Popular Arkansas-born composer and performer Ne-Yo spent last week in Jamaica for that island nation's annual Reggae Sumfest festival.
He was just one of several African American Obama-supporting musicians enabling one of the world's most dangerous spots for gay men and women.
Hilton, Holiday Inn and Sandals were just a few of the prominent hotel chains co-sponsoring this annual Jamaican music festival.
The very same distillers and distributors who peddle their vodkas, gins and beers through gay-focused advertising and media are still promoting the varied brands of fine Jamaican rum.
Most of the finest purveyors of gourmet coffees throughout the United States, including Starbucks, will happily brew you a smooth aromatic grande of authentic Jamaican Blue Mountain.
American, United, Air Canada, Jet Blue, Delta and Continental remain ready to fly your gay ass down to Montego Bay for a personal lynching, throat slashing or head bashing by the local police.
and just last week, the International Monetary Fund granted this human rights cesspool unconditional most favored nation status, granting Jamaica the right to borrow up to 600% of quota at a mere 1.31 percentage rate paid out over five years.
I've lost track of the number of gay advocacy groups and prominent gay bloggers (like Wayne Besen and Joe Solomonese) who have called for boycotts of Jamaica and then dropped the ball within days.
So how is it that a small island within shouting distance of South Beach, arguably the most violently homophobic nation in the Western world, a place where gays are daily slaughtered like cockroaches in the South Bronx can stand as a major US and European trading partner and leading tourist and honeymoon destination?
Just a few days ago, the Associated Pres ran a nightmarish piece on Jamaica.
"Even now, about three years after a near-fatal gay bashing, Sherman gets jittery at dusk," reports AP.
"On bad days, his blood quickens, his eyes dart, and he seeks refuge indoors. A group of men kicked him and slashed him with knives for being a "batty boy" — a slang term for gay men — after he left a party before dawn in October 2006."
"They sliced his throat, torso, and back, hissed anti-gay epithets, and left him for dead on a Kingston corner."
""It gets like five, six o'clock, my heart begins to race. I just need to go home, I start to get nervous," said the 36-year-old outside the secret office of Jamaica's sole gay rights group. Like many other gays, Sherman won't give his full name for fear of retribution."
"Despite the easygoing image propagated by tourist boards, gays and their advocates agree that Jamaica is by far the most hostile island toward homosexuals in the already conservative Caribbean. They say gays, especially those in poor communities, suffer frequent abuse. But they have little recourse because of rampant anti-gay stigma and a sodomy law banning sex between men in Jamaica and 10 other former British colonies in the Caribbean."
"It is impossible to say just how common gay bashing attacks like the one against Sherman are in Jamaica — their tormentors are sometimes the police themselves. But many homosexuals in Jamaica say homophobia is pervasive across the sun-soaked island, from the pulpit to the floor of the Parliament."
"Hostility toward gays has reached such a level that four months ago, gay advocates in New York City launched a short-lived boycott against Jamaica at the site of the Stonewall Inn, where demonstrations launched the gay-rights movement in 1969."
"In its 2008 report, the U.S. State Department also notes that gays have faced death and arson threats, and are hesitant to report incidents against them because of fear. For gays, the reality of this enduring hostility is loneliness and fear, and sometimes even murder. Andrew, a 36-year-old volunteer for an AIDS education program, said he was driven from the island after his ex-lover was killed for being gay — which police said was just a robbery gone wrong. He moved to the U.K. for several years, but returned to Jamaica in 2008 for personal reasons he declined to disclose."
""I'm living in fear on a day-to-day basis," he said softly during a recent interview in Kingston. "In the community where my ex-lover was killed, people will say to me when I'm passing on the street, they will make remarks like 'boom-boom-boom' or 'batty boy fi dead.' I don't feel free walking on the streets."
Jamaican authorities insist that violence against gays is blown out of proportion by gay activists. In fact, they say, as long as gays stay in the closet, they can live peacefully in Jamaica; they call this "a tropical version of Bill Clinton's "don't ask, don't tell".
Jamaica's most prominent evangelical pastor, Bishop Herro Blair shrugs off the violence claiming that it is gays killing gays.
"Among themselves, homosexuals are extremely jealous," said Blair during a recent interview." All this violence, he says, is nothing but endless lover's quarrels and revenge killings by jilted homosexuals.
Other religious leaders say the violence is necessary to fight homosexual recruitment, accusing gays of "flaunting their behavior to "recruit" youngsters."
AP reports that Jamaica has one of the world's highest rates of prostate cancer because many Jamaican men refuse to get digital rectal examinations for prostate cancer believing it to be a ruse for homosexual recruitment.
Yes, really. And this view is encouraged by the island's Christian leadership.
Yes, really.
Some months ago, the White House trumpeted its reversal of homophobic Bush policy and signed the United Nations Declaration calling for the global decriminalization of homosexuality, adding sexual orientation to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Secretary of State Clinton promised to campaign against the international persecution of gay men and women as part of the new U.S. Foreign Policy.
So here we are just miles away from Jamaica, one of the most horrific and violent examples of international homophobia in the world--and Washington is silent, U.S. corporations are silent and, to be brutally honest, our own so-called community squawks occasionally, but then quickly moves on.
So why is there no boycott of Jamaica? No sanctions? No official protests from Washington? Economics? Fear of left wing influence from Venezuela? Fear of Al Qaeda infiltration?
In my view it is nothing more than indifference. After all, it's just a bunch of queers. The Jamaican situation is dripping with the truth of homophobia in this nation, a homophobia that is as pervasive among Democrats as it is among Republicans. The only difference between the two parties is that Republicans are honest about it while Democrats have learned the well constructed lies will garner gay votes.
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