UN Elects Ugandan as President, Pushing Back on US LGBT Pressure

NEW YORK, June 20 (C-FAM) Western pressure on African countries to liberalize policies on homosexuality has had a boomerang effect, uniting Africans against it and resulting in what some see as a new non-aligned movement of countries.

Last week the United Nations elected a Ugandan as president of the General Assembly over  last-ditch efforts by activists who, along with the Obama administration, have condemned Uganda’s recently enacted law against homosexual acts.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activists called on the Obama administration to deny Sam Kutesa's visa, but by election day at the UN, their petition had only gathered 13,466 signatures.

Kutesa is Uganda’s foreign minister and defended the law internationally, stating promotion and exhibition of homosexuality “is wrong for our young people and it offends our culture.”

Africans called Western criticism of Uganda an attack on national sovereignty and some noted, “the Western world criminalizes almost all of these same offenses” as the amended law, such as homosexual rape.  (more...)

UN Elects Ugandan as President, Pushing Back on US LGBT Pressure