Uganda already has a law that could be used against homosexuality
but the new backbench bill goes much further.
The penalty for gay sex could be death.
I got death threats. My children got death threats.
The story of LGBT activism was lonely sometimes.
But I felt that we are not just going to be buried like this.
In a country where biblical values are deeply ingrained
homosexuality is generally deplored.
My family was a very conservative family a staunch catholic family.
Me being the first born 'girl' then. I had issues with gender identity.
I transgressed gender unintentionally from the time I started being aware of my existence.
They bought me a very nice yellow dress and I went and changed.
I put on football shorts, I felt more comfortable that way.
Then when I came out my father was
in the hallway and he gave me a slap.
He said 'go back and dress appropriately'. And then I put on that yellow dress
and I curled up inside I felt different now, I wasn’t proud anymore
I wasn’t happy anymore. I fought against my sexual orientation
for so many years.
I was on my own because my family didn’t want anything to do with me
at that point. And eventually I was homeless.
So I felt that I needed to heal from this thing that was causing me suffering.
So I took myself to churches.
Reject sodomy! Reject perversion!
They were praying for me and then as they were praying
they start stripping me it was my clothes 'making me a man'
so they stripped me naked. They started to lay their hands on me
and these are boys and their pastor.
They laid hands in particular on my genital area
because they said that was the centre of it all.
That is when I felt that it is torture. But I said
this is who I am.
Inside me I felt it was ok to be the
way that I was and that God was not mad at me.
Seeing as homosexuality here is illegal, the gay scene is pretty much underground.
I went to that bar and I just started smiling. Life had come.
I didn’t want to go back home when
I went there because I met lesbians, proud ones!
People dressed like me. People expressing themselves like me.
People in love with other women they had their partners there
and it was like
I had reached heaven.
Last year under the headline 'hang them' a tabloid magazine published
the names and addresses of 100 gay men and lesbians.
The effects of that publication were major. They were horrible.
A lot of people during that period lost jobs, were evicted from homes, killed.
Lawyers and activists had challenged the anti-homosexuality act on the grounds
that it violated human rights.
My children know me as Daddy
and the they call me Daddy they don’t say
'hey trans Daddy, hey former lesbian trans Daddy' they call me Daddy.
It shouldn't matter but it matters now that I identify as a transgender man
because that is the beginning of a conversation about what transgender is.
Not for me because I have survived
but there are people who are still struggling to come out
or to even ask for what they need. So then it matters.