Americans’ Role Seen in Uganda Anti-Gay Push

Three Evangelical American pastors led a conference last March in Uganda last month about "curing" homosexuality. Unknowingly, their lectures helped stoke the fire brewing against homosexuals in Uganda -- specifically the recent law passed in the Uganda parliament to make a homosexuality an act worthy of the death penalty.

"Human rights advocates in Uganda say the visit by the three Americans helped set in motion what could be a very dangerous cycle. Gay Ugandans already describe a world of beatings, blackmail, death threats like “Die Sodomite!” scrawled on their homes, constant harassment and even so-called correctional rape.

“Now we really have to go undercover,” said Stosh Mugisha, a gay rights activist who said she was pinned down in a guava orchard and raped by a farmhand who wanted to cure her of her attraction to girls. She said that she was impregnated and infected with H.I.V., but that her grandmother’s reaction was simply, “ ‘You are too stubborn.’ ” "

Read the NYT article here.