Homosexuality is illegal in Uganda. If the proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009 gets passed, some Ugandan homosexuals could receive the death penalty. ABC News reports that “the bill creates a new category of crime called ‘Aggravated Homosexuality,’ which calls for death by hanging for gays or lesbians who have sex with anyone under 18 and for so-called ‘serial offenders.’ ” Additionally, the bill “calls for seven years in prison for ‘attempt to commit homosexuality,’ five years for landlords who knowingly house gays, three years for anyone, including parents, who fail to hand gay children over to the police within 24 hours and the extradition of gay Ugandans living abroad.” The bill has incited international outrage, with some countries threatening to withdraw aid from Uganda if the bill is passed into law. Within Uganda, activists reject the bill, saying it would force health and social workers to spy on and report their clients, Reuters Africa reports. Additionally, as AIDS activist Rtd Maj Rubaramira Ruranga told The Independent, “ ‘We’ll lose what we’ve achieved in the AIDS fight. . . . Gay infected patients will fear to go for treatment since the law requires the doctors to report the patient within 24 hours.’ ” According to The Monitor, a Ugandan newspaper, activists petitioning against the bill said it “ ‘goes against the Ugandan Constitution which promises freedom from discrimination on the grounds of sex, race, colour, ethnic origin, tribe, creed, birth or religion, social or economic standing, political opinion or disability. . . . We need laws to protect people, not ones that will humiliate, ridicule, prosecute and kill them en masse.’ ” The bill’s sponsor, David Bahati, defended the bill by saying that “in Uganda, 95 percent of our population does not support homosexuality.” As one gay Ugandan told Times Online, “ ‘they want to legislate us out of existence.’ ”
Stereotyping
Facing Today helps educators connect the study of history to issues in our world today. We select current websites, articles, films and blogs that reflect universal themes, such as identity, membership and participation, represented in our scope and sequence. Each media resource is linked to related Facing History materials, including study guides, videos and lessons.
Subscribe to get the latest Facing Today updates directly into your feed reader-
March 15, 2010
-
March 3, 2010
German film director Veit Harlan wrote and directed “Jew Süss,” a 1940 box office success in Nazi Germany that, according to a New York Times article by Larry Rohter, is “perhaps the most notoriously anti-Semitic movie ever made.” New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis writes that the film, which opens in 1733, “tells the story of a Jewish money lender from the ghetto, Joseph Süss Oppenheimer (Ferdinand Marian), who rises to power in Wurttemberg (in what is southwestern Germany), where he gains control of the court, taxes the population, rapes a young married woman (who then drowns herself) and is finally executed.” Rohter notes that the film was “so effective that it was made required viewing for all members of the SS,” and to this day its “commercial exhibition or sale as a DVD is still prohibited in Germany and several other European countries.” German film director Felix Moeller has released a documentary titled “Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss.” According to Dargis, the film is “an exploration of the filmmaker, his career under National Socialism and the children and other relatives who bear his name and, with varying difficulty, his legacy.”
-
March 2, 2010
On February 15th, 2010, University of California San Diego (UCSD) fraternity students threw a “ghetto-themed” party called the “Compton Cookout.” NBC Los Angeles reports that the party was meant “to mock Black History Month” and the invitation encouraged participants to “wear chains, don cheap clothes and speak very loudly.” The Detroit Free Press adds that partygoers were promised “chicken, watermelon and malt liquor.” Students and community leaders in Los Angeles responded, protesting and condemning the event. The editor in chief of the campus’ humor publication “appeared on UCSD’s Student Run Television station on Feb. 18 and called protesters of the controversial party ‘ungrateful niggers,’ ” the Daily Nexus writes. Then, on the evening of February 25th, a noose was found in the main library, hanging from a bookcase and facing a window. The Associated Press reports that the student who hung the noose in the library turned herself in to police. She has been suspended and “is under investigation by campus police for a possible hate crime;” NBC San Diego adds that she could face charges of “hanging a noose with intent to terrorize.” The Black Student Union (BSU) Chapter at UCSD “declared the campus climate to be in a ‘state of emergency,’ the Daily Nexus writes. According to NBC Los Angeles, “black students comprise less than 2 percent of the university’s undergraduates.” Hundreds of students joined a protest on February 26th, both chanting outside the chancellor’s office, and sitting silently in a group “wearing black and listening to fellow students who said that they are tired and hurt after nearly two weeks of racially-charged events,” NBC San Diego reports.
