Dozens of New York gay activists spent their Saturday protesting on Randall Island, where internationally-renowned reggae artists came together for the Carifest festival.
The gays, however, weren’t feeling so gay as they derided some of the singers’ anti-gay stances. GLAAD’s Rashad Robinson showed up at Randall Island hoping to spread the love and told NY 1:
The lyrics of Buju Banton and Bounty Killer are both lyrics that have supported shooting gay men, hanging lesbians. These are horrible lyrics under any context.
Buju Banton only fanned the flamer’s flames.
Banton once allegedly signed the Reggae Compassion Act, an agreement penned by the Stop Murder Music campaign, but later denied supporting the musical movement. The pledge reads:
Artists of the Reggae Community respect and uphold the rights of all individuals to live without fear of reprisals due to religion, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity or gender.
While we recognize that our artistic community comprises many different individuals who express themselves in different ways and hold a myriad of beliefs, we believe firmly that the way forward lies in tolerance.
Banton, meanwhile, thinks it’s the gays who need to get their facts straight:
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
I would say to them they are ignorant, they are stupid, even though they proclaim to be intelligent.
While Robinson, Banton, Stop Murder Music campaigner Peter Tatchell and others battle it out, New Jersey based activist Pedro Angel Serrano says his more tempered voice has been silenced.
Serrano’s been fighting reggae’s homophobia for years, but takes a more nuanced approach than the Reggae Compassion Actors:
My strategy is different. They want to shut people up and they want to ban them, which is what they’ve been doing for years, they’ve been banning these artists and then they come back. That’s another thing that came up on this show – they’ve been doing this for years and [the artists] keep being invited back to perform. If something doesn’t work, do something else. Try something different.
Serrano suggests gay and straight artists work together to produce a peace-loving album, one that will make more of a difference than simply shouting and yelling. Activists need to realize, he says, that protests often exasperate problems. Relationships need to be formed. Bridges need to be built.
The radio host uses his own life as an example. After hearing Jeff Stormwatcher’s “Stay in the Closet,” Serrano pursued a friendship with Stormwatcher. Over the years, he says, Stormwatcher came to understand the error of his ways and stopped singing his single which, as you can imagine, urged queers to stay hidden. The Stop Murder Campaign doesn’t get to the heart of the matter – poverty.
I’m less concerned with people signing [the Act] and more thinking about that issues dealing with poverty in Jamaica aren’t addressed. It’s one of the reasons why these artists write this violently homophobic stuff is because they want to make it big and this is what sells.
Peter Tatchell and his queer colleagues, Serrano alleges, aren’t interested in opening a dialogue and making real change.
Serrano tells us he’s broached the matter in the past, but activists – who, in an email, he described as primarily white – push him and Jamaicans to the fringe:
Instead of my experience being something to learn from, a new tactic, I am a problem. My experience becomes a problem. This issue is really complicated. I propose gays and straights partners getting together to deal with this soul crushing poverty.
…
The reason why [Jamaicans] are producing this music isn’t even necessarily because they believe it, but because people are trying to make money and make living and get out of poverty. Also, activists who are fighting this create problems by labeling “Murder Music” and with little sound bytes like that – no discussion – it generates this circling the wagon mentality among black Caribbeans, their culture is being attacked. A lot of these activists with the language they use and the way they go about their protests generates this negative reaction and that’s another thing – the activist community needs to step back and take a look at itself and see how it’s being perceived.
This wouldn’t be the first time gay activists have been told to butt out.
Nigerian activists were outraged when UK-based gay group, Outrage!, blew up the African nation’s legislative spot. Serrano would like to see the Stop Murder Campaign stop its verbal assaults and attempt a civilized discussion. Leftists activists, however, are just as limited by language as reggae’s homophobes:
I would just like to make an appeal for activists to start thinking outside of the box of the usual protests, banning people and learning how to communicate with each other. Leftists are really good at communicating with each other, but once they get out of their leftist ghetto, they get really bad at it. There’s a leftist language and there’s a leftist way of thinking. I think that a lot of people on the left are just plopped into that and need to start expanding their point of view.
Serrano’s definitely got a point: rather than simply blasting Banton and other anti-gay crooners, activists need to get to the bottom of a complicated situation. Real change sure does feel better than a self-congratulatory slap on the black. Oh, we mean ‘back’.
Check out more of Serrano’s perspective over at MySpace.
Dawster
Buju Banton is a big black dick. he’s the Anne Coulter of reggae… and he has been for many years.
“…slap on the black. Oh, we mean ‘back’.”
bad… bad, bad, bad. funny… but BAD.
Tallskin
Oh, so let me understand your reasoning properly. Gay activists like peter tatchell are in the wrong because we object strongly to songs advocating killing us. Is that correct? And further to this we have no right to object to this murder music because we’re white.
