I strongly urge all people interested in stopping the anti-gay violence in Jamaica to see Taboo Yardies, a film-short on the issue. It will be shown at 6 p.m. April 24 at the General Theological Seminary, 440 W. 21st Street, in New York.

I saw a preview of the movie and I highly recommend it. Filmmaker Selena Blake (pictured left) offers an in-depth, multi-layered snapshot of the problem. She is a heterosexual Jamaican woman who explores the roots of the homophobia and what it means for Jamaican society.

For additional information about the movie, visit www.tabooyardies.com.

(Photo by Bates for News)

Latest media coverage of Boycott Jamaica:

Silence threats from gay community
April 1, The Gleaner, Jamaica

Gays in US ‘Boycott Jamaica’
April 1, The Gleaner, Jamaica

Jamaica is not a theocracy
March 31, The Gleaner, Jamaica

Blog: Jamaican Consul to Talk With Gays
March 30, The Advocate

Boycott Jamaica
March 30, Washington Blade

American activists call for the boycott of Jamaica
March 30, Radio Jamaica

Gays boycott Jamaican products
March 30, Go Jamaica

BoycottJamaica.org is a joint effort of Truth Wins Out, Box Turtle Bulletin editor Jim Burroway, and activist Michael Petrelis.

I have long been outspoken on the abuses of GLBT people in Jamaica and the need for action. I can’t imagine why any American, European or Canadian who cares about human rights would spend a dime visiting this island bubbling over with hate. Last week, Jamaica’s Prime Minister, Bruce Golding, firmly stated how he approved of the persecution of gay people. He stated that gay rights groups are “perhaps the most organized lobby in the world” and he vowed to fight to keep the nation’s sodomy law on the books.

“We are not going to yield to the pressure, whether that pressure comes from individual organizations, individuals, whether that pressure comes from foreign governments or groups of countries, to liberalize the laws as it relates to buggery,” said Golding.

Timothy Kincaid at Box Turtle Bulletin wrote an excellent piece describing the abuses in Jamaica.

Personally, I’ve had enough of the prejudice and persecution. Golding’s comments are one step too far. It boils my blood when our straight friends (and uninformed GLBT people) continue to travel and spend money in Jamaica. There are thousands of people, if they knew the truth, who would not visit a place more accurately described as “Ja-Murder.”

Today, Truth Wins Out purchased www.BoycottJamaica.org. We are not yet sure if we want to launch a full-fledged boycott. But, it is nice to know we have this site in our back pocket and can take action against this nation that seems to have a unique and disturbing – if not psychotic – antipathy towards GLBT people. (Read More)

Excerpt from The Independent:

Why do hip-hop artists — often the victims of bigotry themselves — incite this hatred? For 10 years, Terrence Dean was at the heart of the hip-hop scene as a producer at MTV and Warner Brothers. His life is as ghetto as any of the big name artists. His mother was a heroin-addicted, Aids-infected prostitute whose “clients” held Terrence hostage at gunpoint. His drunken grandmother raised him in the slums of Detroit, and he eventually ended up in prison. When he was released, he headed for Hollywood — and he was amazed to stumble into a gay underworld stocked with some of the biggest names in hip-hop.

I recently interviewed Dean for the gay magazine Attitude. He told me about a man — I don’t believe in outing, so I won’t give his name — who “has been named in the past as one of the biggest rappers of all time by MTV. He’s always trashing gay men in his lyrics. But he is surrounded by a posse of transvestites,” who he has sex with. Dean then runs through a list of hip-hop gays, each more famous and closeted than the last.

He explains: “When the rappers rap about the hatred they have of homosexuals, I know it’s because many of them are struggling with their own sexuality. They hate what they are and in turn they spew their hatred toward men who are reflections of themselves.”

Jamaica prime minister Bruce Golding reiterated this week that he believes all Jamaicans should enjoy a right to privacy and equality — except same-sex-attracted Jamaicans.

Golding told reporters last month that he has no intention of moving to repeal laws that incarcerate same-sex-attracted persons for their private intimate activities.

Antigay Caribbean nations, some of which criminalize homosexuality and permit mobs to assault and kill gay people, enjoy the ongoing support of the ex-gay Exodus Global Alliance.

