Just days after word got out that Uganda’s government was going to reintroduce a bill that would include the death penalty for homosexual acts, a spokesperson for the president says it won’t be happening. The “kill the gays” bill is, again, dead.

A spokesperson for President Yoweri Museveni on Monday said the government has no plans to introduce the legislation that would impose the death penalty for gay sex. “There are no plans by the government to introduce a law like that,” Don Wanyama, President Museveni’s senior press secretary told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “We have the penal code that already handles issues of unnatural sexual behavior so there is no law coming up.”

So two men or two women having sex will still be a crime, but execution won’t be the penalty. That’s good news… in a perverse Christian sort of way.

It seems like outrage from countries that provide aid to Uganda spooked them away from this bill. After all, Ethics and Integrity Minister Simon Lokodo seemed fairly confident the bill would not just be proposed, but pass without obstacles. What caused the 180? Why did he even bring it up in the first place?

No one knows… or wants to admit it, anyway.

When asked why Lokodo had made the statement, Wanyama said: “Ask him. I don’t know where he got this idea from. There is no plan by government to introduce a law of that nature.”

The whole saga is a reminder of how faith-based policies are still wreaking havoc across the world. But those policies are hard to enact when decent people everywhere express opposition to the Christianity-tinged legislation.

(Screenshot via YouTube)

