John Abdallah Wambere

John "Longjones" Abdallah Wambere is a Ugandan gay rights activist and co-founder of Spectrum Uganda Initiatives, a Kampala-based LGBTI rights advocacy organization with a focus on health education. Because of the threat of violence and persecution he faces in Uganda, Wambere was approved for asylum in the United States by the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services on September 11, 2014. He currently resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In an interview on Legal Lines with Timothy Lynch, an LGBTQ Massachusetts Bar Association production, Wambere said of his childhood, "We heard about gay people. [People] spoke about gay people. But they were never condemned, they were never persecuted. No one went to torch their homes. They lived as part of the society, and some of them were appreciated as people of uniqueness, different people. And no one ever called them pedophiles." The Penal Codes of 1950, enacted by the ruling British government, contained sodomy laws that are still in force today. However, recent, intensifying anti-homosexual sentiment in Uganda has been associated with the dissemination of anti-gay rhetoric by evangelical Christians, particularly Scott Lively, who came to Kampala in March 2009. According to Stephen Langa, who organized the visit, Lively gave a series of talks about "the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda" — and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family." It did not pass.

However, on December 20, 2013, the Parliament of Uganda proposed the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014. The bill, which was signed into law by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on February 24, 2014, proposed a maximum sentence of life in prison for those found guilty of "the offence of homosexuality," "aggravated homosexuality," "conspiracy to engage in homosexuality," and "promotion of homosexuality," among others. The law was later annulled by Uganda's Constitutional Court on August 4, 2014, because it did not have the requisite quorum needed.

Increasing violence In 2005, The Red Pepper, a Ugandan news tabloid, publicly outed Wambere as a gay man. The tabloid was criticized by the Human Rights Watch for putting these men in danger of increased government harassment.

On WGBH-TV, Wambere said of Ugandan media, "I never outed myself. The media outed me… but at one time I found that I had to live the reality... We are Ugandans and we are Africans. And we were born homosexuals."

In the spring of 2009, Wambere was physically attacked by several men as he left Capital Pub, a local bar in Kampala. He was grabbed from behind and knocked unconscious; he later woke in a friend's car with a chipped tooth. Wambere began to receive death threats that he would be the next to die.

Facing death threats and life imprisonment if he returned home, Wambere worked with GLAD to file for asylum with the U.S. Government. "This has been a very, very difficult decision for me," said Wambere in a statement to the media. "I have devoted my life to working for LGBTI people in Uganda, and it gives me great pain not to be with my community, allies, and friends while they are under increasing attack. But in my heart, I know it is my only option, and that I would be of no use to my community in jail."

Family Wambere has a sixteen-year-old daughter who is still in Uganda, staying with relatives.