Bompani, Barbara, and S. Brown. "A 'religious revolution'? Print media, sexuality, and religious discourse in Uganda". Journal of Eastern African Studies, No.1 (2014): 110-126.

Bompani, Barbara, and S. Brown. "A 'religious revolution'? Print media, sexuality, and religious discourse in Uganda". Journal of Eastern African Studies, No.1 (2014): 110-126.

• The Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda was introduced in 2009 by MP David Bahati, although its most famous supporter became the Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga. The law was passed in December 2013, and signed into law on February 2014 by President Museveni (110).
• In August 2014, the Ugandan Supreme Count nullified the law because it had been approved without a quorum. Since then Representative Bahati has led a group attempting to reintroduce the bill into Parliament (111).
• Both Representative Bahati and Speaker Kadaga are members of powerful pentecostal churches with which they maintain strong public and political connections (110).
• Many opposition figures have argued that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill is being used as a ploy by the Museveni administration to cover up widespread corruption. They assert that Ugandan governments have a long history of scapegoating groups to avoid systemic change, including Muslims by the colonial government, Asians under General Idi Amin, Rwandans under President Obote, and the Lord's Resistance Army during the early Museveni administration (111).
• Pentecostal Churches have become extremely popular in Uganda, with one-third of all Ugandans converting to Pentecostalism. Pentecostal churches grew rapidly since their introduction in the 1950s and 1960s, and always exerted an outsized influences on politics due to their politically active conservative tendencies (111).
• The Pentecostal Church benefited from the political situation of the late 1980s and 1990s, as its materialistic message meshed well with the philosophy of national reconstruction (113).
• Pentecostal Churches were critical points in dispensing aid during the HIV/AIDS epidemic, further bolstering their popularity. The churches took full advantage of their position in dispensing aid from American evangelicals, promoting abstinence campaigns and other religious teachings through the HIV/AIDS relief (113-114).
• Religion has had a deeply politicized history in Uganda, beginning in the Early Modern period with competition between Catholic and Protestant missionaries, both backed by imperial power, for the upper hand in converting the Kingdom of Buganda. This divide continued during the colonial and post-colonial period, with political parties often being drawn across Protestant-Catholic lines and receiving assistance from their patron churches (112-113).
• This old division began much less powerful following the beginning of the Museveni administration in 1986, largely because the country has devastated by war and religious divisiveness was unpopular. This, alongside increasingly individual and neoliberal understandings of politics and existence, allowed for the rapid growth of the Pentecostal movement (113).
• The Ugandan government began to be concerned about the incredible success of Pentecostal Churches following the Kanungu Massacre in 2000, when a Pentecostal cult split from the Catholic Church committed mass suicide. From this point on, all churches not part of Anglican, Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox hierarchies had to register with the government as NGOs and become subject to those laws (114).
• Since the beginning of the HIV epidemic, sexuality -- which was previously a taboo topic -- became an acceptable topic in the public sphere. This led a proliferation of 'sex tip' magazines and the commercialization of Ssenga services, an older female relatives who taught young women about sex prior to marriage (114-115).
• This period of relative liberalism in the 1990s began to end in the late 2000s, when Pentecostal churches spearheaded a number of initiatives to restore conservative sexual norms to the public sphere. These measures have included banning literature discussing sex, pornography, and miniskirts or other erotic clothing (115).
• Pentecostal churches, although not more inherently conservative than other established churches, have been more successful in the Ugandan environment largely because they are willing to discuss sex. Whereas Muslim, Anglican, and Catholic communities treat it as a taboo subject, Pentecostal priests will frankly discuss sex, publicly and actively shaping perceptions of it as acceptable only within heterosexual marriage for the purposes of reproduction (115).
• Religious institutions and print media have been deeply intertwined during modern Ugandan history, often limiting the ability of editors to breach taboo subjects, like sexuality, for fear of conservative backlash and loss of sale revenues. The Pentecostal churches have again changed this, as they are willing to endorse publications which discuss sexuality, just as long as it still promotes the Pentecostal vision of sexual morality (117-118).
• Pentecostal churches are establishing a larger influence over print media in Uganda, as demonstrated by the removal of graphic sexual content from the tabloid, The Red Pepper, in 2013 in a bid by the tabloid to attract more Pentecostal readers. In other situations, Pentecostal pastors have used print media to disseminate their views, paying for the inclusion of their sermons in newspapers (116-117).
• This is not a new phenomenon, as print media has always included religious views in an attempt to appeal to conservative customers. Most of Uganda's major newspapers include sections on faith (117).
• Some Pentecostal-controlled publications have also been set up in Uganda, run with the explicit purpose of promoting Pentecostal morals alongside other work. These publications almost exclusive hire Pentecostals, both out of a religious affiliation and because Pentecostalism is associated with being hard-working and passionate (118-119).
• This conflation of church membership and position within print media can have troubling implications for press freedom, because a number of Pentecostal writers feel uncomfortable covering topics conflicting with church views and would feel that such journalism would hurt their career prospects (119).
• Print media is used to influence and control acceptable public discussions and conceptions of sex and sexuality, and those opinions and perspectives are heavily influenced by Pentecostal churches (121).