ABSTRACT
In September of 2014, Ty McCormick of Foreign Policy reported that U.S. President Barack Obama would be meeting with Sam Kutesa, describing Kutesa as “the controversial Ugandan diplomat serving as president of the United Nations General Assembly,” such that the move to meet with him “is sure to frustrate rights activists who say Kutesa’s support for virulently anti-gay legislation makes him unfit to lead the world’s parliament.” McCormick (2014) quotes Maria Burnett from Human Rights Watch as explaining that “his human-rights credentials are fundamentally undermined by his defense of Uganda’s discriminatory Anti-Homosexuality Law as well as other concerns.” The Anti-Homosexuality law to which Burnett refers permits the sentence of life in prison for “aggravated homosexuality” – or, being gay and having sex more than once (McCormick, 2014). McCormick (2014) suggested that Obama was unlikely to spend his meeting with Kutesa criticizing his positions on gay rights, instead choosing to focus on other issues of importance to the United States in the United Nations, including but not limited to the Islamic State and Ebola.
