Tara Abrahams-Clivio

My daughter and I bundle up in my bed one afternoon to watch TV. It is a treat for us both as she is not usually allowed to watch TV during the week, regardless of the most relentless nagging you can possibly imagine. But today I'm tired and I give in. She suggests we watch PBS Kids and I imagine some purple creature singing excitedly at me for 30 minutes. Feeling even more exhausted after that image, I suggest a compromise, A Baby Story. This show documents the pregnancy of a family and eventually the birth of an adorable baby. I figure that this will help my daughter to understand the pending birth in her family, as the show often involves siblings and excited "big sisters" just like my little girl.

We select the channel and she places her thumb in her mouth, starts sucking and becomes transfixed. All is well as we watch a big fat lady like Mummy buying cute baby clothes and selecting a crib, always accompanied by a woman who seems to be a friend or sister. After the break, the pregnant woman and her companion, who I am beginning to suspect is not her sister, sit down together holding hands and start to talk about the birth and rather complicated conception of their baby. A little stunned that "same sex" pregnancies have hit the seemingly innocent world of A Baby Story, I hear the dreaded question, "Where is the daddy, Mummy?" I reply, "At work. Wanna watch Barney?" Not surprisingly, she agrees, and I turn to the ever-faithful and safe-singing bouncing purple blubber.

Jamaica has been getting a really hard time lately about being homophobic, and people who have spoken out against homosexuality have been labelled bigots. When an openly gay person is killed, there are loud accusations of it being a hate crime despite the circumstances suggesting that it was just another of our many crimes, or even a case of domestic violence. British groups have called for some of our local artistes to be banned because of their anti-homosexual lyrics, even though they are aware that homosexuality is against the law in our country and is sinful, according to our Christian beliefs. It seems these gay groups are not very tolerant of our way of life or our - albeit backward - ideas.

It would be easy for me to argue against homosexuality.
Based on the word of the Lord, it is a sin. Owing to the fact that I have turned a deaf ear to the occasional Biblical utterance, or just allowed myself to interpret it more to my liking, I will not go there. I will let others who have not sinned before cast those first stones. Yet, while I fancy myself as a forward-thinker, a progressive and open mind, in this area I admit my mind is severely limited. I keep silent when people argue that we Jamaicans are backward in our thinking. But to be honest I am not ready to be all that progressive, neither am I comfortable having my children exposed to overt homosexuality.

Like the vast majority of Jamaicans, I in no way condone violence against homosexuals or even discrimination against them. My mind can happily extend to the point that everybody should be allowed to do as they please as long as it does not affect the rest of us, especially behind closed doors. Am I ready to cheer as gay parades with some of the more unusual-looking human beings go prancing by? Not yet. Am I ready to shatter my children's notion that little girls grow up to marry the man of their dreams and have children, with the idea that they may grow up and marry the woman of their dreams? Not really. I size up the cute little girls in my son's pre-school class and make jokes about prospective girlfriends; the boys are just prospective teammates on the football field. When I explain "the birds and the bees" to my children, I think I would be more comfortable keeping to the basics of a man and woman in love coming together and creating a little baby; getting into the test tubes and turkey basters is something I would prefer them to learn about much later in life, and honestly I like the idea that they will never see it as the norm here in Jamaica.

So while my limited thinking may well be my vice and certainly is not very hip, I would ask that my homosexual friends try to understand that their way of life is in many ways totally unusual to me, and despite the fact that I do not judge it, it honestly can seem very shocking and some aspects are hard for me to understand. So while we in Jamaica survive together, learning gradually to accept our differences, some amount of patience should be adopted by both sides.
Certainly, gays in other countries which have standards that we are nowhere ready to adopt, should not expect us to bypass the same process they went through. Perhaps we will never end up where they are. In fact, I hope that in Jamaica we will find a common ground where mutual respect can be the basis of our tolerance for our differences in sexual preference, not some legislation or other pressure that forces us heterosexuals to conceal our lack of understanding or that we are uncomfortable with aspects of homosexuality.

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