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February 10th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda KAMPALA (Reuters) – The Ugandan legislator who this week retabled in parliament an anti-gay bill widely condemned as draconian said a particularly controversial clause proposing the death penalty for “repeat offenders” would be scrapped.
The bill outlawing homosexuality caused an international storm when it first came up in parliament last year.
U.S. President Barack Obama denounced the original bill as “odious”, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni to reject it and some international donors threatened to cut aid if it became law.
Uganda later dropped the legislation, but the controversy re-emerged when ruling party Member of Parliament David Bahati resurrected the bill earlier this week.
Bahati told Reuters in an interview on Friday a controversial clause
told Reuters in an interview on Friday a house committee recommended during the previous parliament that capital punishment be dropped.
“This bill is part of the 23 bills which were saved from the 8th parliament to the 9th parliament. What is meant by saving the bill is that the work that had been done on these bills would form part of the saving process,” Bahati said.
“Now, in the 8th parliament, in the amendments that we had suggested, we had already removed the death penalty,” he said.
Homosexuality is taboo in many African nations. It is illegal in 37 countries on the continent, including Uganda, and activists say few Africans are openly gay, fearing imprisonment, violence and loss of jobs.
Bahati said the 8th parliament’s committee report recommending deletion of the death penalty had not been officially adopted yet, and that it could not be made public.
The bill retabled on Tuesday was the original version from 2009 that proposes the death penalty for those who commit what the law calls “aggravated homosexuality”.
“The most important thing is to get the views of the mover of the bill … and we’re saying the death penalty will not be part of the bill,” he said.
After being introduced in 2009, the bill was subsequently shelved last May. The cabinet later took it over and, after widespread censure from western governments and gay rights activists, said in August it had decided to drop it.
The cabinet said existing laws were sufficient to deal with homosexual crimes in the east African country.
The government this week distanced itself from the bill, saying Bahati was a backbencher, the proposed law did not form part of the legislative programme and it was not supported by the prime minister or the cabinet.
“However, as Uganda is a constitutional democracy, it is appropriate that if a private members bill is presented to parliament it be debated,” the government said in a statement.
“Contrary to reports, the bill before parliament even if it were to pass, would not sanction the death penalty for homosexual behavior in Uganda,” it said.
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