Have I got that right?
So, be extension a black guy who objected to some Klu Klux Klan songs advocating killing black people would have no right to object because he would be interfering in poor white culture, and at the same time he is black.
So, who would be allowed to protest? Black Right-wingers?
So would you, by the same logic have urged Jews in Nazi germany to communicate with Adolf? Would you have said that those noisy, soundbite obsessed jewish “activists need to get to the bottom of a complicated situation”. Those nazis were only celebrating their European culture after all. “The reason why Germans are producing this music isn’t even necessarily because they believe it, but because people are trying to make money (remember there’s a very bad recession going in Germany) and make a living and get out of poverty.
“Also, activists who are fighting this create problems by labeling “Nazi Murder Music†and with little sound bytes like that – no discussion – it generates this circling the wagon mentality among Nazi germans, their culture is being attacked.”
Tallskin
I should perhaps point out that this a dead issue here in the UK and Europe. The gays here have won the argument and most people agree that hate music should be discouraged by bannings and economic boycotts of the singers concerned.
We had the ludicrous situation here of black activists demonstrating outside the Home Office for the right to advocate the death of lesbians and gays.
These black activists were arguing the same nonsense as expressed above that they were being oppressed by not being allowed to advocate murder, that the British and European gays were being racist, blah blah blah.
A nonsense really.
shirls22mcr
Postin really pathetic “black” comments aint gonna do anyone favours. but we should have a far right wing gay group and fuckin shoot him! where are these pink pistol weildin lesbians when you need em? eh?
Bill Perdue
Pedro Angel Serrano’s solution – hand wringing about poverty and feel good, bridge building dialogue is doomed. The gay haters he wants to convince are little different than drug selling thugs – they know they’re murderers but shrug it off with the excuse that things are tough all over. It’s not a “cultural thing”, it’s a criminal thing.
What will stop them are criminal prosecutions, boycotting them and Jamaica, and mass demonstrations to shut down the venues that let them play. Are they dangerous enough to warrant such treatment? The wave of murders and beatings of gays and lesbians in England, the former Brit colonies in Africa and the Caribbean states indicates they are.
However, Serrano makes a very valid point when he says that poverty is behind this. It’s a combination of the poverty inherited from the Brit slave trade, Brit colonialism and a culture steeped in anglo-catholic gay bashing.
The solution I think is obvious – make the Brits pay. Confiscate without compensation all the profits of English companies that do or have done business in colonial ventures or the slave trade. Confiscate, without compensation, all the property of the Brit aristocracy, including the pampered pigs in Buckingham Palace and use those assets to fund projects to economically stabilize Caribbean, African and other former Brit colonies and to campaign against racism, misogyny and gay hating in those regions and in England.
That would work.
Tallskin
How would you enforce this making the “brits” pay, Bill? I think most of us modern Brits might object to us paying for something that happened 200 years ago! Like to see the bailiffs walk away on their two legs when they turn up to present the court order!
Bill Perdue
Any Brit who falls into the categories I mentioned, who’s a bloodsucking aristocrat, or who’s living leechlike on a family fortune based on colonialism or slavery, ought to pay. Obviously it’ll need a few trifling political changes, i.e., a socialist revolution, to accomplish it, but when that’s behind us we’ll impose the ‘court order’ with guns and the like.
Similar things happened in Russia, Cuba, China, and Germany after the Nuremberg trials and here when we confiscated the wealth of Brits during our first revolution and later confiscated the wealth of the slaveocracy during our second revolution. It’ll be great fun.
Tallskin
Unless socialism is established on a world wide basis and is established democratically and peacefully, then it won’t be worth having! Otherwise we’ll have another leninist cadre running the world with gulags, labour camps etc.
And that would be huge no fun, no party zone.
What did Emma Goldman say? Oh yes, If I can’t dance, then I don’t want to be part of your revolution.
Sam Kestu
A copy of Buju Banton’s signed Reggae Compassionate Act form is online at http://tinyurl.com/ybwrq3c
He signed using his real name: Mark Myrie.
He did almost immediately deny signing the RCA form and very soon afterward violated his RCA agreement by promoting hatred and violence.
As this is written, Mark Myrie, aka “Buju Banton,” is in U.S. federal custody in Florida. He is awaiting trial on a charge of conspiracy to distribute 5 kilos or more of cocaine.
You can get details of the charges and some of the evidence against Buju Banton in the “Buju Banton Affidavit” at http://tinyurl.com/ydarjgs
Mark Myrie’s trial is expected to take place in September 2010.
For some recent information about Buju Banton see http://cancelbujubanton.wetpaint.com/