Melville Cooke SO LAST week's column seems to have got some panties in a bunch. I meant it then, I mean it now and, unless there is some sort of Damascus Road experience, have no reason to believe that I will not believe the same way in the future.
Adults have the right to sleep with anybody they want. Homosexuals have excluded themselves from the reproductive process and, I believe, should not be allowed to adopt children. This is part of all that I wrote last week and I can't bother to repeat it all. Suffice it to say, I believe every word still.
I have not read any responses which shake me from that position an inch. In fact they have strengthened my stance, because none of them has mentioned the second paragraph of last week's article, which effectively said that no one should attack a homosexual or intrude on his or her privacy.
That omission shores up my belief that most gays do not simply want sexual freedom, but simply want the privilege to flaunt their lifestyle. It may be a way of compensating for any negative feelings they may have about themselves. It is a bit like a woman with a huge, stretch-marked gut who wears a tiny, bra-style top and a blue wig in public.
Those practitioners and sympathisers who have been offended can take heart, though. It will only be a matter of time before an article like the one last week will not see the light of day.
With programmes such as Queer as Folk, the proposed Nickelodeon cartoon with same sex parents, the powerful 'backative' (pun intended) of lobby groups such as GLADD etc., as well as occurrences like the hint of British aid being tied to repealing laws against buggery (last year), times are a-changing.
When the day of silence of opposition to any aspect of homosexuality comes, though, I wonder if gays will be truly happy and feel totally guiltless.
I know that, if I am alive, my personal happiness will not be affected one way or the other.
Now that was a pretty good waste of 343 out of 800 words.
While Jamaicans do a pretty decent job of hating homosexuals - in public, anyhow - we do not do well at loving women. This is despite the much higher level of tolerance - and, judging by the happenings at a couple go-go clubs, encouragement - shown more towards lesbians than male homosexuals.
When a man hates male homosexuals, for real or in pretence, that does not mean that he loves women. It is such a simple thing, but so many men equate the two. As a matter of fact, having sex with women does not mean that a man loves women.
Ever so often, when I go to an entertainment event in the course of work, the selector will say something like "all who no love b-.yman, put up oonu han. Me waan every man whe no love b-.yman fi bunkse pan da wan ya". That is normally followed by Shabba's Love P--..ny Bad or, failing that, another song which declares a fascination with women.
But if Jamaican males really loved women, the rate of domestic abuse, up to and including murder-suicides, could never be so high.
To love a woman, or women in general, does not mean just having sex with them. It means wanting to see them succeed (no pun intended) at whatever they wish to accomplish; it means being outraged, not amused, by rape; it means approaching a woman with "Hello, how are you" and not "Baby, mi woulda live inna yu hole y'nuh". It means not grabbing women passers-by like they are stray goats, or using threats to keep a woman in a semblance of a relationship.
And where the matter of sex is concerned, battering a woman into a quivering, whimpering lump of submission in bed is not an expression of love. Naturally, a certain amount of vigour is required at times, but the desire of causing incessant pain, to the extent that the woman pleads no more or has to go to the doctor, is sheer sadism.
Of course, there are women who are masochists, physically and musically. I have seen it repeatedly over the past dozen or so years, but it never fails to astound me that women are the most enthusiastic supporters of the most degrading dancehall lyrics. Put on the nastiest of the nastiest tune and it will be the women who have their hands in the air - or on their fronts.
It speaks of a deep-seated lack of self-respect which is beyond my comprehension. If my wife ever shakes a toenail to one of those songs, ah divorce her blertnaat instantly.
Melville Cooke is a freelance writer.
