Actions and Impact

This is an uncomfortable but very interesting article by Samuel Oakford, worth a read: How LGBT Activists Accidentally Helped Pass Uganda's Anti-Gay Laws

Should activists and Western governments not have decisively lent their support to the beleaguered LGBT community in Uganda? Of course not. But outsiders struggled to grasp that their rancor over the law was inconsistent with a long silence during Museveni's increasingly dictatorial 28-year rule and his flagrant corruption, disregard for human rights and suppression of opposition parties, problems that made life difficult for all Ugandans. None of those issues presented the viral-friendly morality play of an apartheid-esque law... 

Think of the U.S. for a moment. Of the 29 states that ban gay marriage, more than two-thirds enacted limiting laws either in 2004 or 2008, during one of the bloodiest years of an unpopular war in Iraq or at the climax of a financial crisis. As Americans died in the Middle East and retirees lost their life savings, voters and legislators chose, over others, the same moral issue as Ugandans.

Now that the bill has been signed, there's a lot of analysis going on, especially to do with aid cuts and the impact this will have.