Around the world, as many as eighty-six countries criminalize same-gender sexuality; Exodus Global Alliance claims a presence in many of them, and explicitly opposes criminalization and discrimination in none.

From Ecuador and its ex-gay torture and incarceration centers to Gambia and its plan to behead all gays, Exodus Global Alliance says nothing about the human rights of those who “struggle” with same-sex attraction. Instead, the Exodus alliance legitimizes its host countries’ violent methods by promoting undefined ex-gay conversion while offering no public guidelines — no restraints — upon the barbarity of powerful antigay church and government agencies.

Concern is rising about violent antigay mob violence in Jamaica — violence that has been supported by some of the island nation’s antigay Christian pastors.

As a result of authorities’ and churches’ refusal to take action against the violence, the gay-affirming Metropolitan Community Church has called for a possible tourism boycott against that island nation.

While claiming to offer compassion and a cure for homosexuality, Exodus Global Alliance — a worldwide network of ex-gay activists — has offered no public condemnation of the violence.

Indeed, the organization appears to support criminalization of homosexuality in the region.

Consider the following Exodus Global Alliance flier for a 2006 conference in Barbados — click the banner to view the full flier.

The Exodus-Project Probe slogan, “Some say decriminalise homosexuality …… we say lets offer solutions” (sic), markets fraudulent ex-gay therapy as an alternative to decriminalization.

Throughout recent media coverage of violence in Jamaica, Exodus Global Alliance has declined to announce an unambiguous public policy opposing antigay violence or reversing its nod to criminalization.

This should not be a tremendous surprise: The organization’s newsletters claim, in country after country, that “sexual freedom” is unilaterally harmful and must be stamped out in places as far-flung as Barbados, Brazil, China and Ethiopia — where Exodus blames sexual freedom for AIDS.

Exodus Global Alliance apparently believes that, even with proper education, people cannot be trusted to manage their own lives — that they need the harsh hand of authoritarian law to control their sexuality. And when Exodus responds to mob violence with silence, it joins Jamaica’s local police in offering a cold shoulder to gay people as mobs bash gay residents and loot their homes.

In the United States, the leaders of Exodus International and Focus on the Family strive to make life dangerous for gay and bisexual Americans and their families by:

• associating equitable punishment for violent antigay hate crimes with “thought crime“
• distributing antigay literature in public schools and opposing anti-bullying programs
• opposing inclusion of sexual orientation in existing antidiscrimination laws, which already include religion as a protected category and exempt religious groups from compliance
• blaming innocent parents for their child’s sexual orientation
• promoting pro-violence activists such as Ken Hutcherson, an Exodus conference speaker who demands that employers discriminate and affirms violence against gay men and “effeminate” heterosexual men in the United States and Eastern Europe

The goal of these activities, as Exodus president Alan Chambers has acknowledged, is to compel same-sex-attracted persons to change, in defiance of biology, psychology, and sound moral conscience. Chambers admitted in 2004:

Had same-sex marriage been legal in 1990 I am certain that I would have tested that option. I met men whom I wanted to “marry.” … The law kept me from making one, if not many, huge mistakes. And while honoring and preserving the sanctity of heterosexual marriage is the bedrock of my opposition to redefining marriage to suit a few, I believe a positive bi-product of keeping same-sex marriage illegal is that it will save tens of thousands of hurting young people like me from the biggest mistakes of their lives: looking to man to meet a need that only God can meet.

In Jamaica, according to Human Rights Watch and the New York Times, “pro-family” advocates go a few steps further to discourage homosexuality:

In addition to making homosexuality illegal, public officials, the media, and ministers have incited mobs to such a degree that, on Jan. 29, one mob invaded a house where five gay people who were having a dinner party, beat them senseless and apparently killed at least one man. Last year, a mob disrupted a gay man’s funeral and trashed the church. In 2004, according to Time magazine, a teenager was nearly killed when his father learned his son was gay and urged a mob to lynch the boy at his school. And when two of the island’s gay-rights advocates, Steve Harvey and Brian Williamson, were murdered, a crowd celebrated over Williamson’s disfigured body. Time recounts numerous other mob killings in recent years.

(Read More)