Much is being made of an apparently innocuous ad which members of the gay community are seeking to promote via the electronic media, television in particular.
Two of your In Focus columnists, Dr Glenda Simms and Ian Boyne, waxed warm on the subject on Sunday. Both seemed to be crying shame on the television stations and members of the clergy for not embracing a message of love and tolerance (although the point in Boyne's piece was very much obscured by his attempt to play to all sections of the theatre at the same time).
I am in total agreement with the media houses for the non-broadcast for two reasons. First, unconditional love for family is, indeed, a laudable quest by any standard. As a nation, we should resist any attempt to have it pursued on a narrow, partisan basis. Let us therefore widen the conversation to recommend it to the family members of all persons who are ending up on our streets for one reason or another.
Like some homosexuals, some have been abandoned to the streets (and worse) to escape parental abuse, to grapple by themselves with teen pregnancy, with mental-health problems, with progressive drug-abuse issues. To isolate the homosexuals for special consideration smacks of opportunism, perhaps even collusion, coming so soon after the recent media exposé of their carryings-on in New Kingston.
The message clearly is: 'See what your intolerance is doing to these nice homosexual people? Have a heart'.
White isn't always right
The second difficulty I am having with this ad is far more objectionable. It is its insidious attempt to secure a desired culture change by the trusted, colour-coded formula which the colonial experience has bequeathed to us. The formula presumes that Jamaicans believe that the measure of whether anything is good or bad is the extent to which white or near-white people indulge in it. That, in fact, is how carnival came to our shores with a vengeance, instantly upstaging the Trinidad version for sexual vulgarity and our own street dancing for pride of place as the premier Caribbean cultural exhibition of gay (no pun intended) abandonment.
Now it's time for another culture change - a more tolerant, less homophobic society - so who better to carry the message than a high-profile, near-white 'browning'? Before dismissing this as nonsense, the unbelievers should try to get the J-Flaggers to replace Christine Straw's picture and voice with those of a black, 'faceless' member of the masses - an indulgent, Patois-speaking mother of a homosexual son.
This is not just about the promotion of love and tolerance. It has a lot to do with undermining the resistance to the full endorsement of a lifestyle which many Jamaicans find repulsive.
The television stations should hold firm on this one.
OLIVE NELSON
olivescottn@hotmail.com
White isn't always right
The second difficulty I am having with this ad is far more objectionable. It is its insidious attempt to secure a desired culture change by the trusted, colour-coded formula which the colonial experience has bequeathed to us. The formula presumes that Jamaicans believe that the measure of whether anything is good or bad is the extent to which white or near-white people indulge in it. That, in fact, is how carnival came to our shores with a vengeance, instantly upstaging the Trinidad version for sexual vulgarity and our own street dancing for pride of place as the premier Caribbean cultural exhibition of gay (no pun intended) abandonment.
Now it's time for another culture change - a more tolerant, less homophobic society - so who better to carry the message than a high-profile, near-white 'browning'? Before dismissing this as nonsense, the unbelievers should try to get the J-Flaggers to replace Christine Straw's picture and voice with those of a black, 'faceless' member of the masses - an indulgent, Patois-speaking mother of a homosexual son.
This is not just about the promotion of love and tolerance. It has a lot to do with undermining the resistance to the full endorsement of a lifestyle which many Jamaicans find repulsive.
The television stations should hold firm on this one.
OLIVE NELSON
olivescottn@hotmail.com
ENDS
My two cents
This letter looks like a lift from my comments about the ad campaign by JFLAG, that is of course not the first ad but the second one with the "high coloured" Jamaicans, Jamaicans as they are and they have a right to express their side but given our "two Jamaicas" problem + the cynical stance many have that the gay lobby and its supporters are trying to homosexualize everyone else this resistance is expected. Many persons as this letter writer in a sense echoes that they are being talked down to via this Jamaican white family who in my views are far removed from the realities of homophobic abuse and I doubt weren't even introduced to any victims of such during the courting stage of creating this ad campaign.
What sensitization was she exposed to in as far as real victims of homophobia are concerned?
Was she taken to the streets where the rubber meets the road to see the visible problems? (apart from driving past them in wound up tinted windows)
The letter writer may be correct in some sense of the imperialism as the contemptuous way in which the advocates treat the homeless populations, dissenting voices and poor engagement/consultation with the LGBT body politic is embarrassing. The subsequent fall out and lack of proper compensatory measures for would be and or affected persons is glaring, this sharp rise in attacks towards the community on the strength of a questionable email message declaring war on gays we are now seeing is another testament to the ineptitude of our advocacy structure.
Right message, wrong shaded and socio economic class actors.
further two cents in audio
and
meanwhile TVJ responds to Gay Ad
Peace and tolerance
H
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