are dismayed at present polices in Uganda (and in many other African countries) criminalizing sexual orientation, and we view with alarm the draconian penalties, including the death penalty that the Ugandan anti-homosexuality bill would impose if passed....¨  please read it all, HERE

·  Thanks to The Washington Blade, sidebar
·  Thanks to Michael L. Lomax
·  Thanks to The United Negro College Fund
·  Thanks to By Lou Chibbaro Jr