Uganda held its first Gay Pride

This weekend, activists in Uganda held their first Gay Pride. This is a country where homosexuality is punishable by death. This is a huge step for human rights, and I can’t even fathom the bravery it took to participate.

Can you imagine that the worst place in the world to be gay is having Gay Pride?” Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera asked a crowd of cheering gay men, lesbians, transgendered men and women, and queers somewhere in between. It was Saturday afternoon, and we were on the shores of the giant, cloudy Lake Victoria in the Ugandan city of Entebbe, where L.G.B.T. activists had decided to stage the country’s first Pride Parade. Nabagesera, a lesbian activist covered, for the occasion, in glitter and neon spray paint, with homemade angel wings, was being half-sarcastic. A barrage of media coverage has painted the country as a hell for gays—a place where they are suffering and being attacked constantly—and, despite the need to combat such threats, L.G.B.T. Ugandans were tired of hearing a story that ignored their nuanced experiences of both joy and hardship. But Nabagesera was also sincerely pleased: a crowd of nearly a hundred people had come out, fears of arrest notwithstanding, to celebrate their existence. The air was thick with confetti, paint fumes, and anticipation.

As the parade began, in a convoy of marchers and cars blasting more music, people held up signs like “African and Gay. Not a Choice.” Children who lived nearby flocked to the parade, and adults stared, clearly stunned, and, in some cases, amused. The marchers chanted, “We are here” (a reference to those who say that there are no gays in Africa), and danced and sang in a chorus that was at once moving and exciting under a rainstorm of ribbons and flags. Nabagesera’s German shepherd trotted around in a rainbow-colored handkerchief. A woman named Claire said, “Even if Lokodo came today, he could not stop us.”



Read the rest of the article here.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/08/gay-and-proud-in-uganda.html#slide_ss_0=1