As the world stands aghast that Uganda made good on its promise to criminalize gay activity, it’s worth noting that it quietly signed a broad, sweeping anti-pornography bill last week.
The text of the bill reportedly goes to absurd levels in defining what form porn can take. According to Uganda’s Daily Monitor, it bans “behavior or form of communication or speech or information or literature or publication in whole or publication in part or news story or entertainment or stage play or broadcast or music or dance or art or graphic or picture or photography or video recording or leisure activity or show or exhibition.”
Ugandan media has largely focused on the possibility that the law would be a de facto ban on revealing clothing and has dubbed it the “miniskirt law.” But it’s even more sweeping than that and seems designed to include anything a person might find sexually attractive. Its possible offenses reportedly include “unclothed or under-clothed parts of the human body such as breasts, thighs, buttocks, and genitalia, a person engaged in explicit sexual activities or conduct; erotic behaviour intended to cause sexual excitement and any indecent act or behaviour tending to corrupt morals.”
In other words, if a Ugandan stage play that includes sexualized, under-clothed thighs, she and the journalist who writes a review could both be locked up. Breaking the law could incur penalties of up to seven years in prison.
It’s not immediately clear how the country would deal with the vvast proliferation of porn on the Internet.
Simon Lokodo, Uganda’s minister for ethics and integrity and the longstanding supporter of the bill who announced President Yoweri Museveni’s intent to sign on Tuesday, reportedly connected Internet porn with HIV infections, murders, and high school dropouts.
Lokodo has previously drawn criticism as a prominent champion of the anti-gay bill, which could sentence gay citizens to life in prison.
H/T Daily Monitor | Photo by alanant/Flickr