A society reflects its people, and a broken society reflects its broken people, and the people, in turn, determine what is right and wrong, and in most cases, right and wrong are illogically subjective. Therefore, in such a society of subjectivity, everything right or logical might be discarded as wrong or unacceptable, and this is […]

Across Africa, the loudest cries of “protect the children” are too often followed by silence when children are actually harmed — but fury when consenting queer adults exist. Across the African continent, a familiar refrain echoes from pulpits, political rallies, and parliamentary debates: we must protect the children. It is a powerful phrase — emotionally […]

I flipped the last pages of this book on a bus while returning from somewhere, and two questions lingered in my head long after I closed it: Where will you be when the world heals from homophobia? And when will the world finally accept that people are people, regardless of their sexuality? I come from a country, Uganda, […]

In August 2023, something shifted in Uganda. Not quietly, not gently — but with the heavy, unmistakable thud of a law landing on real lives. The Anti-Homosexuality Act had just come into force, and for months many in our community had lived with a question sitting in our throats: Who will be first? Who would […]

In the early hours of January 17, 2026, police officers from Wakasanke Police Post raided a home in Masanafu, arresting four young men in a scene that has become disturbingly routine across Uganda. What followed illustrates how the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023 has transformed into a weapon of extortion, harassment, and systemic abuse against LGBTQ+ […]

When I Cast My Vote, I Did So With a Quiet But Stubborn Hope of Freedom: Freedom From Homophobic Leaders! Everything with a beginning comes to an end; even the strongest thunderstorms eventually settle. The year has barely begun, yet chaos already hangs over it. Another long ride? Maybe. But this too shall end. On […]

Across Africa, the loudest cries of “protect the children” are too often followed by silence when children are actually harmed — but fury when consenting queer adults exist. Across the African continent, a familiar refrain echoes from pulpits, political rallies, and parliamentary debates: we must protect the children. It is a powerful phrase — emotionally […]

When I Cast My Vote, I Did So With a Quiet But Stubborn Hope of Freedom: Freedom From Homophobic Leaders! Everything with a beginning comes to an end; even the strongest thunderstorms eventually settle. The year has barely begun, yet chaos already hangs over it. Another long ride? Maybe. But this too shall end. On […]

This Thursday, Uganda goes to the polls. Streets fill with posters, rallies buzz with promises, and the weight of choice hangs in the air. Elections are often framed as moments of division, but they are also moments of collective ownership. They ask us a simple question: what kind of country do we want to live […]

As the world marks Human Rights Day under the theme “Building Our Future Together,” Uganda’s LGBTQ community finds itself at a critical juncture, grappling with intensified legal persecution and systemic discrimination that threatens the very foundation of universal human rights. For decades, the community has existed under the shadow of colonial-era penal code provisions that […]

Election season is here, and like clockwork, Ugandan politicians have dusted off their favorite campaign strategy: screaming about the gays. It’s so predictable you could set your watch by it. Speaker of Parliament Anita Among, campaigning in Bukedea, recently declared that Museveni is the hero who decreed “a man should marry a woman,” while “these […]

  LOVE WON AGAIN — EVEN AS RIGHTS FALL In a world increasingly defined by the rollback of hard-won freedoms, a quiet but powerful victory for equality emerged this week from the United States. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to revisit Obergefell v. Hodges, the landmark 2015 decision that recognized same-sex marriage as […]

Who wrote the laws of society that now certain people believe that other people are not people enough—that their rights are not rights enough and so they should be flouted without any iota of reverence? One might thus wonder what society has become—a beast that consumes those who refuse to be what it wants them […]

For those of us navigating the complexities of queer life in East Africa, picking up She Called Me Woman: Nigeria’s Queer Women Speak feels less like reading a book and more like finding a long-lost map. Edited by Azeenarh Mohammed, Chitra Nagarajan, and Rafeeat Aliyu, this anthology is a profound collection of thirty first-hand accounts […]

Book Review: Boy From Mukono: My Defining Moments by Farid Ulsan Bugembe This memoir, set against the red soil and unrelenting heat of Uganda, is an honest account of what it costs to be queer and alive in a country that would rather you were neither. It is not a comfortable read. It is not […]

Some books we read merely to pass time, just as we read newspapers, quickly and inattentively. Others we read for purgation: to loosen the grip of self-imposed prisons. Indubitably, many of us are prisoners: societal prisoners, family prisoners, mythical prisoners. Or yet, someone out there, out of hatred for our identity, has enslaved us, and […]

I flipped the last pages of this book on a bus while returning from somewhere, and two questions lingered in my head long after I closed it: Where will you be when the world heals from homophobia? And when will the world finally accept that people are people, regardless of their sexuality? I come from a country, Uganda, […]