Livingston ThompsonCURRENT DISCUSSIONS in the society about homosexuality, heterosexuality and the spread of HIV/AIDS have revealed that we are seeing in our time a crisis in human sexuality and sexual practices. In Jamaica, as indeed in other societies, we know that we are facing a crisis when there is a strong call for the church, by which is meant the leaders representing the Christian community, to speak out. It is reasonable to expect that representatives of the largest religious community should speak at a time as this because the issues related to the crisis touch on the lives of members of that community. What is also true is that when, in the Christian community, we make reference to the will of God for human lives and when we implore people to try to discern what that will is, it is often frowned upon as empty rhetoric. However, the way we respond to the perceived crisis in human sexuality and sexual practices will depend principally on how we understand the human being, that is, our anthropology.
CULTURAL PREFERENCE
There are two trends in sexuality that when seen together create the sense of crisis. One is the impression we have that a traditional Jamaican cultural preference of recognising heterosexual relations as the only legitimate form of sexual relations, is under political and economic pressure to adjust to the cultural preferences of North America and Europe, both of which have different understandings of legitimate sexual relations. The traditional Christian understanding of the human being influences the Jamaican position, which shows a preference for heterosexual relations. In other words then, the practice of homosexuality is a cultural preference constructed on a certain notion of the human being and the arguments that try to justify the practice otherwise have not been convincing.
The other trend that has helped to create a sense of crisis is the statistics about HIV/AIDS which was released in observation World AIDS Day, on December 1. The trend in the data is troubling, as it reveals a rapid rate of infection in Jamaica which, like other developing countries, seem to have the conditions that favour the spread of the disease. We were led by both national and international presentation of the data to focus on the impact that HIV/AIDS is having on the lives of women, as the faster rate of infection among them reveals that they are more at risk of infection than men. At the same time, however, it is well known that the disease is spreading mostly through heterosexual contacts, that is sexual relations between men and women. I believe then that to have focused mainly on the impact on women, rather than on male sexual behaviour, was misguided. If the rate is increasing more among women, in a society where men have several sexual partners, the conclusion must be that male sexual conduct is most responsible for the spread. There is clearly a gender imbalance in the research and analysis of the data. We seem to need a more gender sensitive presentation of the data on HIV/AIDS that hold conduct and impact in tension.
The problems of human sexuality, which are expressed in the issues relating to homosexuality, heterosexuality and HIV/AIDS, stem principally from how we understand the human being, i.e. anthropology. Take first of all the practices of homosexuality and heterosexuality: In the view of many, it does not matter what people do in the privacy of their homes, providing it does not prejudice the rights of others and the public interest. Therefore, the argument continues, the sexual relations that is practised between two consenting adults in the privacy of their homes really should trouble no one and should not be the subject of legislation. The same argument is used to justify the smoking of marijuana. Happily, it has not yet been used to justify bestiality. The limit of that argument is illustrated by the call on one hand to decriminalise sodomy in the privacy of the home and, on the other hand, a call to make a person with HIV/AIDS having unprotected sex to be guilty of a criminal offence. We cannot have it both ways.
The argument about privacy and consenting adults is really an argument about the freedom of the individual, which is always to be mentioned in any definition of the human being. The centrality of freedom to the understanding of the human being is illustrated by the number of times it appears in the Charter of Rights and Freedom in our Constitution: freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful association, freedom of movement, freedom from discrimination. The question we seemed to have forgotten to ask, though, is where did this idea, that freedom belongs centrally to who the human being is, is coming from.
CHOICE AND RESPONSIBLE ACTION
The idea of the human being as a creature with freedom, free will and the capacity for choice is given to us from the Judeo-Christian tradition, which asserts that God created the human being in God's own image. Theories about how the world came into being, which have no reference to God as Creator, cannot account for this notion of freewill in the individual. It is a fallacy then, to speak about free will and the capacity for choice without appreciating that these are gifts of the Creator. And if we speak of the free will of the individual we must also speak about the will of the Creator. An anthropology that is centred on the freedom of the individual is a part of the Judeo-Christian heritage. However, that tradition is also one that emphasises responsibility to the community. In the Judeo-Christian account of creation, the importance of the wider community is emphasised in the creation of male and female in the image of God. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, community life is therefore a life between the sexes.
When we are faced with the confusion about homosexuality, the dangers of irresponsible heterosexual conduct and the threat of HIV/AIDS, the Christian community makes a plea for responsible human action in private for the well-being of the community. For this reason, we find an emphasis on the individual and individual rights, which does not at the same time speak of the responsibility of the individual to promote the well-being of the community, to be deficient anthropology. The point is that the sum total of all consulting adults, in homosexual or heterosexual relations in the privacy of their homes is what has created for us a sense of crisis. Private conduct cannot therefore disregard direct or indirect community impact.
Livingstone Thompson, Ph.D., is president of the Moravian Church in Jamaica.
E-mail: moravianchja@colis.com.
