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After a 6 day climb, Neal Gottlieb, founder of Three Twins Ice Cream in San Francisco, has claimed Margherita Peak on Mount Stanley for Gays in protest of Uganda’s new anti-LGBT laws.

The Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014 (previously called the “Kill the Gays bill” in the media due to the originally proposed death penalty clauses) was passed by the Parliament of Uganda on 20 December 2013 with the death penalty proposal dropped in favor of life in prison. The bill was signed into law by the President of Uganda on 24 February 2014.

Gottlieb also published the text from an open letter to Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni:

Dear President Museveni of Uganda,

On April 16, 2014, after a 6-day climb, I summited your country’s tallest peak, Mount Stanley’s 16,753 foot tall Margherita Peak, and mounted a gay pride flag at its summit in protest of your country’s criminalization of homosexuality.

Your country’s highest point is no longer its soil, its snow or a summit marker, but rather a gay pride flag waving brilliantly, shining down from above as a sign of protest and hope behalf of the many thousands of Ugandans that you seek to repress and the many more that understand the hideous nature of your repressive legislation.

The wiser of us understand that humans possess certain unalienable rights. These rights include freedom to express oneself, freedom to worship one’s god or none at all and freedom to live and love as one is born […]

If you don’t like said flag on your highest peak, I urge you to climb up and take it down. However, you are an old man and surely the 6-day climb through the steep muddy bogs and up the mountain’s glaciers is well beyond your physical ability. Your days are more limited than most. Do you want your remaining days to be yet another blight on the history of your nation or will you find the strength to reverse your actions and allow all Ugandans to be free?

With all due respect,
Neal Gottlieb