THINGS ARE NOT THE SAME FOR...Freedom of Speech... A National Question

Bird’s Eye View

Years ago a promised march had set the island a blaze and many feared for the lives of the proposed marchers so much so that it was cancelled. PJ Patterson’s government was in power at the time and took a few name calling and labels as a result of the idea of a LGBTQ march. Buju Banton and Shabba Rankin careers seem to have suffered because of a statement of hate by the later. Bruce Golding’s not in my cabinet became a rhetoric and found its way into many social gatherings and in some way reaffirmed the idea that the nation was deeply homophobic as was already being propagated due to the lyrics of local deejays.

Then a campaign emerged that saw the closing of shows as well as the cancelling of visas or popular reggae artistes who had homophobic lyrics. Even the incarceration of Buju Banton was being associated with LGBTQ lobbyist and organizations around the world.

Tolerance Stand in on Hope Road

And by the year 2013 many few shifts have occurred. Portia Simpson Miller stated that gay men could serve in her government, and there was mention of a repeal of the buggery law by Parliament. Then suddenly a slew of conversations began to surface in the public, the newspaper columns, JFLAG’s television and internet programs that examined the rights of humans and the issue of homosexuality as well sporadic presence of marches as well as “standins” for visibility. Lawsuits against the media for not airing tolerance ads as well as Maurice Tomlinson and Javed Jaghai’s lawsuit against the government asking them to amend the buggery law, because his landlord gave him notice to leave the premises when she discovered he was a gay man.

This is 2013 Jamaica; these are truly difficult times; especially for the minorities, the misunderstood and those being judged. As midst these triumphant times here there are still large pockets of Jamaicans (although, there seem to be an idea that Jamaica is becoming more tolerant) who seem adamant that the LGBTQ community has no place on this island. So there have been a few instances in a few months that have gathered media attention: The mobbing and beating of the UTECH Student, the movement of a merry and disrespectful band of gay men and the squatter drama that sprung from the Millsborough community and the Observer reports, the Government officials call for human rights or interest groups or lobbyist  to declare the source of their funding, the growth of a youth arm walking and fasting for sexual purity, the death of a transvestite boy because he was convinced that he was a girl, a sentiment he must have believed, irrespective of his biological make up, and now the recent blow out with Queen Ifrica’s statement at the Grand Gala and the Canadian gay community’s response, gay men being rescued from angry mobs in two communities in Old Harbour and Mandeville. Just to name a few.

An Even Broader Perspective:

Micheal Manley

It is an excellent time to be alive if you are a Jamaican fighting for human rights and the fight against injustice because there is, if nothing else open dialogue and a vigilance to get these issues in a different light as it relates to policy. As the language debates have also began, so too has health care concerns the banning of cigarettes in public places, the building and development of Yoga communities increase in vegetarian and raw food eateries, the campaign for organic foods, the debate against GMO seeds and products, the right to worship including the question of lifting of the archaic law against Obeah, secularism, public safety on the roads, child remand and detention queries ranging from Armadale to the children in adult detention are the few that come to mind.

For me this debate of rights and policy comes at a time when the entire nation is ready to ask and receive more. As, either because of the various tiers that people survive on in this island, a demand for equality exists; if nothing else, as a poignant residue from the 1970’s and Manley’s demand for social equality.

Friendly Close up:

The truth  is everything is connected. A large web.  Even within the small communities things that rub every one or some people the wrong way also find their roots within the larger society. But from a few people’s perspectives ugly on top of ugly is uglier and thus easier to point at. The LGBTQ community then becomes the place pointer fingers feel safest to point. The worst of all sins. And so many Jamaicans who are anti violence still find it difficult to become allies for the human rights of sexual minorities even when they declare they are for social justice and are self proclaimed tolerant. Mixed in with the demand for justice, the mantra of the poorer people in this country, Jamaica carries in it many ideologies, mindsets, doctrines and convictions of tradition.

Among the many is that these are the “Last Days”, so these actions (immoral in nature according to social conditioning) are a battle not just against blood and flesh but against spirit. For example many gay people who have friends who are “tolerant” of them but abhor their lifestyle are sometimes bombarded with the Christian jargon of hate that it is an “evil spirit that causes a man to want to lay with a man, a demon that has possessed the woman so that she will want to lay with another woman”. Or “God loves you, he hates the sin”.  For the not so "die-hearted" Christian or religious in nature the Jamaican affinity to puns and word play has friends and close associates playing with the language in music so that even the famous Bob Marley song against violence becomes invoked “Man to man is so unjust”. Both languages meaning the same thing, this is incorrect according to tradition, doctrine and morality.

