In his column ("Understanding the odd story of gay rights in Africa," March 5), Dominic Mhiripiri '12 accuses supporters of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill of being patronizing, closed-minded carpetbaggers. They just don't understand Southern culture. Trying to end lynching in the South is forcing Northern values down the throats of the good people of Mississippi.
Oh, wait. It's 2010, not 1920, and Mhiripiri is writing about opposition to Uganda's anti-homosexuality bill.
While Mhiripiri claims to oppose the part of the bill imposing the death sentence for people convicted of homosexuality, he nevertheless treats the position of those who support it as fundamentally valid. It is not. Advocacy of large-scale state-sanctioned murder cannot and should not be treated as morally equivalent to opposition to large-scale state-sanctioned murder. To say that the two positions should be given equal weight is to demean the name of reasoned debate. This is not a culture issue. It is a human rights issue.
(Historical note: The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill never passed. The Senate apologized in 2005 for its failure to pass it and other anti-lynching measures.)
Rebecca Maxfield '13
March 5
