UGANDA’S PARLIAMENT has dropped plans to debate a controversial bill that proposed the death penalty for some gays and lesbians – but officials indicated that members would still discuss the move on Friday.

LGBT rights groups around the world have denounced the bill, hoping to force the National Assembly to reject it. Internet petitions have gathered more than 1.4 million signatures.

The bill was first proposed in 2009 but hadn’t been discussed until last Friday, and was scheduled to be discussed today – but a walkout by female legislators over an unrelated bill prevented the parliament from discussing it.

Now parliament appears ready to hold an extraordinary session on Friday to debate the bill, which in its original form would impose the death penalty and life imprisonment in some cases.

The bill’s author, David Bahati, has said a new version would not contain the death penalty, but no amended version has yet to be released publicly. Bahati said he expected the bill to be debated and passed on Friday.

Frank Mugisha, the director of Sexual Minorities Uganda, a gay rights group, said he considered the lack of quorum to be only a temporary reprieve.

“The way I saw, if the bill was debated today, it would have been passed because most MPs were in its favour,” he said. “We were saved by the lack of quorum.”

Online petitions from the groups Avaaz and Allout said they had gathered more than 1.4 million signatures. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch called the bill’s progress “deeply alarming”.

Gay rights groups say that the harassment of gays has increased in Uganda since the introduction of the bill in October 2009.

Last year a tabloid newspaper in the deeply conservative country published the names and photos of men it alleged were gay. One cover included the words “Hang Them.”

Shortly afterward, a prominent gay rights activist whose picture was published was bludgeoned to death, though authorities contend David Kato’s sexual orientation had nothing to do with his killing.

Bahati’s original bill would mandate a death sentence for active homosexuals living with HIV or in cases of same-sex rape. “Serial offenders” also would face capital punishment. Anyone convicted of a homosexual act would face life imprisonment.

Anyone who “aids, abets, counsels or procures another to engage of acts of homosexuality” would face seven years in prison. Landlords who rent rooms or homes to homosexuals also could get seven years.

Homosexuality is highly unpopular in Uganda, and pastors in this Christian country speak out loudly against it. Bahati has said he thinks the bill would become law if voted on.

AP