Should Freedom of Religion Protect Extremists?

September 11 each year is a somber day for Americans, but the date is seared into my memory as well. In 2001, I had only just started high school when I learned that religion can dehumanize its adherents in addition to those ostensibly condemned by scripture. How could anyone become so thoroughly brainwashed that they feel obligated to kill other humans to demonstrate allegiance to a belief system?

Post 9/11, western media encouraged an association between terrorism and so-called ‘Muslim fundamentalists’. It wasn’t until recently that I realized that Jamaica has its own brand of terrorism. Except, our ‘fundamentalists’ are Christians and instead of waging war against ‘the West,’ their target is ‘sodomites’.

In January of this year, J-FLAG launched a participatory video campaign, ‘We Are Jamaicans,’ that sought to put a face and a story to LGBT (lesbian, bay, bisexual and transgender) Jamaicans and those who embrace them as part of the human family. The videos are powerful because the storytellers are speaking from their hearts at great risk of harassment and potential violence; they are earnest but not preachy.

Last week, J-FLAG advertised five of the videos on Facebook in hopes that some Jamaicans would watch them and maybe come to recognize the humanity of LGBT citizens. Instead, many used the opportunity to lambast J-FLAG for ‘forcing nastiness down their throats’. The organization received countless aggressively-worded messages demanding that it suspend the campaign immediately because Jamaicans had a right to not see or hear the pain that they inflict upon LGBT bodies.

The arrogance and self-righteousness of those who sent messages and posted vitriolic notes on the group’s Facebook page was hard enough to process, but it is the comments on the videos that made my blood curdle. I wept as I contemplated what could lead ordinary human beings to chant, ‘burn them,’ ‘murder them,’ ‘exterminate them,’ about fellow Jamaicans.

Anti-gay Christian groups claim they do not advocate violence against LGBT people, yet every day they add coal to a raging fire that too many of us are frothing at the mouth to toss LGBT Jamaicans into. I am genuinely terrified that we have created a society that is filled with so much hate for this one maligned group that some would threaten to murder just to validate their prejudices. I used to tell myself that a majority of people couldn’t possibly reach the same conclusion and not be right. Then I studied history and realized that divine sanction has been used to justify countless atrocities.

I am a fierce defender of the constitutional right to freedom of speech; I am not threatened by the Christian understanding that homosexuality is immoral. As a human being, and as a gay Jamaican, however, I am horrified that we turn a blind eye to the most vicious among us who proclaim with impunity that LGBT persons are unworthy of life. The next time we gasp at the actions of a religious extremist in a foreign society, let us remember the Jamaican Christian fanatics whose vile words and actions we tolerate in defense of religious freedom.

Crossing Imaginary Lines

Last Saturday while walking in Liguanea with my boyfriend, I had an encounter with a windscreen-wiper that sent me reeling. We had just left the salon where we added blond highlights to our hair and we were in high spirits. As soon as we walked by the Total gas station on Hope Road a windscreen-wiper asked, “Yow, a how unu a move like fish so?” (Hey, why are you behaving like gay men?) We turned to look him in the eye before continuing on our way. He beckoned to his colleagues at the intersection as we walked toward them, “Look pan dem fish bwai deh!” For a moment I thought the time had come. I would get just what I deserved for daring to be myself as I sought to cross Barbican Road to get to Sovereign Mall.

Another windscreen-wiper wanted to know, “Indian, why yu look like fish so?” (Indian man, why does it seem like you’re gay?) By this time, three of them were shouting at us while onlookers in traffic waited for the traffic light to signal ‘Go’. My boyfriend urged me to ignore the men so I did but unable to control his rising temper, he turned to face them and asked mockingly, “Would you like fifty dollars?” Without missing a beat one of them shouted, “Go suck yu mada! Is a knife mi want fi push ina unu chuot!”(Go suck your mother! What I would really like to do is push a knife in your throats!)

I walked ever more confidently to not betray the sense of dread that fell over me. A few minutes later, we crossed Hope Road to the Post Office Mall. I went to a printery and he went to a photo shop. While I waited for my order, I decided to visit him to see how he was doing.

