Out actress Ellen Page was on hand to celebrate Jamaica’s first ever pride festival, which included a flash mob but not a parade due to security concerns in the notoriously homophobic island-nation.
J-FLAG, Jamaica’s foremost LGBT rights organization, scheduled a series of Pride events to coincide with the 53rd anniversary of Jamaica’s independence from the UK.
Related: How The UK Ruined Gay Sex For Everyone
However, since Jamaica is one of over 75 countries where homosexuality is illegal, J-FLAG decided not to have a parade and kept the location of the flash mob a secret.
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Still, in a rare show of solidarity with the LGBT community, the mayor of the country’s capital, Kingston, was scheduled to speak at the Pride event’s opening ceremony on Saturday.
“I come from the point of view that I, as mayor, have a responsibility to all the individuals of Kingston,” Mayor Angela Brown-Burke told the Washington Blade. “There are individuals who are minorities who have been struggling in terms of their identity and finding their own space. It is important for us to provide safe spaces for them.”
The LGBT community in Jamaica often faces violence and persecution, with homosexual acts between men carrying a penalty of up to ten years in prison.
Related: Jamaica Still “Most Homophobic Place On Earth” As Cross-Dressing Teen “Chopped And Stabbed” To Death
Page, who came out as a lesbian last year, is making good on her hope of making a difference by shining a social media light on Jamaica’s groundbreaking Pride celebration.
Award winning actress, Ellen Page is in Jamaica for #PRiDEJA2015. Our Programme Officer, Karen Lloyd took a pic with…
Posted by J-Flag on Saturday, August 1, 2015
Page also shared a pic of the Pride flash mob — though a far cry from the bigger, flashier celebrations around the world — some 40 Jamaican LGBTs made their presence and their pride known.
Les Fabian Brathwaite — Jamaican some progress.
h/t: GayStarNews
AtticusBennett
very moving.
it really puts into perspective how good “we” have it, eh? and yet….while these brave men and women defy violence and police-sanctioned brutality against who they are, we have wimpy gay men in north america who won’t participate or attend pride celebrations because “lady gaga fems glitter drag queens shirtless men stereotypes!”
you simpering ninnies are so lucky you live in a nation where people fought and died so that you could be the self-hating insecure losers you choose to be today. take a gander at what LGBT people in russia, Uganda, and Jamaica are doing – in the circumstances dictated by their surroundings. and now take a look at your life, in your country, and realize what a profound lack of integrity you have.
1EqualityUSA
Jamaican progress. Very exciting. two steps forward, one step back, but progress happening. Ellen Page, thanks for being out.
jwtraveler
Good for Ellen. Great to see a gay American celebrity giving her support where it’s really needed. And I sobering reminder of how much worse LGBT people have it in much of the world, a lot worse than not being able to buy a wedding cake.
Interesting to note that Jamaica has been making small steps in the right direction, thanks in part to the Prime Minister and Mayor of Kingston, who are both women.
Peter McKinney
How is her parkinsons?
GTT
Atticus – don’t hold back your disdain.
AtticusBennett
@GTT: the disdain is real. russia. uganda. iran. jamaica. they come out, they defy violence, and here in north america you get adult gay men who are such pathetic wimps that every year it’s just “i hate pride! it’s all rainbows! i hate rainbows! i’m not like you stereotypical gays who like rainbows!”
the wimpery. it’s staggering. and it’s shameful.
Stache99
So they came out as a “flash mob” before the thugs i mean Jamaicans had enough time to get together to bash some heads. Good and brave for them but will still never visit that cesspool of a nation.
Stache99
@jwtraveler: Yes very small considering being gay there can and will result in you getting killed. Most there looked like women or tourists who would fair much better then some local gay guy.
meghanada
@AtticusBennett: If you so resent homophobia, maybe you should direct your anger at the people promoting it – heterosexuals -, not at gay people who just happen to have it better after *struggling* for their rights.
You bitter little moron.
Lestar
baby steps Jamaica, baby steps….it will get better. Lawwd,only 40?
AtticusBennett
@meghanada: that made no sense, but i’ll try to speak Derp so you can understand my point.
*ahem*
in russia. in jamaica. we have brave men and women fighting for their lives, fighting to be able to protest, and celebrate Pride.
meanwhile, in north america, gay grown adult men who are spineless cowards choose instead to denigrate Pride, to complain about “oh all those RAINBOWS! i hate them! they remind me of fems! i’m not a fem! i’m a non-rainbow masculine manly man-man who isn’t a gay stereotype and these parades make us look bad!” and on and on and on.
taking for granted all the hard work that has been done, taking for granted the freedoms they do have here in north america.
