The president of Uganda signed a punitive anti-gay invoice on Monday that features the demise penalty, enshrining into regulation an intensifying crackdown in opposition to L.G.B.T.Q. individuals within the conservative East African nation and dismissing widespread calls to not impose one of the world’s most restrictive anti-gay measures.

The regulation calls for life imprisonment for anybody who engages in homosexual intercourse. Anyone who tries to have same-sex relations might be responsible for as much as a decade in jail.

The regulation additionally decrees the demise penalty for anybody convicted of “aggravated homosexuality,” a time period outlined as acts of same-sex relations with kids or disabled individuals, these carried out beneath risk or whereas somebody is unconscious. The offense of “attempted aggravated homosexuality” carries a sentence of as much as 14 years.

The laws is a significant blow to efforts by the United Nations, Western governments, civil society and rights teams that had implored the president, Yoweri Museveni, to not signal it. On Monday, the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union all condemned the enactment of the regulation, saying it undermined equality and the proper of all Ugandans to dwell free from discrimination and persecution.

President Biden referred to as the regulation “a tragic violation of universal human rights” and mentioned his administration would “evaluate the implications of this law on all aspects of U.S. engagement with Uganda.”

“We are considering additional steps, including the application of sanctions and restriction of entry into the United States against anyone involved in serious human rights abuses or corruption,” he said in a statement.

The speaker of Uganda’s Parliament, Anita Annet Among, first announced on Twitter that President Museveni had signed the bill into regulation. “I thank my colleagues the Members of Parliament for withstanding all the pressure from bullies and doomsday conspiracy theorists in the interest of our country,” she wrote.

The regulation, activists mentioned, tramples the rights of L.G.B.T.Q. individuals and leaves them susceptible to discrimination and violence. Homosexuality is already unlawful in Uganda, however the brand new regulation calls for a lot extra stringent punishment and broadens the listing of offenses.

The regulation’s passage has stoked worry amongst L.G.B.T.Q. individuals, lots of whom have begun fleeing Uganda. Gay rights teams say a whole lot of homosexual individuals — going through rejection from their households, discrimination at work or mob justice within the streets — have reached out to them in current weeks looking for assist.

“There’s fear that this law will embolden many Ugandans to take the law into their hands,” mentioned Frank Mugisha, essentially the most outstanding brazenly homosexual rights activist in Uganda. “This law will put so many people at risk. And that creates anxiety and fear.”

The laws additionally represents a significant victory for most of the nation’s non secular teams, whose members had organized road protests urging lawmakers to guard kids and what they portrayed because the sanctity of the normal African household.

The Rev. Stephen Samuel Kaziimba, the archbishop of the Church of Uganda, mentioned in February that homosexual teams have been “recruiting our children into homosexuality.”

The sweeping anti-gay measure comes as a rising variety of African nations — together with Kenya and Ghana — contemplate passing related and even stricter laws.

The Ugandan laws, recognized formally because the Anti-Homosexuality Act, was first passed by Parliament in March. But as an alternative of signing it instantly, Mr. Museveni despatched it again for amendments, looking for to clarify a distinction between being homosexual and fascinating in homosexual intercourse.

Lawmakers did add language making clear that anybody suspected of being a gay wouldn’t be punished except they engaged in same-sex relations.

The remainder of the regulation remained the identical, together with mandating a jail time period of as much as 20 years for anybody who promotes homosexuality, a imprecise provision that activists worry might be used to focus on companies supporting L.G.B.T.Q. individuals, together with these providing lifesaving AIDS treatment.

In a joint assertion, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Joint United Nations Program on H.I.V./AIDS, and the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief mentioned the brand new regulation would put the nation’s AIDS response “in grave jeopardy.”

Anyone youthful than 18 convicted of getting homosexual intercourse faces as much as three years in jail. The regulation, which additionally encourages the general public to report any suspected acts of homosexuality, comprises ambiguous language that makes it troublesome to interpret.

Anyone who permits premises for use for same-sex relations might withstand seven years in jail, and an individual convicted of homosexuality might be despatched for “rehabilitation.”

A crew of legal professionals and activists is drafting a lawsuit, whose particulars haven’t been divulged, difficult the regulation in Uganda’s Constitutional Court.

The laws follows a yearslong marketing campaign in Uganda to criminalize L.G.B.T.Q. individuals and those that assist them. Politicians first drew up an analogous measure in 2009, however when it was signed into law in 2014, the courtroom struck it down on procedural grounds.

But over the previous few years, political leaders, together with home and worldwide non secular organizations, started ramping up anti-gay campaigns and warning about what they name a risk to household values.

Politicians additionally started making baseless claims a few plot to advertise homosexual actions and lure kids in faculties to homosexuality. Last yr, the authorities shut down Sexual Minorities Uganda, a number one homosexual rights advocacy group, claiming it had not been formally registered with the federal government.

“What’s so troubling about this moment is how swiftly the bill moved through Parliament and how thoroughly Uganda’s institutions beyond the legislature, like the judiciary and police, have absorbed and pushed anti-L.G.B.T.Q. sentiment,” mentioned Gillian Kane, a senior analyst at Ipas, a nonprofit, who has studied anti-gay measures throughout Africa.

The swift passage of the Ugandan invoice, she added, was partly pushed by the assist it acquired from organizations exterior the nation.

Those embody Family Watch International, an Arizona-based group that promotes the bogus apply of conversion remedy to alter somebody’s sexual orientation. Just days after the invoice was first handed in March, the group’s American founders helped arrange a convention in Uganda amongst African lawmakers to advertise anti-gay measures continentwide.

“The passage of this bill has implications beyond L.G.B.T.Q. rights,” Ms. Kane mentioned. “By trampling on human rights and constitutional law, this bill is a political project for authoritarianism.”

Some analysts mentioned the regulation was meant to scapegoat homosexual individuals and distract the general public from mounting home challenges, together with rising unemployment and skyrocketing food prices. Mr. Museveni, who has been in energy for nearly 4 a long time, has additionally confronted elevated scrutiny for his crackdown on the opposition and human rights activists.

“Homosexuality remains highly politicized in Uganda,” mentioned Helen Epstein, the writer of a book exploring the president’s lengthy maintain on energy. “It is very much a product of Museveni’s malevolent political genius.”