ABSTRACT
In Uganda, multiple episodes of expulsions and punitive actions against LGBTQ youth have made headlines, sparking responses from government officials, religious leaders, and LGBTQ activists alike. Whether real or rumored, many of these reported incidents evince anxiety over LGBTQ youth in schools. As Gilbert Herdt has noted, episodic flares of moral outrage are often sexualized, and come in a variety of forms approaching a moral panic. This chapter looks at a fundamental and existential threat to LGBTQ students' rights sex panics over same-sex activity, gender transgression, and other forms of queerness that prompt mass expulsions of LGBTQ youth from schools. After surveying the history of mass expulsions, the discursive frames that justify and perpetuate them, and the rights that are at stake, the chapter concludes by examining the practical question of how states in the region might realistically be persuaded to advance the rights of LGBTQ children.
