The Ugandan president is well known for making some pretty outrageous statements. But during his latest public speech, Yoweri Museveni crossed into the absolutely bizarre, suggesting that oral sex should be banned as mouths are "for eating”, and that “outsiders” are trying to corrupt Ugandans into performing more oral sex.  

I mean, it hardly needs saying that most of us use our mouths for many things besides eating, such as that little thing called breathing, as well as talking and even blowing out birthday candles. But no. According to President Museveni, the mouth is only for eating.

“Let me take this opportunity to warn our people publicly about the wrong practices indulged in and promoted by some of the outsiders,” President Museveni reportedly told the audience. “One of them is what they call oral sex. The mouth is for eating, not for sex.”

Now weirdly enough there is actually some evidence to suggest that men who have a high number of female partners – and who regularly go down on them – have an increased risk of getting certain types of head and neck cancers. This is thought to be because it can give them an oral infection of cancer-causing strains of HPV, which is unsurprisingly exacerbated by smoking.   

In this situation, though, we highly doubt that President Museveni has suddenly become concerned about protecting men from oropharyngeal cancer.

This isn’t even the first time he has made comments about oral sex. In 2014 he made another weird statement, claiming that if “you push the mouth there, you can come back with worms and they enter your stomach because that is a wrong address.”

Uganda isn't exactly well known for its liberal attitude towards sex, mind. In 2014 the country rolled back on LGBT+ rights, introducing draconian laws banning gay sex and even making it illegal for someone who knows that a person is gay not to report it to the police. Anyone suspected of being gay, protecting a gay person, or even "promoting" homosexuality can be sent to jail, while there are plenty of reports of gay rights activists being beaten and killed.