Over the past decade, Ugandan tabloids have mounted repeated attacks on gay people in the country, outing prominent figures and calling for them to be killed. “When I go home, there is a boy who keeps shouting, ‘You are gay, we are going to kill you.'” “When you are gay, life in Uganda is not good at all,” says transgender activist Joseph Kawesi as she knocks back her third bottle of Club. When the bar closes a few hours after midnight, most will go home to closeted lives, hiding their sexual identity from family, friends and employers. At the bar, Kampala’s lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people gather over bottles of the local Club beer to soothe rattled nerves and take refuge in a place where strangers do not glare at them with hostility.
