Why is Uganda being singled out by the USA over anti-homosexual laws?

By Scotty Reid

Last week the United States announced plans to prohibit Ugandan officials from entering the country and to suspend some aid donations to the country over laws it recently passed to outlaw homosexuality. In February 2014, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed bills into law that allow life imprisonment for acts of “aggravated” homosexuality, which include intercourse with a minor and HIV transmission.

In response to the passage of the legislation US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power said, “LGBT rights are human rights and the steps taken make clear that the United States will take action to defend those rights. The discriminatory laws in Uganda that criminalizes homosexual status should be repealed, as should laws and policies in the more than 76 countries around the world that criminalize homosexuality.”

Powers is in a same sex marriage with law professor Cass Sunstein.

Actually, the number of countries that have laws against homosexuality is 81 according to 76crimes.com and 13 states in the United States all have laws against homosexual acts on the books. Those states are Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Virginia.

Of the 81 countries that have anti-homosexual laws on the books, many of them receive aid and military assistance from the United States but yet none of those countries is having their aid packages suspended nor are their leaders being hit with travel bans to the United States.

So the question should be asked of the Obama administration, why single out Uganda. Is it right to punish an entire country over laws the United States does not like or approve of but ignore the same laws in countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Pakistan, Qatar and the UAE just to name a few that receive aid from the United States?

Will religious organization in the United States lose their tax exemption status for teaching homosexuality is a sin? That is highly unlikely.

For its part, Uganda leaders have remained defiant and have refused to be coerced or bribed, depending on how you look at it, into bending to the will of the United States government.

The World Bank also got in on the discriminatory act when it postponed a loan worth 90 million dollars (66 million Euros) after the Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed the bill into law in February.