By Mutabazi Sam Stewart
Homosexuality, abortion, prostitution and capital punishment are the most controversial issues that have divided the world view in equal measure with both proponents and opponents believing that they are correct. This column will try to highlight the major issues in the debate about what I have decided to call "the big four controversies". Lets first deal with homosexuality
Homosexuality
Human rights are first and foremost about individual choices. It is not anyone's business to put to task gay people to prove that what they do is actually natural. Many times, when gay people have been cornered to justify their actions, they say they are "born like that". They relate their sexual orientation to a person who uses his or her left hand having no choice about the same. Whether this is true or false is up to gay people to decide. But gay people are not under any obligation to explain to anybody why they do what they do.
Two consenting adult people who decide to use their bodies according to their wishes would have committed no wrong to the public so long as they do it within the confines of their bedrooms or in hidden places. Any government that tries to limit the rights of gay people through prohibitive legislation is only wasting its time and resources. The Law that seeks to prevent homosexuality is as redundant as its framers. This is because any law that is not easy to enforce is as good as non existent.
Problems arise only when gay people may need to popularize and publicize their acts to the wider public. This may constitute a direct danger to the population and need to be checked immediately. Just as it is not allowed for heterosexual people to have sex in public, gay people must keep their romance away from the public eye. Those that are fighting homosexuality are fighting a war they are sure they can not win, at least in the long run.
Prostitution
Prostitution is a manifestation of nothing else but the very nature and character of human beings because they engage in sex for other reasons other than procreation, to be specific, for pleasure, unlike other creatures created by God. To any moralist, prostitution is the last thing they would love to hear about. To them, it signifies the highest form of moral decay. It symbolizes putrefy that boarders on the margins of the Biblical road to total destruction of a society that condones it. But to liberals, prostitution is a sin just like any other.
Morality is defined by different people differently. Morality is debatable but human rights are not. Lest I am misunderstood, I must clarify that there are some minimum benchmarks or requirements that every society must conform to. Otherwise if every one was allowed to act as they wish, the world would run crazy. Besides, the concept and foundation of human rights is based on morals. Morality is such a big topic that it encompasses almost all aspects of human life. Would it be in order for instance any government to make laws that condemn premarital sex because it is morally not right?
How did government determine that prostitution is morally wrong and not premarital sex? Isn't this a clear indication of government allocating itself more powers than it actually has? Won't the same government at a future date declare which rights people would have to enjoy? What is clear though is that for some one to enjoy human rights they must be human beings. It is further assumed that all human beings have morals naturally. If we follow the argument of moralists, it may mean that prostitutes do not have morals and therefore are not human beings, which therefore means that they do not have any human rights.
Readers must understand that Laws do not provide human rights but rather they protect them. Laws only guide people on what they are expected to do in order to live harmoniously with fellow human beings to ensure unity and peaceful coexistence. A law that supposedly gives human rights means that that same law can take away the same rights through the same process that it provided those rights.After all laws are made by man and man is selfish and imperfect. The day human beings begin making laws to grant human rights is the day human rights shall start to become meaningless to humanity.
Capital Punishment
Capital punishment remains on Uganda's law books as a legitimate and legal practice. The last time the state killed people in large numbers was in 1993 when 29 people were hanged to death in Luzira Maximum prison. Currently there are about 300 people on death row in Luzira prison alone.
Impunity in human rights has never been an option of reconciliation. Nether is it tolerated as a means of resolving conflicts or maintaining peace and stability. Society must always punish wrong doers in order to deter them from repeating the same mistakes or committing more crimes. Punishment also helps would-be wrong doers to think twice before they commit crimes because they would be aware that they may suffer grave consequences. Nevertheless when punishment goes beyond the proverbial boundaries, it fails to achieve its purpose. Most scholars argue that the death penalty is actually not a punishment but an act of outright murder by the state. They argue that the objective of a punishment is to reform the culprit to become a better person. Yet the death penalty does not give the accused any chance to reform.
There is no mechanism to protect people who commit crimes unintentionally when capital punishment is in place. The worst scenario happens when wrongly convicted persons are executed only for contrary evidence to be adduced at a later stage when the innocent person is already dead. This forms the strongest base that reinforces the argument against the death penalty.
