It is amazing how hateful and extremely antigay the comments are in the discussion board attached to the Jamaica Gleaner’s story on the boycott. This island is sick, and sad.

There’s a long tradition of young West Indian men coming up from Brixton in south London to barrack gay men in Old Compton St, and people on gay marches in Brixton have borne the brunt of hate-filled diatribes from middle-aged women and men standing outside the tube station. There again I pity anyone growing up gay in Muslim Bradford. At least demotic Jamaican homophobia will fade in time, whereas fiery Muslim interdicts will not.

Having formal boycotts that unite a nation to resist oppressors is one thing, but strategically they mostly fail to accomplish their goals when pushed by a relatively small minority.

When I made my comment about love the sinner hate the sin, I had in my mind the Episcopal, Methodist, Lutheran, and Presbyterian churches. The Baptists, Catholics (of which I was once a practitioner), Mormons, et. al. don’t even pretend to have any social liberalism so don’t count.

If other people of like mind choose to do the same things I do, great, but our enemies cannot say we are organising an attack against their “traditional” values.

” Over the weekend, Saturday to be precise a small group of LGBT persons launched a public demonstration against Jamaica’s human rights abuses against its gay citizens. The “Rum Dump” as it also named was successful as outlined on
boycottjamaica’s site and http://mpetrelis.blogspot.com/

While I appreciate the support in the cause for justice and tolerance towards everyone here despite their sexual orientation, groups planning or who have planned these events must be mindful of the repercussions such actions may have on an already marginalized grouping as we are here.

Members of the public and by extension select public opinion shapers will consider this as interference by foreigners and hence push for more hatred and opposition towards gays. Not to mention the increase in violence that occurs when a situation like this becomes public knowledge. As we have seen before during the planned Canadian group EGALE’s boycott early last year many persons including lesbians suffered attacks, we saw a spike in the numbers that was never so for lesbians especially before. The stories told to us by many victims included hints that we (gays) were getting foreigners to force their nasty lifestyle on Jamaica and other derogatory remarks so the attackers felt justified in their actions.”

The rest is here:

http://jflag.blogspot.com/

http://www.bilerico.com/2009/0.....s.php#more

I don’t travel to Jamaica nor the Cayman Islands (or anywhere else in the Caribbean). I don’t buy produce from California since it comes mostly from areas that voted for Prop 8. If I know a business is controlled by a far right organisation such as most religious organisations, I look for alternatives. I even avoid Florida as much as possible for its long term and codified homophobia. I will buy orange juice from Florida because they dumped that sour bitch, Anita Bryant, as a spokesperson when she helped rouse the fascists in Florida to repeal gay friendly laws. As a matter of morality, I avoid any state that has ever been governed by a member of the Bush family.

I don’t campaign for formal boycotts simply because that is almost always counterproductive and provides our enemies with another target. I do choose personally not to give them any more money than life’s necessities dictate. Most religions and religiously based charities are not on my list of acceptable recipients of my money. This includes so-called liberal churches who go on about loving the sinner and hating the sin which I liken to loving the bird but hating the feathers. I choose charites such as Doctor’s Without Borders, AMFAR, Unicef, and my local NPR station.

I don’t advocate violence, but if someone defaced buildings occupied by the offices of Focus on the Family, I would smile on hearing the news. When Jesse Helms died, I felt like celebrating the end of an evil life lived in consciously chosen ignorance. I’ll stop now before I ramble anymore.

they can’t imagine.

And things are really bad.

