Melville CookeI only see how you constantly building churches
But a yu church defen' your slackness as usual
Rasta no mix up with homo
Praise Ye Jah,
Sizzla
EARLIER THIS week, THE STAR reported that there was a bounty (an unfortunate choice of words, considering the
circumstances) on the head of OutRage! fellow Peter Tatchell as he pursues his campaign against deejay lyrics advocating violence against homosexuals.
Of course, the murder of anyone, paid and planned or not, is abhorrent, but so is blatant and deliberate lying and attempted assassination of a country's character, which this guy Tatchell has no problem with doing.
In his zeal at wiping out
advocating violence against
homosexuals, Tatchell has laced his campaign with homofibia (or homophibia, for those who like strictly alternate terms for alternate lifestyles). He must think that the Internet is reserved for queer folk so we in the boonies would not read it.
On the website www.petertatchell.net, in an article under the headline 'Black hate singers urge: kill queers', Tatchell says:
"In recent years, more than 30 gay men have been killed in Jamaica. They have died horrible, gruesome deaths at the hands of homophobic mobs. It is like Afghanistan under the Taliban. Queers are stoned to death, chopped up with machetes, beaten unconscious with sticks, doused with petrol and set ablaze, blasted in the head with shotguns and chased into the sea until they drown from exhaustion. Despite this bloody trail of murder and mayhem, the police in Kingston claim there is no homophobic
violence. But since they refuse to monitor and record anti-gay attacks, how would they know?"
FOUR-HOUR SWIM
I will refrain (though it is so juicy an opportunity to pass up) from making remarks about leaks, bungs and talking in water with regard to that drowning claim, but I do remember a story about two years ago, in which a gay Jamaican man seeking asylum in the United Kingdom (U.K.) claimed that he had been chased by a mob and had to jump into the sea to escape. However, he said that he had to swim for four hours in order to escape being lynched.
Four hours? He swims for the length of time it takes to drive from Kingston to Montego Bay at a somewhat placid pace?
No man. Fia pon dat.
If I remember correctly (and here is the chance for the gay community to make a firm stand, to ram home their point), the U.K. asylum programme for Jamaican gays was abandoned because it was being abused, because
outrageous lies were being told so that lovers could get together and feel all right. In other words, there was overwhelming homofibia.
That quote from Tatchell ends with a very plausible claim against the police, but Tatchell is not
content to stop there. He has to try to sneak some homofibia through the back door.
In an article dated Monday, October 4, on the website of the New Statesman under the headline 'Black and gay and hunted' Tatchell says:
"A few years ago, the Jamaican media reported that a gay pride march was scheduled in the
capital, Kingston. Hundreds of people wielding guns, machetes, clubs and knives turned up at the starting point. They had come to kill the 'battymen' (a patois term of abuse meaning 'queers' or
'faggots'). The police turned up, too not to protect the marchers, but to help murder them."
The Police High Command and the Jamaican Government should, I believe, be very interested in the state security service turning out to murder homosexuals.
AIRPLAY
In the same article, this guy Tatchell addresses the matter of airplay for songs against homosexuality. He gets the songs and the lyrics generally correct, but he does not stop there and allow them to speak for themselves. He just has to go boldly where no man has gone before. Tatchell goes on to say:
"These murderous lyrics get prime-time airplay in a society where real-life homophobic
violence is a daily occurrence."
Prime time airplay? Boom
Bye Bye gets played on the radio? Wow! The Broadcasting Commission should be interested in that one. Homophobic violence a daily occurrence? Not from where I sit in The Gleaner's newsroom.
In that New Statesman article, Tatchell puts a 'boom bye bye' on the truth, when he says why he is leading this effort against anti-gay lyrics:
"Sadly, Jamaican gays cannot lead this campaign. If they
were identified, they would be
murdered. Their Kingston office is at a secret location. If its whereabouts became public knowledge, the office would be razed to the ground within 24 hours."
Oh you wicked, wicked man. You wicked, wicked homofibber (think Mrs. Doubtfire when you are saying that). When the now deceased (for a hole in his wallet, not that other orifice) former
J-FLAG head Brian Williamson was applying to the authorities to have his 'entourage' licensed, to entertain gays in peace and private, it was reported openly in the newspapers. The address was no secret, the man and his sexuality were no secret. There was not one single protest, not one stick of Comet pulled out, not one 'bokkle boom' (as we term Molotov cocktails in our language that cuts through the hypocrisy of subtlety, just as we use 'battyman' for the sanitary sounding 'gay') was thrown.
But now the office is a secret, because it would be razed in 24 hours! Can you see the hand-
flapping, the wide open eyes, the shudders of fear? This is not only homofibia, this is homohysterics.
When your point is strong enough, you do not have to lie. This has gone way past the deejay's lyrics and I, for one, am outraged. Let us keep the record straight.
Next week: Gay on gay
violence, a violent response to a gay advance in downtown Kingston, Brian Williamson's viewpoint, a true testimony of police indifference. Then I'm done for now.
Mel Cooke is a freelance writer.