I looked through the glass exterior and scanned the store but he was not there.

I panicked.

My boyfriend has a penchant for revenge and I wasn’t sure of the extent of his hurt.

Could he have gone to confront the windscreen-wipers at the intersection?

Is he dead?

I dug my phone out of the right front pocket of my jeans shorts and called him as my eyes welled up with tears.

He was safe. Seated in the store, hidden from my view.

I returned to Jamaica in July 2012 to work with J-FLAG. Since then, I’ve received a number of threats online in response to my advocacy. However, last weekend was the first time in a year that someone accosted me as I went about my business. Even while my friends encourage me to hire taxis to go from place to place, I insist on walking when I can because I refuse to live in fear of my own people.

Anti-gay attitudes are not as pervasive as they once were. Most Jamaicans still believe homosexuality is immoral and unnatural but they would never actively try to make a gay person feel unwelcome. However, there remains in our midst a self-righteous minority that believes it is their duty to rid Jamaican streets of the abominable sodomites that dare to defy arbitrary standards for gender presentation. They are brash, crass and bloodthirsty. When questioned about their opinions on homosexuality you find that their views aren’t that different from the religious folk who warn of the ‘gay agenda’: homosexuality is unnatural and immoral and gay people are a public health risk to ‘the [heterosexist] nation.’ The majority may never strike or threaten to strike a gay person but through their silence, they allow for the periodic deployment of violence by the few who think they are God’s servants on earth and protectors of our cultural heritage.

Jamaican heterosexual men have embraced a metrosexual aesthetic. They wear skinny jeans, neon colours, shorts, and some even change the colour of their hair with impunity. Popular wisdom tell us that verbal harassment has decreased because it’s impossible to differentiate gender non-conforming gay men from the average heterosexual man, but this is not true. The sexuality police have developed a sophisticated understanding of what a fish looks like, and last Saturday my boyfriend and I were too fishy for their liking. Even while some lines that once separated the fish from the mammals have been erased, others have been drawn. Jamaican gay men know these ever-evolving demarcations well and comport themselves accordingly.

Time and again, I see good people stand by as violence is inflicted upon defenseless victims. A man beats a woman who we assume to be his partner, but we do not intervene because we don’t want him to visit his wrath upon us. Instead of speaking out we question, “A weh shi kuda du so fi deserve dem lik deh?” A mother physically assaults her child in a public venue but we say nothing because we remind ourselves that Jamaicans don’t take well to critique from strangers. The onlookers in traffic may have sympathized with us but they dared not defend us. If these windscreen-wipers had assaulted me, many Jamaicans would have called in to radio programs and would sound off on social media to express that while they don’t ‘condone the homosexual lifestyle,’ they don’t feel it is appropriate to physically harm gay people. Some may even graciously offer a word of caution that we should be mindful of the cultural context and shouldn’t do anything that might trigger such a violent response from the sexuality police.

There are more voices championing tolerance for gay Jamaicans today than ten years ago, but these voices become mute when needed most: when a raging tyrant decides to act on a firmly rooted disdain for the sodomites that call Jamaica home. We acquiesce to the demands and values of the most uncivilized citizens because the culture still endorses and allows for the affirmation of their point of view.

I want to live in a Jamaica where eyewitnesses do more than bear witness to my shame and vulnerability. I want to help to create a Jamaica where voices of reason and love triumph over voices of ignorance and hate. Until then, these streets that my tax dollars help to pave are not safe.

But my hair remains blond in defiance.

Outlaws at Home

The Jamaican constitution clearly delineates the heteronormative boundaries of citizenship. It ostensibly outlines the rights of all Jamaican citizens, but flagrantly restricts gay men’s claim to the rights to privacy and equality.

The Jamaican constitution includes a number of savings law clauses, which preclude the repeal of prior statutes that might be in conflict with constitutional principles. One such statute is the colonial-era ‘Offences Against Persons Act’ that criminalizes the ‘abominable crime of buggery’ (anal sex) as well as ‘gross indecency’ (intimacy) between men in public and private.

