THE EDITOR, Sir:
WITH MR. Ian Boyne's wide-ranging article in last Sunday Gleaner 'Dark Days for Free Speech', I wish to raise here one objection. Mr. Boyne writes that there has been an "over-reaction to the decades of polemic against homosexual behaviour" such that "any opposition to the homosexual lifestyle...is immediately dismissed in some circles as necessarily narrow-minded, bigoted, prejudiced and mere 'hate speech'.
"I'm not sure to which circles Mr. Boyne refers. If he means only the Swedish courts or the Canadian radio establishment (two contexts to which he gestures) then I'm not in a position to engage with his claims, having no personal experience with either. I am, however, somewhat familiar with Jamaican public discourse and I would like to submit that in this realm pro-gay sentiments are few and far between. I whole-heartedly agree with Mr. Boyne that diverse, even conflicting ideas should be allowed free play in what he terms "the intellectual marketplace."
But perhaps I am less sanguine than he is about the market's regulatory free hand in our country. From what I've read and heard, anti-gay rhetoric far outweighs pro-gay rhetoric in public discussions of the issue. Mr. Boyne writes in the national newspaper of a country which by his own admission makes it so that "homosexuals cannot show their faces on television... for fear of being killed, harassed or victimised."
In this context, for Mr. Boyne to use ideas about homosexuality as a gauge of the excesses of political correctness is either mistaken or disingenuous.
I am, etc.,
NADIA ELLIS
nellis@princeton.edu
Kingston 6
