Masked people protest against Uganda's anti-gay bill at the Ugandan high commission in Kenya: 'It is simply untrue that homosexuality is un-African'. Photograph: Dai Kurokawa/EPA
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A day after the anti-homosexuality act was passed, a tabloid listed me as a 'homo'. This hatred is new to my country, and driven by US evangelicals
Frank Mugisha The Guardian
Thursday 20 March 2014 13.57 ED
Growing up in Uganda, homosexuality was not something we talked about much. I knew I was gay from a young age, and I came out to those close to me when I was a teenager in the early 90s. Some in my family accepted it, while others refused to acknowledge it. Homosexuality wasn't always accepted but it was, largely, ignored.
There were characters from my youth whom I remember as openly gay, such as a local barber – everybody in our close-knit neighbourhood knew them for who they were. There were snide comments and rude names – it was far from social equality – but I did not experience hatred. To be gay in Uganda back then was a fairly unremarkable thing.
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