Homos want to kill me

A government minister has said that gay people from around the world send him hate mail everyday because of his stand against homosexuality.

“I receive at least 20 abusive and threatening mails on my life daily,” Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo told reporters yesterday. “As I speak now, I have seen about 11 mails on my email address waiting for me to read.”

He said most of the e-mails are from the United States and the United Kingdom. The message to him is that he must drop his campaign against gays and lesbians.

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Dr Buturo said gays have designed websites promoting their rights complete with his name and photograph appearing as one of the persecutors of gay people in the world.

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Speaking from his ministry’s offices in Kampala, Dr Buturo said the government is not fighting gays but it is against the practice of homosexuality because it is immoral.

Homosexuality in Uganda is illegal and punishable with a maximum sentence of life in prison.

School district regrets deleting gay kiss

A Newark city school district that ordered staffers to use markers to black out a picture of a male student kissing his boyfriend from all copies of a school yearbook now says it regrets the decision.

Superintendent Marion A. Bolden issued an apology to the student, Andre Jackson, according to a statement released by the district on Monday.

“The decision was based, in part, on misinformation that Mr. Jackson was not one of our students and our review simply focused on the suggestive nature of the photograph,” the district said.

“Superintendent Marion A. Bolden personally apologizes to Mr. Jackson and regrets and embarrassment and unwanted attention the matter has brought to him,” according to the statement.

The district said it would reissue an “un-redacted version” of the 2007 yearbook to any student of East Side High School who wants one.

Gay pair’s photo blacked out of yearbook

A photograph of an East Side High School student kissing his boyfriend was blacked out of every copy of the school’s yearbook by Newark school officials who decided it was inappropriate.

Andre Jackson said he never thought he would offend anyone when he bought a page in the yearbook and filled it with several photographs, including one of him kissing his boyfriend.

But Newark Superintendent of Schools Marion Bolden called the photograph “illicit” and ordered it blacked out of the $85 yearbook before it was distributed to students at a banquet for graduating seniors Thursday.

“It looked provocative,” she said. “If it was either heterosexual or gay, it should have been blacked out. It’s how they posed for the picture.”

Russell Garris, the assistant superintendent who oversees the city’s high schools, brought the photograph to Bolden’s attention Thursday afternoon. He was concerned the picture would be controversial and upsetting to parents, Bolden said.

There are several photos of heterosexual couples kissing in the yearbook, but the superintendent said she didn’t review the entire yearbook and was presented only with Jackson’s page.