Mothers beg president to drop anti-gay law plans

A group of Ugandan mothers who have LGBT children have written a letter to President Yoweri Museveni urging him not to sign into law a new draft law under which people who are revealed as being gay could be sent to prison.

In the letter published in local media, the parents said they’d watched in trepidation as what they called “religious fundamentalists, elected officials and anti-gay lobbyists” had demeaned and dehumanised their children.

Homosexual acts are already against the law in Uganda but the new bill introduces many new criminal offences – including making it illegal not to report people in same-sex relationships.