John Oliver: America Celebrates Gay Pride While Peddling Homophobia Abroad (VIDEO)

John Oliver reminds viewers that America is responsible for Uganda's recent crackdown on LGBT individuals.
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John Oliver celebrated Pride weekend on Sunday’s “Last Week Tonight,” marching out a team of cheerleaders and a rock n’ roll George Washington to congratulate the U.S. for making big strides toward marriage equality.

But while Americans were out parading, LGBT individuals in Uganda were seeing their rights curtailed by draconian anti-gay laws. Oliver took it upon himself to remind viewers that American anti-gay activists, in particular evangelist Scott Lively, were responsible for Uganda ramping up its persecution of gays.

“Clearly U.S. groups recognized the market for homophobia stateside was dwindling, and so tried to sell it somewhere else,” Oliver said. “Meaning that Africa isn’t just where we send our losing team’s Super Bowl shirts. It’s also where we now send our losing political philosophies.”

Oliver then played a clip of transgender human rights activist Pepe Julian Onziema’s appearance on a Ugandan morning show. The very first question the host posed to Onziema was “Why are you gay?” and while he said it didn’t feel unnatural to sit down with Onziema, the host admitted he was “baffled” by the activist.

“If you’re baffled by something, you don’t automatically throw it in jail,” Oliver joked. “Otherwise, American prisons would be full of Keurig coffee machines.”

Later Oliver sat down with Onziema himself, whom he called “the Gandhi of Uganda,” to discuss U.S. influence on that country’s anti-gay laws.

Watch below, courtesy of HBO:

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