Advocates for the retention of these laws argue that they exist to protect children and to safeguard public morals. By advancing this argument, they recklessly conflate homosexuality with pedophilia and consensual intimacy with rape. This framing is not accidental but is a calculated attempt to stigmatize non-heterosexual identities. By using a savings law clause to elevate anti-gay laws beyond judicial scrutiny, the constitution privileges unscientific and exclusionary religious perspectives on wholesome gender and sexuality. Furthermore, it renders sexually active gay Jamaican citizens unapprehended criminals.

Anti-gay Christian crusaders argue that decriminalization of male homosexual intimacy is the equivalent of positing that gay identity is equal to heterosexual identity. (Let us ignore for a moment the fact that it is very much so.) The potential subversion of religious notions of sexual morality unifies Christians in revolt against demands for a more inclusive Jamaica.

Retention of the buggery and gross indecency laws symbolically represents the precarious and conditional nature of citizenship for gay people. We are Jamaicans but we are outlaws. We can be gay but the legal framework demands that we forgo seeking companionship and intimacy. Unofficially, we can break the law so long as our transgressions remain a private matter that has no legitimacy in public discourse on relationships, family and citizenship.

Characterizations of Jamaica as homophobic, while apt, fail to recognize the complexity of gay identity negotiations and the impact of internalized homophobia. The gay community is largely invisible and there is great ignorance in the society about homosexuality. Many gay Jamaicans feel compelled to deny their sexual identities to avoid scrutiny, harassment and violence. However, some are simply holding on to the strands of privilege received as a condition for remaining silent about the oppressive status quo.

The dehumanizing narratives about gay men that are pervasive in the Jamaican cultural imagination are encouraged by acquiescence from influential gay men in the society. We occasionally decry the violence periodically meted out to vulnerable gay Jamaicans who are unable to camouflage their sexualities or to barricade themselves in upscale, gated apartment complexes. For the most part, though, we are unconcerned.

Some of my colleagues in advocacy openly disagree with my oft-repeated assertion that we are shamelessly negligent. They deny that we make concessions to the homophobic cultural order when we lie about our sexualities by omission. They deny that we hide behind professional titles and concern for respectability. And they deny that we willfully bolt our closet doors to exonerate ourselves from the obligation to educate and re-socialize the public.

I insist that we must break the tradition of complicity and proactively challenge those who guard the gates of normalcy and citizenship. If not for ourselves, then for those who feel the brunt of anti-gay animus. The routine abuses and anticipated limitations we subject ourselves to are not necessary conditions. If we truly believed we were equal and deserving of the rights of citizenship, we would not passively wait for our belief to be validated by the majority but would boldly claim our birthright.

Alas, for many gay men in Jamaica being closeted is virtuous and agitating for change is seen as a needless and futile pursuit. We claim we accept ourselves in private conversations with like-minded individuals, but our stoicism betrays a deeply rooted sense that we are inferior.

Jamaica is our home, but we are resident aliens. Too few of us are willing to invest in liberating ourselves from our homophobic and heterosexist socialization. We surrender to and are held hostage by the fear that if we should breach the terms of our residency we might be deported from our homes, communities and jobs.

But all of us are not vulnerable in the same way. In fact, some of us have secure jobs, are not likely to be evicted from our homes and are not vulnerable to physical violence. It is our fear of ourselves and our inability to believe that we are worthy of recognition and worthy of equality that keeps us invisible, disenfranchised and vulnerable.

Can You Be Heterosexual Without Jesus?

Is your sexuality in limbo? Do you believe the Devil and God are at war over your sexuality and therefore your soul? Can you be heterosexual without Jesus?

Many Christians believe that everyone is heterosexual by default—even though reality invalidates this assertion. They argue vociferously that if homosexuality is accepted as normal and Biblical prohibitions no longer matter, heterosexuals might develop a desire for sex only with people of the same gender and the human race will die out in a few generations. Implicitly, there are more gay people per capita in secular societies where ordained heterosexism and homophobia are not the cultural standard. The invisibility of gay people in the public sphere affirms this ridiculous hypothesis.

