Uganda's politics grabbed international headlines two years ago. On Oct. 14, 2009, this tiny landlocked East African country sprung to global notoriety when its Parliament tabled a bill that sought to criminalize same-sex relationships.
When David Bahati, a member of parliament representing Ndorwa West, brought the anti-homosexuality bill before parliament, it drew shrieks of protests from local human rights activists and the international community.
Opposition intensified in January 2011, when David Kato Kisule, a prominent local gay rights activist, was found bludgeoned to death in what activists feared was a hate crime since his photograph had been published in a local tabloid that encouraged the outing of gay and lesbian people within the country.
However, surprisingly for many people in Uganda, Kato's death was the last time the bill made headlines.
And more than two years since it was tabled, the anti-homosexuality bill not only failed to get passed but it has fallen off the radar.
What happened?
WikiLeaks sheds light
The Cabinet early this year threw out the bill on the advice of its legal minds who argued that it was unnecessary since government had a number of laws criminalizing homosexuality anyway. Yet, according to recently leaked diplomatic cables from the whistleblower website, WikiLeaks, that seems to be only part of the whole story.
WikiLeaks suggests that due to international pressure, the bill might have been dead on arrival.
In leaked cables, the website reveals that Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, while in a meeting with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Affairs Johnnie Carson on Oct. 24, 2009, said Uganda is not interested in a war with homosexuals and agreed that the proposed legislation went too far.
In yet another meeting between Foreign Affairs Minister Sam Kutesa and U.S. Embassy officials, the minister said the bill would die a natural death, while Nsaba Buturo, the bill's most vocal advocate within the cabinet, appeared to have succumbed to pressure when he started campaigning for a watered-down version.
The local gay community has been too busy celebrating the demise of the bill to care about the murky details.
But even then, many within its closeted circles were surprised by WikiLeaks' revelation that while Bahati was the face of the bill, its real architect was actually First Lady Janet Museveni.
Bill championed by First Lady
Described in the leaked cables as "a very extreme woman," Janet Museveni has never made a secret of her Christian beliefs, embracing them instead as a badge of honor.
As a result, revelations linking her to the bill should not be surprising. What shocks the gay community is the fact that her husband, Yoweri, killed a bill personal to his wife in order to relieve pressure from the international community.
The gay community in Uganda subsists on this international pressure and support. Many within the community insist this support is critical if gay rights are to remain a realistic aspiration.
Val Kalende, a vocal gay rights activist who heads the Board at Freedom and Roam Uganda, fears the bill might actually make a return in an even more vicious form.
"The people who were behind this bill are very radical and extreme," she says matter-of-factly. "You don't expect such people to simply take the silent death of the bill lying down. These are people, who inspired by U.S. evangelicals, have sowed seeds of hatred towards minorities."
She continues: "The Ugandan Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex Community is depicted as a bunch of subhuman entities that are unworthy of life. And these messages of hate are actually propagated by important and influential members of the government plus opinion leaders from across the religious spectrum. So, while we applaud the pressure the international community brought to bear when this atrocious bill was tabled, we also urge this pressure to be kept up if our rights are to be won and protected eventually."
Kalende also contends that while the death of the bill might have denied the government a legal basis to persecute the minorities, it hasn't put an end to the persecution that existed in the first place.
While the particular battle of the bill appears won for now, the struggle continues.
Kalende views each such victory as one more step toward a future that will see Ugandan minorities accorded the same basic rights enjoyed by their counterparts in more tolerant cultures.