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 This is a story of two boys. Two boys whose parents were reverends in the Anglican Church, two boys who attended high profile boarding primary schools, went to the elite King’s College Budo, graduated from university and spent years abroad before returning to Uganda. It is a story of, now, two men, who have one fundamental difference: one would lay down his life fighting for homosexuality rights; the other has dedicated his life to fighting homosexuality.
These two men epitomise a country literally at war with itself and with the developed countries over gay rights. When David Kato was a teenager in Mukono District, he was unlike many of his peers; he was not attracted to girls. Now 40, Kato betrays a sense of disgust when he talks about his first sexual experience, and his only heterosexual encounter. He was in his Primary Seven vacation when his elder sisters teased him that he was a coward; why didn’t he go after girls? They pointed at a girl in the neighbourhood and dared Kato to approach her.
“Now ask her for what?” he asked them.
“Her,” one sister answered.
And off he went, determined to prove he was not a coward. His heroics led to an intimate date in a banana plantation, but one to which there would be no follow ups.
“I was so disgusted with the experience which I got,” said Kato, frowning and waving his right hand like some one pushing a smelly, rotting object. For the first time, his voice rises over the traffic buzzing past us at Speke Hotel. “Since that time, I have never tried again. I kept on wondering what was wrong with me. Boys were chasing girls but not me.”
Kato says he had no idea he was gay although three incidents stand out in his memory. There was the reverend who tried to force himself on the young Kato at Matale Boarding Primary School. Then the Senior Six student who forced Kato – then in Senior One – to touch his crotch and then went ahead to make funny noises. And there was the stranger at Kampala’s Kiyembe Lane who pretended to know Kato and scratched his palm, before confessing, later, that he was gay although he had a wife and children.
“I think I must have been looking nice; I was not old like now,” says Kato, a teacher by profession. He won’t discuss his career, but says he was once interdicted over “funny allegations”.
Eventually he ended up in Johannesburg, South Africa. It was there that he came to terms with his sexuality, aided by the presence of gay churches, gay bars and even gay prostitutes. Inspired by the anti-apartheid struggle, Kato decided to fight for gay rights. He is now the advocacy/litigation officer at the activist group Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG). This has brought him in confrontation with many Ugandans who are decidedly hostile to homosexuality.
Gross opposition
 Among the most eloquent opponents of homosexuality is Steven Langa, 55. He fully supports the Anti-Homosexuality Bill that was tabled in Parliament in October by Ndorwa West MP, David Bahati. Among other things, the draft legislation proposes the death penalty for aggravated homosexuality and jail terms for people who promote homosexuality or fail to report gays to authorities. Unfortunately for human rights campaigners, this law is very popular among Ugandans – Catholics, atheists, Anglicans, Muslims, traditionalists, with only calls for the death penalty to be reduced to life imprisonment.
Whenever this newspaper has written about homosexuality, the comments are predominantly in support of tightening the noose around gays. Some commentators are at pains to explain that they never thought they would ever share a position with President Museveni or Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe until this issue came up. In reaction to the latest Observer article about homosexuality, out of 45 comments posted at the time of filing this report, 80% were against homosexuality. Two years ago, a Steadman survey found that 95% of Ugandans were opposed to homosexuality.
This is the apparent majority that would see Langa as their hero. Langa has been married for 25 years and is a father of two – a son and a daughter. Born and raised in Tororo, Eastern Uganda, he attended Kisoko Boarding Primary School and King’s college Budo, before studying electrical engineering at Nairobi University. In 2001, Langa sold off his two companies to start Family Life Network, an organisation that promotes family values and morals.
Langa fiercely rejects the idea that homosexuals, like his Budo Old Boy Kato, should be allowed to be. For him, homosexuality is an alien culture and more importantly, the Bible condemns it.
“I think I was a grown up,” he stares out of the window of his little office at Kansanga, trying to remember the first time he realised that Uganda had gay people. “As A child I never heard of homosexuality. We used to hear of men who wanted to be women, who dressed and behaved like women. But we were told that such men did not want to pay [graduated] tax.”
Even in the 15 years he spent in Nairobi, Langa does not remember meeting any gay people. It would hit him in the mid 1990s, when he started offering counselling sessions for students and youth groups. Although he says it was not rampant like today, young boys started coming up to say they had been molested by older boys or men. What should they do? Is homosexuality okay?
Of course, he told them homosexuality was evil.
Evil? Who says, when it is a norm in London, New York and Paris?
