Uganda to drop death penalty?

Not necessarily great news. Here's the clip from Bloomberg:

Ugandan lawmaker David Bahati presented a private member’s bill on Oct. 14 which sought the death penalty and life imprisonment for gay people in the country. The Ugandan government supports the bill because homosexuality and lesbianism are “repugnant to the Ugandan culture,” Buturo said. Still, it favors a more refined set of punishments, he said.

In addition to formulating punishments for the gay people, the bill will also promote counseling to help “attract errant people to acceptable sexual orientation,” said Buturo.

Emphasis mine.

I think back to Rachel Maddow's recent chat with Richard Cohen--of the "ex-gay" movement.



Maybe the point was always to sell the "ex-gay" program. Still biased, still about repression, still pretty hateful. Just better than murderous. And still about disinformation and misinformation. (And still liable to drive homosexual behavior deep underground and risking the loss of the great success Uganda had in reducing AIDS with education and promoting condom use.)