September 18, 2000
 

JAMAICANS UNITED AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY 

Jamaican poet, responds to "Prime Minister Patterson says not to gay rights"

 I have been silent in all this back and forth between the voices that tread these cyber pathways because I have had few comments that would add to the effectiveness of these discussions. I am not certain there is much to be gleaned of what I am about to say- except that Visibility is one of the greatest weapons that any civil rights movement struggle has at its disposal. I am only making an attempt to increase the visibility of young black voices who have been pushed out of Jamaica because of its laws against homosexuality.

 Over the years I have watched Jamaica send it's young intellectuals off to New York, Toronto, London, Munich- name it we have left to study there- and many of us have not come back. Lawyers, doctors, teachers, bank clerks, construction workers, and a staggering number of writers and painters and dancers and vocalists and etc have left the island, discovered the sexual freedom of other societies and never looked back.

  What our politicians have always lacked in Jamaica is good old common sense. The dollar keeps devaluing and the crime rate keeps going up and the poor become even more removed from the rich and still no good sense from the people we pay from our tax dollars. Whether PJ Patterson is a "batty man" or not is of little interest to me. The question I am forced to ask is, do the members of the present parliament realise that jamaica is only a part of this Global Village that is supported and perpetuated by the growing technological reality of the twenty first Century? Does the leader of that misguided bunch realise that the world is coming to terms with the idea that homosexuality has always been here and for all intents and purposes will be here for all time? Does he realise that more and more people are realising that they do not have to live their lives in fearful secrecy? Does he know that many of us who would have added so much to the flailing economy, who would have been proud to be a part of our country's growth have chosen to live elsewhere because who I sleep with could make me a crimninal? In jamaica what I do behind a closed door with someone I love is of greater importance than what I can offer to the growth and development of my fellow countryman? Does he realise also that if he keeps council with this pack of neandethals, some with lesbians and homosexual men for sons and daughters themselves, that Jamaica will continue to lose many more of the great minds who will eventually become aware that there are other places where you could live with the love of your choice and not live in fear of your life. A life that is no more valued than that of a thief or a murderer- a manner of thinking backed by two most powerful forces in the country-the laws of the land and the laws of the Christian church. This I say is the heart of our national tragedy. The exclusive resorts pandering to Butch Stewart's version of tourism, the elitism that allows the upper class to pay the poor a salary that is less than the amount their children spend on fast food per week for a sixty-hour week, the undernourished children, the hanging of men who are only victims of a system perpetuated by our "Christian" way of thinking, the ornate bars we need to seaprate on class of black Jamaicans from the other, the wealthy business men and their young pregnant girlfriends from the darker side of town- these are only symptoms of a society that refuses to take a closer look at itself and perhaps manufacture the shame and the courage it would take to right some of the wrongs the queen and her loyal subjects have left with us.

 Some days, I am very angry woman - others I am quietly grateful for the freeedom of New York City. Always, however, I am a Jamaican- living in exile- far away from my the heat and laughter of own country- only because, on the days when I fall in love, I chance to fall in love with other women.

 Staceyann Chin
 
 

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