The Speaker of the Parliament, Ms. Rebecca Kadaga, took Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird to task at the 127th Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) in Quebec City on Wednesday for his remarks criticizing Uganda’s ban on same-sex “marriage.”
Kadaga told off Mr Baird and reminded him that Uganda was neither a colony nor protectorate of Canada and as such her sovereignty, societal and cultural norms were to be respected.
“If homosexuality is a value for the Canadian people, that’s not a problem for us, that’s its issue, but one shouldn’t force Ugandans to accept homosexuality because we’re not Canadian citizens,” Kadaga said to loud applause from parliamentarians from African and Arab countries at the IPU conference.
“Ignorance and arrogance, that is how I would describe Mr. Baird,” Ms. Kadaga said in an interview, adding that her government’s does not promote violence against gays. “This is a very high level of arrogance for him to attack my country.”
“To say that we would invite the President of Uganda to officiate the wedding of two gays, that would not happen in Uganda,” Ms. Kadaga said.
Kadaga accused Baird of harboring a “colonial attitude” towards African nations and interfering in her country’s internal affairs, after Baird, in an address to the Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), denounced Uganda for violating gay rights and oppressing homosexuals.
Background
Kadaga claimed that Canada refused to grant entry visas to most Ugandan parliamentarians, and that she was prevented from making a presentation at the conference by the organizers, due to Uganda’s ban on same-sex “marriage.”
Baird cited the brutal murder of homosexual activist David Kato as an example of the dangers faced by open homosexuals in Uganda. Kato died after being bludgeoned to death by a homosexual prostitute whom he failed to pay for his services. However, his murder has been widely cited by homosexualist activists as a case of “anti-gay” violence.
In 2005, the Ugandan Parliament adopted a constitutional amendment that criminalized same-sex “marriage” and specified that “marriage is lawful only if entered into between a man and a woman.”
