Africa Speaks Reasoning Forum

It isn't racist to target Beenie Man

But it is to remain indifferent to the persecution of Jamaican gays

Peter Tatchell
Tuesday August 31, 2004
The Guardian

'I wake up in the morning not knowing whether today I will live or die," one gay Jamaican told me. Until three years ago, hardly anyone knew, or cared, about this reign of terror. Now the whole world knows about the suffering of Jamaican gays. At the request of gay Jamaicans, and working with black gay people in Britain, the gay rights group OutRage! has organised an international solidarity campaign that has spread across Europe and the US.
It is targeting eight Jamaican reggae singers whose songs incite listeners to shoot, burn, stab and drown gay people: Beenie Man, Bounty Killer, Buju Banton, Capleton, Sizzla, TOK, Elephant Man and Vybz Kartel. Last week, we called on the organisers the Mobo awards to drop the nominations of the last two performers in the list. These artists have a right to criticise homosexuality, but free speech does not include the right to commit the criminal offence of incitement to murder.

Already, we have secured the cancellation of dozens of concerts. The huge financial losses incurred, together with the threat of prosecutions, have forced Jamaican music chiefs to consider abandoning murderous homophobic lyrics. These successes show our tactics were right.

We are now accused of racism by sections of the black community and the left. But I ask myself: how can it be racist to support black victims of homophobia and oppose violent homophobes in the music industry? The real racism is not our campaign against murder music, but most people's indifference to the persecution of gay Jamaicans. No one would tolerate such abuses against white people in Britain; it is racist to allow them to happen to black people in another country.

Why are some people making excuses for homophobic black music? They say it is "cultural imperialism" to challenge gay rights abuses in Jamaica. I don't remember anyone accusing me of cultural imperialism when I supported the ANC's freedom struggle against apartheid. In those days we called it international solidarity.

Some defend violently anti-gay reggae music on the grounds that homophobia is "part of Jamaican culture". Racism was part of Afrikaner culture in apartheid South Africa, but that did not make it right. By this logic, we should also accept cultural traditions like pogroms, female circumcision, lynchings and honour killings.

In any case, homophobia is not authentic Jamaican culture at all. It was foisted on the people of Jamaica in the 19th century by British colonisers and their Christian missionary allies. There is no evidence the Africans brought to Jamaica as slaves were homophobic. On the contrary, homosexuality was common in many of the west African societies from which they were stolen. It became more or less accepted among many slaves in their Caribbean exile, especially given the dislocation of traditional family life by the slave system. The prejudices and laws against homosexuality were imposed by the British. Yet most Jamaicans now claim homophobia is part of their own African-derived culture. They are in massive denial.

Later conversion to Christianity provoked massive guilt and self-hatred, which is still manifest in the vicious homophobia of modern-day Jamaica. The descendants of these slaves today worship in churches that encourage them to hate their black gay brothers and sisters - the same churches that, in the past, supported the enslavement of their African ancestors.

How can any self-respecting Jamaican endorse a fundamentalist Christianity that sanctioned the greatest ever crime against humanity - slavery - and which today preaches a gospel of divide and rule, setting straight Jamaicans against gay ones? Jamaica won its independence in 1962, but the mind of Prime Minister PJ Patterson remains colonised by the homophobic values of 19th century British imperialism. He is Jamaica's most servile defender of the British-imposed anti-gay laws, which continue to stipulate 10 years' hard labour for same-sex relations.

In contrast, black liberation heroes like Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu support the struggle for gay human rights; with Tutu condemning homophobia as "every bit as unjust as apartheid". Hallelujah!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/race/story/0%2c11374%2c1294065%2c00.html

HOTEP! SELAMTA!

12 Tribes Of Israel Greetings
Greetings in that divine name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ who has in this day revealed himself in the wonderful personality of his Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie the first.
I also greet you through the Twelve Tribes of Israel
Which was once lost and scattered aboard but now founded in the island of
Jamaica by our beloved Prophet Gad and is now functioning the four corners of
the earth.
I also greet you in the orthodox faith
which is not a faith of writs and rights but a mystically incorporated function
of the heart In plain words to be born again
 

                                      SELASSIE I
Greetings.
We as Christans should follow the Ten commandments. I personaly would not kill a sodomite or encourage others to do so. Having said that I would ask a Sodomite to stop his dutty acts, as I would ask a theif to stop stealing or a murderer to stop killing. In leviticus it tells us that sodomy is an abomination in the eyes of the lord. Understanding that we are his creation it would make sense that it would offend Jah would it not.
Now to try to justify sodomy by saying that it was an accepted part of African custom, and that it is only the colonialists who brought about this great shame beggers beleif.
The fact that it may have been common does not make it anymore right then, than it does now. Are you you implying that African slaves didn't know right from wrong untill the white colonialists showed them the error of their ways.
Sister hang your head in shame. EThiopia once the mightiest nation upon the plains of Africa, whos empire stretched from Africa to India a beleive in the one true God of Israel. Beleive me they knew what they were doing was wrong.
Sodomy should be treated like an illness. Some people are born blind, deaf,dumb but they have to bear that cross. What the Sodomite is saying is look I dont want to carry this cross I want to get involved in all sorts of debauchery and wicked acts and your askinf me as a God fearing person to support that, no sister

Poem
If you no want to change
In truth me na want to see or hear you.
Me na like or want to be near you
Ras na bow nor run
Leviticus say it abomination
Batty bwoy your time is done
Batty bwoy me na need no gun
Batty bwoy what a tribulation
Accept the facts
we na like your dutty acts
Sodimite keep out of the church
keep out of the shcools
Ras na bow to the wrulles of sinners and fools
Me see the lies that you tell
And me listen to the one true God
Not Peter Tatchel
For thse few words I n I give thanks