Humanist

President Museveni justified his accession to the homosexuality bill, claiming he sought and got scientific opinions from scientists the world over. Including, Ugandan scientists affiliated to the departments of genetics, the school of medicine and the ministry of health.

Apparently the scientists were unanimous in their conclusion that homosexuality is not genetic but behavioural.

“Homosexuals are nurtured but not natured. No study has shown that one can be a homosexual purely by nature. Since nurture is the cause, that is why I have agreed to sign the Bill into law.”

His Excellency President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni

There is another bill for which the president did not seek the opinion of scientist – the anti-pornography bill, which he has accented to and has signed into law.

“The law defines pornography as “any representation through publication, exhibition, cinematography, indecent show, information technology, or by whatever means of a person engaged in real or stimulated explicit sexual activities or any representation of sexual parts of a person for primary sexual excitement.”

Daily Monitor

Moreover, the two laws are related.

• The one on homosexuality is about what excites one into wanting sexual relations with another, in this case a person of the same sex.

• The one on anti-pornography is also about the same thing ‘sexually exciting’ others – particularly, women dressed in a certain way deemed sexually exciting by men.

Two different processes, one based on empirical data and the other on ‘I-am-still-trying-to-figure-out-what-data’, have given us similar laws. Legislation of our behaviour.

So, why the two different processes?

Are ‘scientific’ opinions necessarily superior and infallible?

Well, the following email joke doing the rounds provides food for thought on ‘scientific’ empirical data:

“Late fall and the Indians on a remote reservation in North Dakota asked their new chief if the coming winter was going to be cold or mild. Since he was a chief in a modern society, he had never been taught the old secrets.

When he looked at the sky, he couldn’t tell what the winter was going to be like. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he told his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect firewood to be prepared.

But, being a practical leader, after several days, he got an idea. He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked, ‘Is the coming winter going to be cold?’ ‘It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold,’ the meteorologist at the weather service responded.

So, the chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more firewood in order to be prepared. A week later, he called the National Weather Service again. ‘Does it still look like it is going to be a very cold winter?’ ‘Yes,’ the man at National Weather Service again replied, ‘it’s going to be a very cold winter.’

The chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of firewood they could find. Two weeks later, the chief called the National Weather Service again. ‘Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?’ ‘Absolutely,’ the man replied. ‘It’s looking more and more like it is going to be one of the coldest winters we’ve ever seen.’

‘How can you be so sure?’ the chief asked. The weatherman replied, ‘The Indians are collecting a shitload of firewood’.”

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