Neal Gottlieb has taken a brave and single act against the anti-homosexuality bill past by Uganda parliament (endorsed and signed by the countries president Yoweri Museveni). The American stunned the nation by planting a Gay Pride Flag on Uganda’s highest peaked mounting in protest of the act. Alongside the letter he wrote an open-letter to the Ugandan president
Dear President Museveni of Uganda,
On April 16, 2014, after a 6-day climb, I summited your country’s tallest peak, Mount Stanley’s 16,753 foot tall Margherita Peak, and mounted a gay pride flag at its summit in protest of your country’s criminalization of homosexuality. Your country’s highest point is no longer its soil, its snow or a summit marker, but rather a gay pride flag waving brilliantly, shining down from above as a sign of protest and hope behalf of the many thousands of Ugandans that you seek to repress and the many more that understand the hideous nature of your repressive legislation.
The wiser of us understand that humans possess certain unalienable rights. These rights include freedom to express oneself, freedom to worship one’s god or none at all and freedom to live and love as one is born […]
If you don’t like said flag on your highest peak, I urge you to climb up and take it down. However, you are an old man and surely the 6-day climb through the steep muddy bogs and up the mountain’s glaciers is well beyond your physical ability. Your days are more limited than most. Do you want your remaining days to be yet another blight on the history of your nation or will you find the strength to reverse your actions and allow all Ugandans to be free?
With all due respect,
Neal Gottlieb
Other course, this act has not been taken well by the Ugandan politicians – some seeing it as an act as colonial symbol of “planting a flag” with the fact that Museveni has framed homosexuality as a western import.
However, many have shared with overwhelmingly positivity for his stand. In response, Frank Mugisha, head of Sexual Minorities of Uganda, provided a personal reaction.
For me, its a good thing and he is showing support and solidarity , the LGBT movement in Uganda. Many people will do so many things because they are concerned about the fundamental human rights of Ugandan LGBT individuals and some solidarity messages or gestures are simply out of passion and none political like what this American man did at the peak of mountain rwenzori , I think it’s simply human.
