Counteracting fabricated anti-gay public pedagogy in Uganda with strategic lifelong learning as critical action

Abstract

Political, cultural and social fallout following the introduction of the anti-homosexuality bill in Uganda in 2009 intensified fabrication of an anti-gay public pedagogy of negation and nemesis that fuelled the passage of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014. The Government of Uganda, conventional Anglicanism and US evangelical Christianity were all implicated in developing this homophobic public pedagogy. This article provides an extensive account of what transpired to result in prohibition of lifelong learning focused on Ugandan sexual minorities. In the face of this prohibition, the article calls for lifelong learning as critical action constructed as strategic public counter-pedagogy aimed at recognizing and accommodating sexual minorities in the face of homophobia. This critically progressive counter-pedagogy would include a pragmatic turn to comprehensive health education as a starting point for inclusive, holistic learning. The article also considers the important role that media could play in this work. It explores contemporary realities of advancing and deploying lifelong learning as critical action in Uganda, examining the current dire state of education in the nation. It concludes by considering the status of Uganda’s tenacious quest to entrench gay apartheid amid what is now a growing trend toward global gay inclusion.

Keywords:

• Lifelong learning
• critical pedagogy
• anti-gay public pedagogy
• critically progressive and strategic public counter-pedagogy
• lifelong learning as critical action
• sexual minority
• lesbian and gay
• anti-homosexuality bill
• Ugandan politics and homosexuality
• religion and homosexuality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.