LGBT people risk their lives in jamaica, insecure grown adult gay male cowards in the USA remain closeted because “they don’t want people to think that they listen to lady gaga and like glitter and rainbows”
heterosexuals are promoting homophobia? not really. conservatives are, to be sure. social conservatives. even gay ones.
my family are straight and a great number of my straight friends join me marching in Pride every year.
i don’t think you understood a lick of what i wrote. try again.
odawg
@AtticusBennett: Well said!
meghanada
@AtticusBennett:
I understood well what you said, and just as proof is that in your reply, you re-hashed in no uncertain terms the same self-righteous garbage that I saw in your original post.
So basically, you feel gay people in the West are the worst ever because they disagree with you on a bunch of questions about… aesthetics – about flags and campy parades.
Who cares if some gays dislike rainbows and Pride? Polls on gay people show most of us don’t think they do much to promote our rights – they might be fun, and that in itself justifies their existence, but the value of individual gay people and their contributions to the community shouldn’t depend on a matter that is unessential to gay rights.
Maybe your dislike of your kind has deeper justifications, but the one you did adduce, in both rants, is utterly superfluous. It makes you look like a typical internet activist who makes a mountain of drama out of a molehill of small differences in order to parade his “righteousness” at the expense of people who only have slight disagreements with you. Ugh. Just another white fag SJW who gleefully demonizes other gay white men in order to be seen as something of an exception, superior and more aware, without quite saying so, and get congratulatory BJs back from identity-obsessed bigots on the left. Might seem edgy, but actually, there are thousands of bitter, loquacious imbeciles just like you at any given moment on Tumblr and Twitter.
Funny you chastise me for giving a monolithic portrayal of straight people, while you yourself do the same to both gay Westerners and Jamaicans. The fact that you very consciously shape your views on the latter to be so overly positive, doesn’t make them any fairer.
You can be sure that many gay Jamaicans are not the brave warriors of your romantic imagination – many are in the closet, preaching against gay people from the pulpit or promoting homophobia in Parliament, and who will not change their ways even if Jamaica becomes the Sweden of the Caribbean, and they do so for much of the same reasons people everywhere stay in the closet; religious brainwashing, fears of job loss, lone wolf bigots and rejection from their social and familial circle, oversensitivity to other people’s opinions, etc. Human motivations are very similar across countries and cultures, so you can be sure the same things that shape our behavior, for good and for bad, in the more tolerant nations – the same things that inspire your eloquent whining – do play a role in the lives of your all-virtuous Noble Savages in the Caribbean jungle.
Gay people in the liberal countries don’t need to ask forgiveness for living safer lives; the safety we have, we struggled for, and what gays in Jamaica are passing through today, we did in the past.
So I’m going to repeat this request: If you’re genuinely concerned with homophobia everywhere, if you’re not just parading your “righteousness” out of vanity, pick a better target for your rants. Gays who disagree with you on glitter and Gaga are not it.
Giancarlo85
@meghanada: “Polls on gay people show most of us don’t think they do much to promote our rights”
Care to point these polls out?
You seem very comfortable living your life while criticizing other gay people.
meghanada
@Giancarlo85:
Though most gays and lesbians have been to Pride, only 28% of LGBT people feel it really helps promote acceptance (p. 34): http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2013/06/SDT_LGBT-Americans_06-2013.pdf
As for this:
“You seem very comfortable living your life while criticizing other gay people.”
I’m not the one who uses Jamaican Pride as an excuse to attack gays in more fortunate countries on our “pettiness”.
Kangol
Bravo to the brave LGBTIQs in Jamaica who staged this flash mob celebration, to the mayor of Kingston who is supporting them, and to Ellen Page for showing her support, as a US celebrity. The fact that a sitting politician and an American film star are actively affirming LGBTIQs is a big deal.
People might also be surprised to know that Jamaica’s current Prime Minister, Portia Simpson-Miller, who leads the People’s National Party (the center-right party), not only publicly advocated for LGBTIQ rights in 2011, which caused a major uproar, but has continued to float the idea of decriminalizing homosexual sex. This is a huge deal. It also matters that when US President Barack Obama, who is very popular in Jamaica, went there earlier this year, he spoke on behalf of equality for all Jamaicans, and mentioned gay people specifically. There was no backlash to these comments. As bad as Jamaica has been for LGBTIQ people, things are beginning to improve. Progress is slow but it’s not impossible.
You can help LGBTIQ people by donating to JFLAG, an incredibly brave and visionary organization that advocates for queer people in Jamaica. Every little thing counts towards ensuring others can be free, and the struggle for equality continues everywhere, including in the US, where even despite the US Supreme Court rulings you can still be fired for being gay in a majority of US states.
AtticusBennett
@meghanada: are you one of those insecure homos who hates Gay Pride because it reminds you of all the ignorant things your parents said about gay people? your rant was stupid.
there are many gay men in north america who are terribly insecure about gay pride celebrations. they’re cowards.
John D. Plume
@jwtraveler: Ellen Page is Canadian.