It is a horrid combination of colonial residue coupled with missionary Christian dogma (the hardcore-fundamentalist type) along with the general hate that often accompanies communities living in poverty and therefore ignorance and hate. (believe it or not, the Rastas are MINOR players in this, and the Rocker culture, with their hateful lyrics are not Rastas)

And, here is “an other” complex problem: Jamaica society is extremely liberal when it comes to –heterosexual– sexuality. Even the Christians and the conservative “tryers” have practices that would make heteros in other countries blush! Imagin a Jamaica that was actually tolerant towards homosexuality?! Perhaps that’s also a cause for the absurd and violent manifestation of homophobia. The powers-that-be have not have had great success at controlling sexuality in Jamaica, and the homophobia unites a disparate and desperate collective, alas through hate and it’s manifestation: violence.
—————————————————————-

Jamaica is a terrorist state, benighted by the scourge of Christianity. But if I hear the boogeyman phrase “gay white privilege” again I’m going to throw something at its user. Every gay person of every race is a second class citizen in this country.

Even then, it is a highly subjective judgment call. India has a particularly nasty sodomy law (life imprisonment) and a conservative society. But the law hasn’t been enforced in years and anti-gay hate crimes are extremely rare. It isn’t quite as clear cut as a Jamaica or Saudi Arabia.

Monica I understand that trans people have been marginalized in the LGBT community but at a certain point it is counterproductive to drop the race card into EVERY subject. I have in my activism had the privilege to work with many trans woman activists. My one criticism is that they seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time complaining about the gay male privilege or the white privilege. It is counterproductive.

http://transgriot.blogspot.com.....maica.html

I mean, you can take credit for the idea. It seems that you have been calling to exercise “white gay privlege” for a mighty long time.

OK, Monica, I love you and generally like you commentaries, but I gotta call bullshit on this one.

Haven’t you supported a boycott on Jamaica for sometime now, since 2007, I believe?

And do note that the boycott is also on products from Jamaica [including Myers Rum, which used to be my absolute favorite but I haven’t had a drop of it (or anything else) in a good little while).

I have never had enough money to visit Jamaica. This is so TYPICAL of “gay white privilege,” assuming that people in the lgbT communitu have time or “money” to “travel.”

As a transvestical, I am often called upon to tour the nation, which means leaving my 3 roomates behind to try to REMEMBER to flush the commode.

So, no, Haiti, there is no Santa Clause.

With the government?!! Dude, I don’t want what you are smoking.

The government are the ones heating up the rhetoric against gays in Jamaica. The prime minister has already said that he doen’t care what governments do, he will continue to pursue anti-gay policies.

The fact that there are hate crimes committed in one location doesn’t mean that it is particularly anti-gay. But….on the one hand, you have Human Rights Watch’s report, and on the other hand we have your account. There are editorials out of Jamaica attacking homosexuality and gays and lesbians all the time.

As far as Muslim countries that torture and execute gays (as opposed to the imprisonment they get to enjoy in the Caribbean), so what? I wouldn’t encourage anyone to spend money in Tehran, either.

let’s put it this way. If you read what Alec posted and you were gay would you travel to Jamaica? And if you were so brave, why would you support a nation that let’s things like this happen to your people?

And the Wild, Wild West is glamorized in movies. It doesn’t sound like a place I’d like to be around either.

“In the past two years, two of the island’s most prominent gay activists, Brian Williamson and Steve Harvey, have been murdered — and a crowd even celebrated over Williamson’s mutilated body. Perhaps most disturbing, many anti-gay assaults have been acts of mob violence. In 2004, a teen was almost killed when his father learned his son was gay and invited a group to lynch the boy at his school. Months later, witnesses say, police egged on another mob that stabbed and stoned a gay man to death in Montego Bay. And this year a Kingston man, Nokia Cowan, drowned after a crowd shouting “batty boy” (a Jamaican epithet for homosexual) chased him off a pier. “Jamaica is the worst any of us has ever seen,” says Rebecca Schleifer of the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch and author of a scathing report on the island’s anti-gay hostility.”

http://www.time.com/time/world.....91,00.html

“Erm, tyrants? Like ALL your presidents who can’t stop causing wars and boycotting countries because they won’t give them a) oil or are b) left?”

Nice Harold Pinter impersonation. Your country has its own history of intervention and it’s much longer and genocidal than America’s. Get over it limey.