MUSEVENI’S SCIENCE REPORT: “GAYS ARE AFRICAN”

It appears that Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has not been entirely honest about the contents of a “scientific” report that he commissioned to prove that homosexuality is “unnatural.”

The president said last month that he would only sign his country’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill once he received a report from a team of scientists on the issue.

On the weekend, his party’s spokeswoman Evelyn Anite said that the report by Uganda’s Ministry of Health had concluded that “homosexuality is not genetic but a social behaviour.”

As a result of the report’s apparent conclusions, Museveni has now stated that he will indeed sign the draconian bill into law.

But it seems that the president has not read the report in-depth, which actually asserts that homosexuality is indeed normal.

A copy has now come to light, posted by Boxturtlebulletin, which appears to suggest a more complex and conflicted take on the issue.

The report is full of contradictions and includes numerous subjective and “moral” views that are out place in such an undertaking. For example, it states without any evidence that “some homosexuals may take up the behaviour as an open choice, for others it may be due to indoctrination.”

It also claims that “the present fad of sexual exhibitionism, both heterosexual and homosexual is alien and repugnant to most African cultures.”

But the report is also more complex than first suggested.

It notably states that “Homosexuality existed in Africa way before the coming of the white man,” adding that “most African cultures controlled sexual practices, be they heterosexual or homosexual, and never allowed exhibitionistic sexual behaviour.”

Opponents of LGBT rights on the continent often make the claim that homosexuality is “un-African” to justify its criminalisation.

The report also categorically states that “homosexuality is not an abnormality.”

Another paragraph reads: “Ultimately, all sexual functions are determined by genes and their interactions with the environment. Thus the causes of homosexuality can be traced to biological, social, environmental, psychological or a combination of them. These influence each other. Reparative therapies to change people’s sexual practices have not proven successful and their scientific validity has remained questionable.”

Overall the report seems to suggest that any “overt” and “extreme” sexuality, whether it be homosexual or heterosexual, is not acceptable in Africa and should be controlled.

Its conclusions are as follows:

a) There is no definitive gene responsible for homosexuality
b) Homosexuality is not a disease
c) Homosexuality is not an abnormality
d) In every society, there is a small number of people with homosexual tendencies
e) Homosexuality can be influenced by environmental factors (e.g. culture, religion, information, peer pressure)

Read the full report here and judge for yourself.