Ugandan a hero in U. S., a pariah at home
Human rights attorney faces oppositionwhile fighting for gay rights
In a church, a synagogue and on university campuses across the Bay Area, tearful audiences have delivered standing ovations and lined up to embrace Nicholas Opiyo , a crusading Ugandan human rights attorney. And as he heads back to the capital city of Kampala this week to continue fighting for civil liberties, Opiyo says he’s now witnessed the best of America.
Before, in a life- or- death battle for sexual minorities in East Africa, he said he had mostly seen the worst: evangelicals who spread extreme, anti- gay doctrines in his country leading up to Uganda’s 2014 law making “the offence of homosexuality” punishable by life imprisonment.
His work stands in stark contrast with the U. S., where this week the Supreme Court weighs a broad expansion of gay marriage rights.
“It’s disappointing to see this much support here and to see the kinds of Americans that go to Uganda to spread hate,” Opiyo said in an interview at Stanford University, where he spent recent weeks as a visiting scholar with the Center for African Studies. “They have allowed America to be defined by the worst of them.”
Opiyo, 34 , was the lead attorney on the constitutional case that overturned Uganda’s Anti- Homosexuality Act, mere months after it passed last year. The case brought him international praise, as well as a daily barrage of harassing emails, and more clients living in fear: gay men and lesbians beaten and forced from their homes, arbitrarily arrested and forced to flee the country for safety.
“People think once the law was nullified, everything is OK,” the softspoken Opiyo said. But “the existence of homophobia and hatred remains extremely widespread in Uganda. Religious leaders haven’t relented; they’re at it every single day.”
Opiyo, who heads Chapter Four, an organization protecting victims Nicholas Opiyo is a visiting Stanford University scholar and human rights activist. He has fought for gay rights in his home in Uganda.