The Ugandan lawmaker who proposed a bill that would give some gays the death penalty said Friday he will refuse any request to withdraw the legislation after a minister said the government would ask him to.

Lawmaker David Bahati said he felt the bill is necessary in the conservative East African country. On Thursday, Minister of State for Investment Aston Kajara said the government would ask Bahati to scrap the bill because they fear backlash from foreign investors. The bill, which Bahati proposed in September, has provoked criticism from gay-rights groups and protests in Chicago, Berlin, San Francisco, London, Sydney, New York and Washington. (previous story)

The United Nations informed Uganda leaders that they would withdraw the UNAIDS project from Uganda, as well as the large treatment facility they plan to build there because some of their employees are gay.

Condemnations also came from the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Canada and the Kingdom of Sweden; all of which have threatened to cut financial assistance. Activists continue to urge the Commonwealth of Nations to suspend Uganda’s membership if the law passes. Suspension of Uganda’s membership in the Commonwealth of Nations would be disastrous given Uganda’s dependence on the Commonwealth for international trade. The Commonwealth represents 2 billion people around the world, and accounts for more than $3 trillion in trade.

The law was proposed in Uganda’s Parliament following a visit by leaders of U.S. conservative Christian ministries that promote therapy for gays to become heterosexual. However, at least one of those leaders has denounced the bill, as have some other conservative and liberal Christians in the United States.

On the African continent, South Africa is the only country that allows gay marriage. However, some South African groups have rejected homosexuality as ”un-African” and gangs carry out so-called ”corrective” rapes on lesbians. A 19-year-old lesbian athlete was gang-raped, tortured and murdered in 2008.

“We are not happy with what is being said about Uganda because of the anti gay bill. Ever since the anti-gay bill was tabled, there has been outcries not only here but from allover the world against it. This is likely to affect the flow of foreign investors into the country,” Aston Kajara, Uganda’s Minister of State for Investment said.

Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has told colleagues he believes the bill is too harsh and has encouraged his ruling National Resistance Movement Party to overturn the death sentence provision, which would apply to sexually active gays living with HIV or in cases of same-sex rape.

The proposed bill, though, says anyone convicted of a homosexual act would face life imprisonment and it is unclear whether Museveni supports that provision or not.

One cannot help but wonder, why the bill stopped with gay’s and people with HIV. One International blogger asked:

If they are protecting Christianity as they claim, why not expanded the proposed law even wider to include people who have extra-marital affairs, people with lung cancer, people who contract syphilis, chlamydia and other sexually-transmitted diseases? Why not kill babies born with HIV? Whilst at it, anyone who has a child out of wedlock and anyone who has sex with a woman in her menstrual period should be executed! People with epilepsy believed to be possessed and people with dimples should be included for they bear the devil’s mark! Albinos are scary; maybe the Jews were let off to easy, let’s annihilate them and finish off what Hitler didn’t! Let’s punish White people for colonizing Africa – let’s add everybody, for crying out loud! If the issue is with reducing the prevalence of HIV, killing people with HIV will not solve that problem. In fact that will exacerbate the problem because no one will talk about it for fear of being executed and will not get treatment and that is when the problem will explode exponentially.

What’s the lesson here? If you allow any government to take away even the most basic freedom, you never know what they will take away next.