SOUNDBITES — “I felt really afraid. I can’t even express how I felt, and one politician said things like ‘the only good homosexual is a dead homosexual’ that went unchallenged in the country. Bahamians are very generous, loving people, but it was an act of great shame.”—Children of God director Kareem Mortimer, a gay Bahamian whose feature film examines the lives of, well, gay Bahamians (via)
Kareem Mortimer
“I felt really afraid. I can’t even express how I felt, and one politician said things like ‘the only good homosexual is a dead homosexual’ that went unchallenged in the country”
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terrwill
Guess its really NOT better in the Bahamas………
Josh NYC
Religiously inspired hate.
John from England(used to be just John but there are other John's)
@ Terrwill
We need to talk because I need to give you a history lesson my love.
It’s called Colonisation and before Slavery.
When the slaves were taken from Africa, they went to the 1) West Indies 2) America and 3) South America.
They all pretty much came from West Africa…some East but mostly West, which is why you may link faces or expressions together or features.
The thing about Africans before the white dude came, they were a really spirital bunch, so when you’re beaten down and told your sh*t cause your black with a bible…well, it seems they took the bible to heart! No wonder the Europeans or American slave trades did so well!
So with Bahamas? No shock. A correlation.
Josh NYC
Religion has ruined the Bahamas, too? When will people learn?
B
A google search for
Bahamas politician “the only good homosexual is a dead homosexual”
turns up a small number of web pages, nearly all of which seem to be copies of the article about Mr. Mortimer, with the alleged politician being unnamed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_Bahamas names two people:
On Oct 10, 2007, two anti-gay activists appeared on a
conservative radio station (Gems 105.9 FM) and called
for the re-criminalization of homosexuality. The most
vocal activist, Clever Duncombe, said he would “kill”
homosexuality wherever he finds it. On the same station,
anti-gay Muslim guest Khalil Mustafa Khalfani said “the
only good homosexual is a dead homosexual.”
One might loosely call “anti-gay activists” politicians, but it is not like these guys are in Parliament, and the phrase “conservative radio station” probably means what some of us call “hate radio”. One might note that Mr. Duncombe wanted to kill homosexuality, not homosexuals explicitly, although killing all of the latter presumably kills off the former.
The article did, of course, claim that there is a homophobia problem in the Bahamas. If some real politician did not say it too, however, using the term “politician” is an overstatement and blaming the Christians for what a Muslim said (or all Muslims for what one said) sounds like just a bit of a stretch, to put in mildly.
B
Correction: I should have written, “presumably kills off the former temporarily.”