KAMPALA, Uganda, Feb. 28 (UPI) -- Uganda is willing to forgo international aid to keep its new anti-homosexuality law, its ethics minister said Friday after the World Bank suspended a loan.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signed the Anti-Homosexual Act into law Monday, prompting outrage from Western countries, and resulting in the freezing of aid to Uganda by Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway and the suspension of $100.5 million in new World Bank loans for health services, the British newspaper the Daily Telegraph reported Friday.
"We will not shy away from this. We want to rid this country of homosexuality, and if that means these people -- Obama, Hague, you name them -- want to stop their aid, then let them," ethics minister and former evangelical Christian pastor Simon Lokodo said. "We don't need it, we won't die poor and we will at least be able to save these gays from damnation."
Sam Ganafa, head of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights organization Spectrum Uganda, cautioned against stopping international aid.
"Aid cuts affect all Ugandans, but they will blame the LGBT people for it," he said. "It can cause us more problems."
