Monday, 7 December 2009

protest Uganda homophobia

You can read about the anti-gay law in Uganda on this post on Harry's Place. Horrifyingly, it criminalises all physical homosexual acts, even if committed outside Uganda in countries where such acts are not a criminal offence. There is a protest in London on Thursday and you could write to the Ugandan High Commissioner - also clearly any Ugandan who is gay and seeks asylum in another country should be granted it, as they have well-founded fear of persecution. Hein?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

No, Jane! "Protest" is a transitive verb - please do not use it intransitively! Protest FOR, or Protest AGAINST, by all means, but Protest Uganda Homophobia is linguistically abhorrent.

janestheone said...

It's a headline. There is licence.

Anonymous said...

Licence, perhaps, but you should nevertheless regard yourself as having been shown a "yellow card".

janestheone said...

bollocks to that

Anonymous said...

For the benefit of all of us Ugandan homosexuals who read your blog, which is the nearest safe country to head for ?

dreamingspire said...

Its an Americanism. Don't you, Anon, see how the Yanks always want to move forward while we sit on our arses? Yes, that took them and then us into the catastrophic Iraq situation (the after-war catastrophe, I mean)...

Jonny said...

"Protest" can be used both transitively and intransitively, and in fact Jane's headline uses it transitively. It is maybe an Americanism now, but is used transitively by Shakespeare, Milton and Drayton, off the top of my head. Many Americanisms have their roots in 16th and 17th century English, understandably.

dreamingspire said...

Jonny, thank you - but that only confirms my suspicion that we in this country have been going downhill for centuries. Will the USA still have me, I wonder? (I was offered a job there in 1982, but preferred good old blighty - wrong.)