Uganda Wants to Murder Sexually Active HIV+ Gays. So Why Doesn’t AIDS Crusader Bill Gates Care?
Should we be concerned that Bill Gates, rich person and master philanthropist and Sundance dancer, doesn’t seem very concerned about Uganda’s Kill The Gays bill?
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with a $35 billion endowment, focuses on global literacy, entrepreneurship in the poor regions, and of course, HIV/AIDS research, treatment, and prevention. And that’s where Gates’ focus on Uganda and Africa at large remain.
And yet he tells a reporter, when asked about Uganda’s proposed legislation: “The spread of AIDS is a huge problem and obviously we’re very involved. I talk in my letter about the great success with this male circumcision effort, and preventative drug trials. There’s a tendency to think in the U.S. just because a law says something that it’s a big deal. In Africa if you want to talk about how to save lives, it’s not just laws that count. There’s a stigma no matter what that law says, for sex workers, men having sex with men, that’s always been a problem for AIDS. It relates to groups that aren’t that visible. AIDS itself is subject to incredible stigma. Open involvement is a helpful thing. I wouldn’t overly focus on that. In terms of how many people are dying in Africa, it’s not about the law on the books; it’s about getting the message out and the new tools.”
Gates is a smart man, and he’s right on one count: Whether there’s a law on the books or not, stigmatization about HIV/AIDS, and gays, will remain for generations. But what he negates — or is perhaps uniformed of — is that Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill specifically punishes anyone having same-sex sex while HIV-positive. And by punishes, we mean executes. EXECUTES! For having sex while carrying a virus that the local population remains terribly ill-informed about.
From his statement, it appears Gates isn’t terrified by the prospect that legalizing state-sponsored murder of those with HIV might, uh, infringe upon his efforts to fight the disease.
(Photo: Bill and wife Melinda at the Manhica Health Research Centre in Mozambique in 2003, via Reuters)
They are missionaries! To them, Gays are politics when they are doing “God’s Chosen Work” Too bad, they missed the very thing they could influence change, but stood idly by while HIV positive gays are executed in Uganda. Also, where are the same HIV activists like Charles King and Marjorie Hill of the two biggest AIDS orgs in the the US (NYC) doing on this issue? It’s all very Nazi Party!
Could you write a better ad for Apple?
No. 2 · Fitz
Could you write a better ad for Apple?
This piece of information makes me very happy that I went to Apple five or six years ago.
$35 billion now? I thought he was once worth some $100 billion! Anyway, of course he cares less about the Uganda bill because the less gays there are, the fewer the cases of AIDS hence less money he has to give up to his AIDS non-profit-if one is allowed to infer. I think Gates secretly regrets ever positioning himself at the forefront of the fight against AIDS. He thought it would have been a short-lived and inexpensive pandemic that should have secured his epitaph-”The benevolent Bill Gates: World’s Richest Philanthropist and Conqueror of HIV-AIDS”
Alas, here we are some twenty years later-AIDS is still ravaging populations across the globe and is draining his pocket now more than ever. Seems to have gotten himself into a hole he cannot dig himself out of. Bill Gates must secretly be blaming the gays for this long drawn-out war.
So he’s advocating cutting apart people’s penises instead of condom awareness and distribution? I think I might switch to Apple too.
No. 4 · benlayvey
Bill Gates must secretly be blaming the gays for this long drawn-out war.
Very interesting hypothesis…and a distinct possibility.
No. 4 · benlayvey wrote, “$35 billion now? I thought he was once worth some $100 billion!” … it said, 35 billion for the “The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation” endowment. That’s the amount being given away, not the amount he has.
Don’t be surprised at Gates seeming to ignore Uganda’s anti-gay bill. Gates spent a lot of his career ignoring unpleasant facts when speaking in public, particularly when those unpleasant facts involved bugs in the buggy software they had been pushing out to hapless users. It’s probably a habit that is hard to break.
I am surprised at how much hullabaloo this bill has created in the west. I have lost count of the number of times the words ‘genocide’ and ‘witch hunt’ have been used in the same sentence as Uganda. You use the words ‘genocide’ when not even a single person has been killed, will you invent new words when, say, one homo gets run over by a bus in Uganda?
Am Ugandan and live in Uganda and boy, does this article make for compelling reading! If you are ignorant about Uganda, that is.
This bill is not about you Americans. The sooner you realise that the better for all concerned. Making it the latest excuse in the evangelical-bashing business will only add to your narrow-mindedness.
If I may ask, why is it okay to protect girl minors from rape by heterosexual men and unfair to protect boys under 14 from rape by homosexuals? Are girl children more special or are the gay men more special than the straight men? Uganda is just trying to extend the same protection to boy children especially if the accused person knowingly infected a minor with HIV in the course of raping them. Do we have observe human rights selectively, allowing gay men to behave as they wish without protecting the human rights of the minors they come into contact with?
But I have to give it up to all of you gay apologists. You guys can really make yourselves heard. Seriously, we never thought we would come in for this kind attack from people who have even never heard of Uganda.
Yack….
@B: yeah but I’ll wager his net worth isn’t far off though. Still it has dwindled with time, nes pas?
No. 8 · SPARTAN
Am Ugandan and live in Uganda
Well, that ‘splains it all, doesn’t it? Enlightenment from the land that still practices witchcraft and canabalism…in the 21st Century, no less.
I am surprised at how much hullabaloo this bill has created in the west
No doubt, you would have uttered the same sentiment upon learning that some 6 million Jews were being herded into gas ovens as an “ethnic cleansing” action by a deranged paper hanger in Germany.
If I may ask, why is it okay to protect girl minors from rape by heterosexual men and unfair to protect boys under 14 from rape by homosexuals?
And if I may ask, how do you accomplish this? By executing all of the heterosexual men who might possibly rape a girl minor?
You use the words ‘genocide’ when not even a single person has been killed.
You, Sir, are a disingenuous liar. There are horrendous and terrifying reports coming out of Uganda like the following. And, it is only one of thousands of such reports.
http://evilrituals.blogspot.co.....rders.html
You folks need to get your shit together and stop acting like a bunch of uncivilized savages.
No. 8 · SPARTAN wrote, “But I have to give it up to all of you gay apologists. You guys can really make yourselves heard. Seriously, we never thought we would come in for this kind attack from people who have even never heard of Uganda.” (From a self-described Ugandan who apparently doesn’t realize that Sparta in ancient Greece was noted for its “homosexual tendencies”.)
Those of us living in North America and Europe have heard a lot about Uganda, courtesy of your former dictator, Idi Amin. According to http://robertod.wordpress.com/.....-idi-amin/ “Over the coming years, Amin would instruct his security forces to engage in periodic purges, getting rid of anybody who upset him. Members of rival tribes, diplomats, businessmen, academics, members of the clergy, journalists, bothersome foreigners and plain old ordinary Ugandan citizens all got the chop. Anywhere between 100,000 and 500,000 people (depending on who you ask) were murdered. Entire villages were wiped out, and the Nile became so clogged with dead bodies that they began blocking up the dam intake pipes.”
With that sort of history, maybe you should think twice before singling out classes of people to be executed. It’s bad salesmanship.