Shannon (a member the Love March Movement for ‘sexual purity’), during a heated exchange in the Jamaicans for Secular Humanism Facebook group, disclosed that she was once attracted to both sexes. She made this admission in a bid to argue that sexuality is not defined by sexual attraction but by sexual behavior and piety. Shannon, as a child of God striving to live up to His ideals, wanted to be attracted only to men and with His help she suppressed her attraction to women. In other words, she won the battle with the enemy.

For the record, the fact that I am gay is my strongest conviction. As a child, I never had the vocabulary to understand my sexuality in a Jamaican cultural context and I certainly never had the courage to speak openly about my reality, but my attraction to men has never felt strange or perverse. The struggle I had was to reconcile my sexuality with cultural prescriptions for appropriate, respectable sexuality—never the sexuality itself.

Defining sexuality as behavior and not as attraction only seems to be relevant in the case of gay people. For heterosexuals, sexuality is very much defined by sexual attraction for they don’t wait until their first sexual encounter to affirm their desire for the opposite sex. As far as I know, like most gays and lesbians, they are led to their first sexual experience by sexual attraction. So why do some Christians insist that gay people are heterosexual by ‘design’ and that it is by indulging our ‘sinful desires’ that we become gay?

Shannon confirmed her misunderstanding of human sexuality when she proposed the following analogy: “If I always wished to become vegetarian but never stopped eating meat, can I claim to be vegetarian? No.”

The comparison is thought-provoking, but an examination of its premises lays bare the ignorance that fuels the advocacy of the Love March Movement and other anti-gay Christian groups. Those of us who believe we are ‘vegetarians’ even though we’ve never fully committed ourselves to a new ‘diet’ are not eating ‘meat’ while we ponder the moral implications of a vegetarian ‘lifestyle’. We simply aren’t eating at all. We starve ourselves because we believe that if we should heed the call of biology we would be surrendering to ‘gluttony’.

Perhaps we should do a poll to determine whether Jamaicans who don’t attend church on a regular basis, and who aren’t particularly religious despite self-identifying as Christians, are grappling with latent sexual attraction for both sexes or for the same sex. The vast majority will say no and they wouldn’t be lying. Most people simply have a dominant sexual attraction for the opposite sex. Nevertheless, there is a vocal group of Christians who preach that it’s only by God’s grace that many of us don’t develop attraction for people of the same sex. In their minds, every gay person is ‘affected by the enemy’ and is necessarily struggling with their sexuality and many more heterosexuals are susceptible to the Devil’s machinations.

In an effort to deny the existence of gay people, Daniel Thomas and his Love March Movement are questioning and undermining the reality that heterosexuality is a stable aspect of identity for most people. Dr. Keon West, in a private correspondence, agrees that this is a persistent contradiction in some sects of Christianity: 1) everyone is born heterosexual but 2) without the protection of Jesus everyone would succumb to the temptation to be gay. Frankly, I’m starting to believe that those who advance this ridiculous argument are grappling with same-gender desire themselves and assume that everyone else is suppressing such inclinations with adherence to Christian doctrine.

Manhood and Intelligence Are Like Oil and Water

The idea that there is only one way to “be a man” is limiting the potential of men in so many ways. Yesterday, a heterosexual young man lamented to me that Jamaican culture is anti-intellectual. He says he doesn’t belong here. Later on, another heterosexual man said, “It’s like an untold sin to be intelligent in Jamaica.” 

It is not a sin to be intelligent in Jamaica. It is, however, a sin to challenge the status quo with regards to entrenched prejudices.

It’s so funny (or tragic?) to see educated Jamaican heterosexual men avoid conversations about gender and sexuality. Unless, of course, they’re performing masculinity and affirming said prejudices. Even though they know better, they don’t want their masculinity questioned. 

Would you rather downplay your intelligence and your critical thinking skills than bring dishonor to your ‘manhood’?

I wish we could all think about the things we do & say to appease those who are content with the status quo. And STOP. We glorify respectability and we don’t want others to think ill of us. Even when we have the moral high ground! 

Last thing. To the people who say my sexuality brings my ‘manhood’ into question: You are idiots. Go expand your definition of ‘manhood’. I’d like to think it’s more than where I poke my dick.