This diary is cross posted to my blog, where I've posted the ugly photo of one gay Jamaican's wounds on his back, from an attack that almost killed him.
The Associated Press wire has put out an important story about the myriad problems gay people face in Jamaica. I wish to quibble with the AP writer about the boycott against Jamaica. It is not over. Sure, the boycott is less intense and active as it was during the spring, but it continues.
That aside, I wish the AP had found someone in Jamaica or abroad, gay or straight, with ideas to consider to combat the incredible violence against gays. Important as this wire story is, it is another in a long line of articles about the horrors, with nary a whisper of what to do to change the situation.
We're all aware that JFLAG, the Jamaican Forum for Lesbians All-sexuals and Gays, which isn't even mentioned by name in the article, can't reveal the location of its office out of fear over violent attacks. Jamaican gays are unable to use their real names for this story, and prominent lesbian Jamaican writer Staceyann Chin doubts she would come out now if she still lived there.
But the AP presents no potential solutions to the deadly homophobia racking the island nation. When will solutions be presented and acted upon?
Here are excerpts from the wire story:
KINGSTON, Jamaica — Even now, about three years after a ne ar-fatal gay bashing, Sherman gets jittery at dusk. On bad days, his blood quickens, his eyes dart, and he seeks refuge indoors.
A group of men kicked him and slashed him with knives for being a "batty boy" — a slang term for gay men — after he left a party before dawn in October 2006. They sliced his throat, torso, and back, hissed anti-gay epithets, and left him for dead on a Kingston corner.
"It gets like five, six o'clock, my heart begins to race. I just need to go home, I start to get nervous," said the 36-year-old outside the secret office of Jamaica's sole gay rights group. Like many other gays, Sherman won't give his full name for fear of retribution.
Sherman is the man in the AP photo with the wounds on his back, that you can see here. Or if someone wants to add the photo to this diary, please do so.
Despite the easygoing image propagated by tourist boards, gays and their advocates agree that Jamaica is by far the most hostile island toward homosexuals in the already conservative Caribbean ...
Hostility toward gays has reached such a level that four months ago, gay advocates in New York City launched a short-lived boycott against Jamaica at the site of the Stonewall Inn, where demonstrations launched the gay-rights movement in 1969. In its 2008 report, the U.S. State Department also notes that gays have faced death and arson threats, and are hesitant to report incidents against them because of fear.
For gays, the reality of this enduring hostility is loneliness and fear, and sometimes even murder ...
We must address the gay murders in Jamaica and everywhere too, but in Jamaica they seem particularly gruesome. How to stop the hate that leads to gays being murdered?
Jamaica's most prominent evangelical pastor, Bishop Herro Blair, said he sympathizes with those who face intolerance, but that homosexuals themselves are actually behind most of the attacks reported against them ...
A few weeks later, Prime Minister Bruce Golding described gay advocates as "perhaps the most organized lobby in the world" and vowed to keep Jamaica's "buggery law" — punishable by 10 years — on the books. During a BBC interview last year, Golding vowed to never allow gays in his Cabinet.
The dread of homosexuality is so all-encompassing that many Jamaican men refuse to get digital rectal examinations for prostate cancer, even those whose disease is advanced, said Dr. Trevor Tulloch of St. Andrews Hospital...
That last paragraph is very troubling and shows how homo-hatred can be deadly even for straight men in Jamaica.
Brooklyn-based writer Staceyann Chin, a lesbian who fled her Caribbean homeland for New York more than a decade ago, stressed that violence in Jamaica is high — there were 1,611 killings last year, about 10 times more than the U.S. rate relative to population — but that it is "extraordinarily" high against gays ...
Chin said she doesn't know if she would have the courage to come out now as a lesbian in Jamaica ...
Prominent Jamaican political activist Yvonne McCalla Sobers noted that social standing still protects gay islanders, especially in Kingston, where a quest for privacy and the fear of crime has driven many to live behind gated walls with key pad entry systems, 24-hour security and closed-circuit television monitoring.
People with power and money who are not obviously gay are often protected, she said.
"My thought is there are far more men having sex with men in this country than you would ever think is happening," Sobers said ...
Boycotting Jamaican is one way to address the homo-hatred. Let's hear more ideas, please.