ATTN DREXEL GOMEZ -- EXCLUDER of GAY CHRISTIANS at the ANGLICAN COMMUNION: ¨LGBT rights are human rights and part of Jamaica's heritage¨

 

The Most Reverend Drexel Gomez, Archbishop of Jamaica and the West Indies, emeritus, hatemonger, fabricator of anti-Gay junktalk at Church, cochairman of the Anglican Covenant ¨excluding of LGBT¨ people punitive document and GAFCON panderer.

HERE

 

¨During his World Human Rights Day speech on December 10, 2012 marking the launch of another human rights watch dog in Jamaica, the country’s Justice Minister, the Honorable Mark Golding claimed that recognizing the human rights of LGBT is a Western concept which Jamaica may be forced to accept or face financial sanction.¨

¨While this statement is great politics, it is, of course patently false.

First, homosexuality has been identified in over 1500 animal species, however in no other species besides humans are gay members attacked. Even so, few human societies mirror the level of savagery that Jamaicans meet out to members of the LGBT community, as exemplified in the recent barbaric attack of a student on a Jamaican university campus.

Even without reference to international standards it would seem logical that human rights of Jamaican homosexuals should extend to protection from these kinds of inhuman assaults.
Second, many African societies, from which the majority of Jamaicans descended, have a tradition of homosexuality, including same-gender marriages.

The Supreme Court of Kenya recently affirmed the validity of such a marriage between 2 women.
Similarly, a large number of Jamaicans are descended from Indians and in that culture transgender individuals, called Hijra, have long been viewed as semi-divine and essential guests at special events in order to guarantee good fortune.

This is mirrored in Native American societies where transgendered individuals, termed Two-Spirited, were always honored and served as judges because of their perceived ability to understand both the male and female perspectives.

While the only remainders of Jamaica’s indigenous population are the figures adorning the country’s coat of arms, it is quite likely that homosexuality existed in that culture similar to the Native Americans.

It was western imported Victorian morality which sought to destroy these long traditions of tolerance for sexual diversity found in the civilizations from which most Jamaicans are descended.
 
King Henry VIII of England introduced the first anti-gay legislation during his split with the Roman Catholic Church as a way of gaining revenge on the church and its notoriously gay priests.

Through various iterations, this anti-gay/anti-Catholic legislation was finally exported to Jamaica in the form of our 1864 anti-sodomy law.

By respecting the human rights of homosexuals, Jamaicans will therefore simply be honoring our ancestral acknowledgment of the natural diversity in the human family, as well as upholding our modern national motto of ‘Out of Many, One People’.

Finally, none of Jamaica’s traditional development aid partners have even hinted that the country stands to face any financial repercussions for the continued violation of the rights of LGBT citizens.
That disingenuous suggestion by the Minister was meant, no doubt, to gain sympathy for the beleaguered government from an increasingly disgruntled electorate.

Subsequent to the Minister’s inflammatory statement, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) published its latest report on the human rights situation in Jamaica.
In this report, released on January 3, 2013 the IACHR was understandably critical of the country’s treatment of its LGBT population.

Citing rampant abuse of LGBT by state and non-state actors, the report made numerous recommendations to the Jamaican state.

Some of these recommendations are aimed at immediately ending the crushing stigma and discrimination that LGBT Jamaicans face, and also to give effect to the international human rights obligations the country voluntarily undertook as a signatory to the American Convention on Human Rights.

One obvious and expected recommendation was a repeal of the country’s antediluvian legislation which criminalizes male private consenting same-gender intimacy. This was cited as a clear example of discrimination in violation of the American Convention...¨ please read it all, by  Maurice Tomlinson :

http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/lgbt-rights-are-human-rights-and-are-part-jamaicas-heritage060113

Thanks to GAYSTARNEWS