For countless others fear finds its root. The juxtaposition of sexual predatory fear with child abuse and molestation has many saying that they are afraid for their children. I will give an example a friend of mine (I call him that) who I went to Prep School with said to me that although he does not have a problem with gays as long as they are isolated he is afraid for the children because he remembers being in the drama club at school and being required to attend Saturday classes at Devon House with his effeminate drama teacher and how his mother was afraid of that because it was only the boys who would attend. He admitted something to me though that as a student he was ill prepared to enter the JCDC festival, but was sure that the effeminate man was using this opportunity to lure him into a life of sin. A mindset he developed from his mother’s fear of her son being spoilt, her own understanding of how susceptible children are influences of any nature. He grew in to his mother’s fear. A translation of that is he grew into her convictions her doctrines and mindsets.

There are still a mumbling set of people who realize that their relatives and friends are coming out as gay, women and men they cannot do without, and are beginning to ask “why push something on us that the nation is not ready for?”

And so for these various sets of people, although they abhor beatings and violence and murder of any individual, they cannot actively respond because to solve the problem would mean re-examining themselves their convictions and ideologies so that they can truly be helpful in assisting the growing number of Dwayne Jones in Jamaica. Justice then becomes a spectacle they can watch until another appears that they are more comfortable to hop on to.

Although there is a need for justice there is underneath the sexuality debate a sense of injustice that is a dog barking at the heal of the activist and the movement. This dog is the ingrained thoughts propagated through fear and mass thinking machinery including education and religious institutions (that also go misunderstood) about sex and sexuality that many articles books television programs as showed as problematic not just at it relates to the perspectives on same sex but as it relates to teenage pregnancy, absentee fathers, domestic violence and wider societal issues.

The Mirror View

Queen Ifrica

I have been secretly admiring Queen Ifrica’s response, to the Jamaican Canadian group who had her hoisted from the show, because she is right not just for her cause but for mine as well. The heterosexual and the homosexual have the right to freedom of speech that does not cause harm. I like her have the right to Freedom of Speech. And like her the LGBT activists refuse to be cowed down into silence, they are already tired of having to operate from the space of fear and silence while she does not. Even if a few lobbyists come and snatch away a few of her pennies and that of other artiste she still has a larger voice than the LGBT community on a whole. We have the right to disagree with each other. 

But I am afraid of where we are in the debate about sexuality.  We seem adamant to draw blows. Are blows a necessary part of the advocacy and opposition mind frame? Already so many blows have been thrown in the name of right and rights.  It is indeed difficult to pursue conversations when we are stuck neither holding on to points and not seeing possibilities neither eye to eye. The simple question of "the right to be" on both sides of the table is entrenched with a warring mentality to protect my need for privacy and love versus the abomination and the protect the children misguided ideology (see how easily I too have slipped into the mayhem). Out of this need to be right an onslaught of words raises its head from both sides that make it impossible for respect to be given or gained.

The question of homosexuality in Jamaica is burdened with violence, spiritual separation and economic suffocation. Queen Ifrica's  "No Gays around here" is if nothing else insulting to the mass of homosexuals who wake up every morning and contribute to this community. It is an insult to their family and friends. It is an insult to here-Jamaica. As if we can pick and choose or finest and brightest citizens, eradicate the rest because they serve no real purpose. Are the Jamaican gays here space holders to be discarded upon advise? There seems to be no room for the language of validation of the gifts of the homosexual minority and the promise and gifts they hold for the countries development. Because we are sure of the negative, sure of the damnation that is being heaped on the heads of same sex lovers. We are unable to see the positives.

Is there room for the positives? Are we to give our gifts to this nation and continue persecuted, ignored, isolated and only recognized if we are financially “better of” than the massive? Are we to all have the same value system? Are we to hold to the same moral codes? Are we to believe in exactly the same things? When are we going to see that  individual and national death  is the only outcome of such suffocation? What is the value of morals and values if it negates human life? 

So all I am asking is there room for us to disagree fairly?