The other argument advanced by crusaders against the death penalty is that the practice perpetuates illegal killings. If the state can kill, why shouldn't its citizens do the same? In other words, capital punishment makes life of persons too cheap to be taken away by a mere stroke of a pen through a hangman's noose. Life in most developing countries is too contemptible to the extent that no death can shock the government. Instead, in addition to the many causes of death in Africa such as AIDS, Malaria, Hunger and Poverty, the state adds on another cause in the form of the death penalty.
The state determines what constitutes grievous crimes that attract a death sentence and a misdemeanor that requires the convict to only serve a jail term. One of the most dreadful among our laws is the one that relates to treason which is punishable by death. It smacks of intolerance, lack of democracy and is often more linked to monarchism, totalitarianism and dictatorship. People who are charged and later convicted of treason live at the mercy of the ruler who determines whether he should allow them to keep on living or to die.
We are aware of many freedom fighters that were hanged in their course of fighting for the cause of their countries. Those who were lucky not be killed later became important citizens and have helped to shape the destiny of their countries. A case in point is Nelson Mandela of South Africa. Can anyone imagine what Africa would have lost if the Apartheid Regime had decided to apply capital punishment on the person of Nelson Mandela during his jail term? Though the death penalty was on the law books of South Africa and Mandela was qualified to die under the same law, the white minority chose not to apply it. He was later to become one of the greatest pillars of freedom not only in Africa but in the whole world. The question is; how many Mandela's have been put to death by the state and how many more will die before the state realizes the mistake of killing people?
Abortion
The Bible condemns abortion. The Koran abhors it. Religion in general detests it. Moralists loathe it. Traditionalists and conservatives don't want to hear about it. Catholics hate it with a passion. The Anglican Church can't stand it. Christians and Moslems can't touch it. The state despises it. Despite all the opposition and ranting against abortion, it is being carried out in a semi-legal fashion throughout the world.Some countries have legalized it. But many are still resisting the change. Uganda is in the latter category.
As a consequence, many young and old women put their lives at risk trying to carry out abortions in undignified places with unqualified personnel. Recent research by Florence Mirembe et al shows that over 775,000 women in Uganda have unintended pregnancies and of these 297,000 end pregnancies through induced abortions. Government does not have the capacity to monitor every woman who gets pregnant to ensure that they do not abort. Neither does it have the mandate or authority to pry into the private lives of its individual citizens. Individual persons own their bodies and they are at liberty to choose how they want to use them. Any woman therefore who feels, for any reason, they cannot continue carrying a pregnancy, must be left to terminate it at will.
The duty of the government in this whole process instead should be to facilitate "safe removal" of the fetus from the woman who in her better judgment thinks she is not ready to have such babies. Opinions are abound of people who are opposed to abortion arguing that abortion should not be allowed because in having sex, women should be aware they may get pregnant. This is a shallow argument because scientific evidence suggests that human beings, on average and intentionally have sex primarily not for procreation but for pleasure. Therefore if in the course of having sex for pleasure, a woman happens to conceive, there should be no need for such a woman to ask for permission to terminate such an unwanted pregnancy.
It should be made clear to those who are against abortion that a fetus is not a human being and it remains a fetus until it is delivered as a baby. Whereas the law is kept in place, it serves no other purpose other than propagating underhand methods of operation of carrying out abortions, whose consequences are glaringly fatal. In keeping abortion illegal, government is killing its women citizens who can't access better services to remove fetuses they are not ready to have as children because of fear of the repressive law.
The social problems we face today are not as a result of lack of laws to protect human rights, but to the contrary, it is because we have many laws which are in most cases redundant and at worst without any objective and purpose. Today, some governments out of folly, highhandedness and ignorance have extended the boundaries of their mandate and jurisdiction by declaring what in their own understanding, and for their own motives call immoral human behaviour. Irrespective of how long it shall take the world to debate and meditate on the four controversies, I am convinced that, one day homosexuality, prostitution, and abortion shall be made legal and lawful and governments worldwide shall recognize the fact that killing criminals is like pouring water in a bottomless pit. It may take one hundred years or more, but it surely will come.
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