By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

This June has been a dark month for the long embattled Queer folks of Uganda and no pinkwashed corporate Pride parade is coming to save them from the jaws of state sanctioned violence. While the paler people of my tribe celebrate another year of survival in the belly of Babylon, our darker comrades in Kampala are being fed to the dogs. This month the Ugandan government’s long campaign to annihilate the Queer people within its borders has culminated in the final solution known as the Anti-Homosexuality Act which will undoubtably go down in history as one of the most heinously homophobic pieces of legislation ever written, putting Uganda in the proud company of Wahabi whack-job states like Saudi Arabia when it comes to persecuting those of us who fail to conform to puritanical zealotry.

Not only does the Anti-Homosexuality Act make all acts of same sex love a crime punishable by life imprisonment but it also sentences those found guilty of the ill-defined crime of “aggravated homosexuality” to death. Lumped into this largely subjective category with pederasts and date rapists is virtually anyone caught having sex with a member of the same gender while HIV positive regardless of whether or not they’re transmittable. The law might also become an affective death sentence for all of the 1.2 million Ugandans who suffer from HIV thanks to another vaguely worded provision punishing the promotion of homosexuality with up to twenty years in prison, essentially putting anyone promoting safe sex between same sex partners in the crosshairs.

I won’t deny for a second that this law and the American Christian jihadists who have actively sponsored it make sick to my very soul but our own dear leader Joe Biden’s Pride-friendly virtue signaling response to this travesty actually makes me feel far worse. As word of Uganda’s latest act of war on its own people hit the Queer blogosphere like a hammer, Biden quickly made himself available to play the role of our straight white knight in shining armor by calling on the government of Uganda to immediately repeal this law under the threat of international sanctions. I rabidly oppose this chauvinistic act of imperial posturing and the devastation that it promises to inflict if it proves to be anything more than just another idle threat during an election year, and I oppose it not in spite of my own Queerness but because of it and you should too.

All sanctions, regardless of their expressed goals, are acts of colonial terrorism that inflict the poorest subjects of the given nation they target first and foremost. In Uganda that means the Queer community that the Biden Administration supposedly cares so goddamn much about, especially those suffering from HIV. Regardless of what specific industries or individuals’ sanctions target, they all have the impact of making the market those targets exist in toxic to foreign investment. The end result is the wholesale starvation of an entire population of its vital recourses, and I do believe that this is in fact the intent. After all, out of the scores of governments across the globe that America has and continues to sanction not one has ever corrected their wicked ways and agreed to toe the line and yet the sanctions continue. That is because economic sanctions have always been defined by a larger campaign to punish a government’s civilian populace into conforming to outside influence while creating a level of instability that can be easily exploited to justify regime change.

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