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The World Bank has announced it is indefinitely postponing a $90 million loan to Uganda after that country passed into law its infamous and widely-condemned Anti-Homosexuality Bill (AHB). The loan which was to be approved today, was slated to improve healthcare conditions in the country of about 36 million people.
In a stunning and uncharacteristically direct Washington Post op-ed titled “Discrimination by law carries a high price,” World Bank president Jim Yong Kim (image, top) lambasted the “discrimination that many people around the world face based solely on their sex, age, race or sexual orientation.”
I raise this in light of the law Uganda enacted this week, which could imprison for life those convicted of homosexuality, and the increased violence against gays in Nigeria after an anti-gay law took effect there this year.
These countries are in the news now, but our focus should be much broader: 81 other countries — in the Americas, Asia, Africa and the Middle East — have passed laws that make homosexuality illegal. In the United States, although Arizona’s governor vetoed a bill this week that would have allowed businesses to deny service to gay people, nine states have laws that limit how public school teachers can talk about homosexuality. More than 100 countries discriminate against women. And an even greater number of countries still have laws that discriminate against minority groups.
Kim, the former president of Dartmouth College, also sent an email to World Bank staff which was obtained by Buzzfeed‘s J. Lester Feder, who broke the story. In the email, President Kim attacks “acts of discrimination against a group of people because of their sexual orientation,” and states they “cannot be tolerated.”
Uganda’s motto is “For God and My Country,” and American Christianists infected that country with their anti-gay hate, helping to create an environment that embraced what originally was the “Kill the Gays” bill. Uganda president Yoweri Museveni this week signed the Anti-Homosexualitry bill into law. And then, in an interview with CNN, called gay people “disgusting.”
Image via Wikimedia Commons