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Heigh-ho for 1999!
Morris Cargill
Having been on leave for two weeks I'm now faced with some reluctance, having to think about our problems again.
One major one has been caused by the teachers. The Government is flat broke and increasingly unable to meet its obligations. But I suppose that the teachers are noticing that the Prime Minister is still on cloud nine and that the rest of the Government doesn't seem to be worried and in spite of our mountains of debts, manages to spend millions on an expensive new fleet of helicopters. I suppose, as I have said, the teachers feel that they should get a generous raise of pay. So they strike. As one JTA official has remarked, "a few days of striking won't harm anybody". He's right. I don't suppose that they have much of value at the present to teach their students. I hope they don't get paid while they are on strike. Even teachers should know that if you don't work you can't expect pay.
And then, of course, there has been that riot in Savanna-la-Mar. Everybody demands that the police suppress crime and maintain public order, but every time they shoot a criminal people start blocking roads and setting fires. It's all a part of the country's present suicidal tendencies.
But I must, for a moment, return to our unfortunate state of bankruptcy. FINSAC keeps on sitting upon what assets it has like a broody hen trying to hatch out a clutch of bad eggs. Take the Government's shares in the Cement Company. The Government keeps on cancelling and reopening the bidding. We've now got some excellent bids, but instead of the Government accepting with alacrity the highest bid from CEMEX it is still vacillating. Some people tell me that the reason for this is that the Government, for political reasons, wants to discourage any bids except from Rugby. I don't believe this. I think the Government is just being silly as usual. In any case, it has long been a mystery to me how the Cement Company, with a monopoly and an exclusive market, could possibly have lost money; the usual managerial incompetence I suppose. It seems inevitable that in spite of the Government's false pride, it will soon have to go back to the IMF, for the IMF is the only institution that would be able to bail out not only the Government, but FINSAC as well.
Homosexuals
Over the holidays too and recently, the institution known as J-FLAG has been agitating mightily for what it calls homosexual rights.
This column has always defended homosexuals though their sexual activities are not to my taste. I've always felt, however, that in Jamaica in particular, which is infested with too many fundamentalists and backwoodsmen, the homosexuals need defending. I must confess, though, that it's a subject that puzzles me.
Logic
There seems to be a certain logic in female homosexuality. For if it is true, broadly speaking, we acquire our first sexual proclivities in infancy, girl children who are petted and fondled by their mothers, nurses and female relatives acquire what might be said to be a "normal" sexual affection for their own sex. But this is not true of male children, so it seems to me that there is a very fundamental difference between male and female homosexuality.
Nevertheless, I feel that there are a number of heterosexual habits which are to me equally distasteful; sado-masochism for instance. Let us not forget sexual molestation of young girls and the quite common incestuous habits of the Jamaican male. Our males would do well to concentrate their condemnations in these directions for a change.
While I think that homosexuals should be left in peace to pursue their own way of life provided that they do so in private and don't frighten the horses, I think they are making a mistake to press too vigorously for wider rights, such as the right to same-sex marriage. After all, a marriage stripped of its religious trimmings is purely a contract and there is nothing to stop two males from entering privately into a similar contract.
The danger of pressing too hard in public is that, especially in Jamaica, it risks a backlash that I would not like to see developing. I hope, therefore, that J-FLAG will learn the wisdom of avoiding making too much of a fuss about homosexual rights.
By the way, I wonder whether the hostility of the fundamentalists to homosexuals is based upon a misunderstanding of the section of the Ten Commandments, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's ass".
* Morris Cargill is The Gleaner's senior columnist and has been writing for more than forty-five years.
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