“The Bible is very clear,” says Langa, whose mother is now a retired Canon. “Homosexuality is wrong: you will not lie with a man the way you lie with a woman. Look at Leviticus 18: 22 or I Corinthians 6: 9 or Romans 1: 18 onwards.”
But David Kato, who describes himself as a nominal Christian, rejects this argument. Why should religion-inspired activists like Langa try to impose their version of morality on him?
“The spiritual relationship is between me and God, not with the religious leader. We are consenting adults. We are not mad or sick. Why do you poke your nose into what goes on in our bedrooms?”
This raises another question for Langa: granted, the Bible condemns homosexuality; but it also outlaws adultery, theft, witchcraft, murder and other vices prevalent in our society. Many top political leaders in this country, who are Christians, have a string of concubines or they have stolen money meant for saving lives; how come Langa and company have not gone in overdrive to fight these evils? Why do Ugandans show so much hostility towards homosexuality?
“Because this is something that is culturally repulsive to us,” says Langa. “It is seen as a gross thing in our culture. Ugandans and Africans are repulsed by the whole idea of homosexuality. Anyone associated with homosexuality is revolting to our community. I am not saying the other things are right; they are not, but in any case there are laws to deal with them.”
Sexmplistic menu
Why we find homosexuality so “gross” is a question Langa does not answer satisfactorily. But Hazel Slavin, a sex-therapist from London, believes this may be because many of us Africans have a narrow view of homosexuality. Certainly the idea that a man inserts his male organ into the part of the body through which excreta is discharged sounds gross. Yet, Ms Slavin argues, the gay menu is much wider than that. Men may want to kiss, hold hands, perform oral sex, etc. This is the same point David Kato had made earlier.
“What I want us to remove from people is that whenever you mention gays or same sex relationships, they just think about sex, sex, sex,” says Kato, whose first physical encounter in South African ended with a white man performing oral sex on him. “We also need some one to live with, for companionship and encouragement; there are so many things we can do other than thinking about sex.”
This may explain why many Ugandans I have spoken to appear embarrassed or even strangely curious at the mention of lesbianism, but they look appalled, even horrified, when you mention male homosexuality. Another possible reason for the hostility to homosexuality, says Slavin, may relate to gender. In Africa and other generally conservative societies, there is a rigid boundary between what is masculine and what is feminine.
A woman does not wear trousers, climb trees, whistle or have multiple sexual partners; a man may have two or more women but does not cry, step away from a dare, wear dresses. Slavin argues that consequently, it is difficult for many of us to imagine a woman being romantically involved with a woman – she is supposed to be with a man; or a man lying with a man – he should be with a woman.
Such deep-seated mindsets, together with religious conservatism and laws inspired by the judeo-Christian traditions and inherited from the colonial era, have combined to make Uganda and Africa a thorny ground for homosexuality. In the meantime, the debate rages. Many in Western countries are condemning Uganda for Bahati’s proposed law, with one South African newspaper describing Uganda’s leaders as evil. Sweden even threatened to cut foreign aid.
But many Ugandans are in support. Langa’s network is developing expertise to counsel gays who seek help, while warning young people against homosexuality.
Langa reels off consequences of homosexuality that, he claims, the gay agenda conveniently ignores: Gays, he says, are more promiscuous and more likely to catch HIV than heterosexual men; more likely to abuse drugs and suffer mental disorders and the life expectancy of a homosexual man is almost half that of heterosexuals.
“In one study, 73% of homosexuals admitted molesting children. Is this a lifestyle we want to promote?”
Activist David Kato rejects the use of such studies to shackle gay people. What needs to be done, he says, is to engage the gay people instead of isolating them. They, for instance, wanted to get involved in government’s HIV/AIDS programmes, but religion-inspired opposition stood in their way.
“The problem with leaders is that they have refused to have dialogue with us,” said Kato. “Instead of calling us to understand us, hear our views, hear our stories, they just push us away.”
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as if they have a right to do so while heterosexual is severely punished for similar offence? This is in spite of the fact that in African tradition a girl about 17 has been and continues to be married with no harmful consequences as compared to homosexual encounter that is very unnatural and an abomination by our cultures. Why should one even ponder about the penalty? If the worst should come to the worst, in order to please our donor countries then amend the section in our Penal Code to remove death penalty for defilement. That the western world want to promote abomination to the level of human right in the name of civilization is in itself most ridiculous. 
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