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SOUTHERN VOICE O C T O li E R 2 1 / 1 9 9 3
These members of the “Superstuds” gang on Kingston’s Southside say any gays or
lesbians that come into their neighborhood will face violence.
Jamaica no island paradise
for gays and lesbians
Kingston, Jamaica—In front of wall mu
rals preaching tolerance and black pride,
Percival Cordwell proudly recounts how he
helped drive two men from his shantytown
because he thought they were gay.
The two were lying side by side on a beach
four blocks away, in their swimsuits, when a
neighborhood man screamed “Batty boys!”—
Jamaican slang for gay men. Cordwell joined a
stick-waving mob moving in on the two men.
“These guys ran for their lives. Everybody
wanted to get a lick,” Cordwell, 47, a soccer
coach for teenagers, recalls.
Despite the laid-back, anything-goes image’
propagated by tourist boards, gays and gay-
bashers here agree on perhaps only one point:
Jamaica is the most hostile island toward gay
men and lesbians in the Caribbean.
Gays do visit Jamaica but generally slick to
smaller resorts or guest houses away from main
tourism areas. Gay tourists are told not to hold
hands in hotel restaurants or outside resorts for
fear of attacks.
The anti-gay sentiment has become known
worldwide through the increasing popularity
of Jamaican “dancehall,” a rap-reggac music
hybrid that often has raunchy or violent themes.
In slums like Cordwcll’s rough Southside
neighborhood, the music has long been popu
lar, as has gay-bashing. No gays live here and
none ever will, he declares.
Cordwell, his long dreadlocks tucked un
der a multicolored knit cap, said he maintains
the integrity of his soccer teams by never pick
ing a player from outside the ncighborhotxi.
You never know, he says.
Beside him, a half-dozen members of a
neighborhood gang, the Superstuds, agree, com
peting to describe the violence they would ad
minister if they found gays or lesbians.
Examples of Jamaica’s hostile attitudes to
ward gays abound:
• An attempt to toughen Jamaica’s rape law
stalled last March because critics contended
that allowing prosecution for the rape of one
man by another would implicitly give legal
acknowledgment to sex between two consent
ing adult men. An outpouring of angry public
complaints forced the government to put aside
the proposed amendment
• Victims of gay-bashing seek no justice
from policemen, some of whom state publicly
that they are likely to do some bashing them
selves.
• Reggae rappers often depend on gay-bash
ing themes to stir up concert-goers, as was
done in August’s Sunsplash music festival. The
theme of Buju Banton’s international hit “Boom
Boom Bye”—kill gay men—has provoked criti
cism in the United States, but little in Jamaica.
• A radio broadcast last June about mmors
that gays and lesbians planned a rally prompted
scores of youths armed with axes, knives and
chains to converge on Nelson Mandela Park in
Kingston, the rumored site. No rally took place.
“They were testing the strength of the Ja
maican people,” one bare-chested Superstud
gang member, 30-year-old Errol Sanders, says
of the gay activists behind the reported rally.
“We were going to murder them.”
The tough talk comes as no surprise to
Larry Chang, a restaurant owner and property
manager who is one of the few gay Jamaicans
who has gone public. He has lost work because
of his beliefs, endured insults on tire street and
says neighbors have shunned him.
Homosexuality provokes “a trigger re
sponse” among most Jamaicans, says Chang,
who had been secretary of a now-disbanded
gay rights group.
The intolerance has something to do with
the legacy of slavery and with the predomi
nance of single-parent families, Chang specu
lates.
“Most Jamaican men grow up without a
father. They never fell affection from another
man, any kind of affection, and they don’t
know how to deal with it,” he says.
Psychiatrist Aggrcy Irons, who is host of
Jamaican radio and television programs on hu
man sexuality, adds that constant anti-gay mes
sages by evangelical Protestant faiths may also
play a role. He says Jamaica tolerates homo
sexuality as long as it is not advertised—a
tropical version of President Clinton’s “don’t
ask, don’t tell” policy for the U.S. military.
Irons says he has treated some men who
“are afraid that the stigma may be attached to
them, so their defense is to hit out rather than
deal with their own insecurity.”
Jamaica is probably about as hostile to gay
men and lesbians as the United States was 15
or 20 years ago, says Irons and Aston Cooke, a
spokesman for the Jamaica Tourist Board.
“But,” Cooke adds, “somedmes you ask, would
you want to be where the U.S. is now?”
Cooke says gay tourists represent “an un
tapped market,” but he does not expect Ja
maica to begin directing marketing efforts to
ward them.
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