About two months ago, I was in the line in a bank in New Kingston when three very talkative and animated young men joined the line behind me.

Said one to the other in earshot of all the other customers: 'Lawd, as mi leave here, mi definitely going to Jencare for a massage. Mi muscles dem too tense.' Another chimed in with: 'Yu a talk 'bout dat? Look how mi just leave up me nails. Mi a follow yu go get a manicure and a pedicure.'

It was very obvious from their style of dress and their effeminate gesticulations that they were homosexual, but as I gazed over at my girlfriend (seated nearby) taking them in and stifling a laugh, I could not help but be amazed at how open they were with their 'antics'.

Other males in the line were either unconcerned or smiling while a few of the women were staring at them open-mouthed. In my mind I named the talkative two Daisy and Buttercup.

At one stage Daisy playfully slapped Buttercup on a forearm then did a quick pirouette. Buttercup responded by saying, 'Lorks, yu gwan yah, mind yu pap yu line'. They were touching each other but the body contacts were just short of being considered intimate.

As I watched them keenly, searching for a column, Buttercup grabbed Daisy's hand. Oh, my God, I thought, they are going to kiss. But it was even worse. Buttercup was staring at me and pointing. I pulled out one of my cellphones and linked with Chupski.

'It's you he likes, baby,' she said in jest as I saw him alternating between staring at me and playfully touching his friend. Then horror of horrors, he locked his eyes on me, broke out of the line then came towards me smiling. 'Is you name Mark Wignall?' he asked.

I was still on the phone and Chupski was straining to keep from exploding in uncontrolled laughter. I hung up the phone and half-turned to him. 'Yes,' I said. He turned away from me and said, 'Ah him, Sidney, ah him.'

Daisy evaporated and was replaced by Sidney. Everyone was now staring at us and my girlfriend was on the verge of hysterics. She was certainly enjoying herself.

Under my breath I was saying, make him go away, make him go away. Then, in a surprising language transformation he said, 'Mr Wignall, I buy the Observer just to read you.'
Someone needed to have written a book titled 'How heterosexuals should respond kindly to homosexuals without making it seem that heterosexuals like them.'

'Thank you,' I said as my phone rang. It was Chupski again.
'What did he say to you, honey. Did he propose to you. baby?'

'Not even in joke,' I said to her, myself trying to avoid laughing out. Buttercup had by then sauntered back over to Sidney and I ensured that my eyes were anywhere else but on them. Like myself, Jamaican heterosexuals are uncomfortable with homosexuals.

Most of us find the male/male sex act repugnant and the idea of two men in an intimate embrace sickening. In growing up, no one taught me to hate homosexuals. In fact, I do not hate them, but would appreciate if they would allow me to dislike their lifestyle - in peace and from a socially safe distance.

The incident in the bank is a far cry from the Observer headline of Wednesday, November 17- 'US Group says gays abused in Jamaica'. I am much more comfortable with outbursts from groups like OutRage! simply because those groups are led by homosexuals.

Although they would want the world to see them as more than viable units of human endeavour and view their lifestyles as something to be proud of, I have seen no evidence to support the wholesale disfranchisement of the homosexual community in Jamaica.

If OutRage! has done anything positive, it is in forcing the hand of Jamaican deejays to use their 'creativity' to create and not promote senseless gibberish. Indeed it is my belief that Jamaican deejays who are short on talent and brains are the ones who revert to cussing homosexuals and those 'normal' folk who find much delight in oral sex.

These deejays do not have one-tenth of the talent of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh or the awesome writing skills of Bob Andy. To make up for that vapidity of thought and absence of real talent, they leap across the stage, shout, and, like Elephant Man, have brought dancehall music fully into the realm of nursery rhymes for the mentally impaired.

What makes me uncomfortable with the stern 'lecture' from Human Rights Watch is the likelihood that it seems it is the homosexual surrogates attached to that group who have 'ripped' into Jamaica for what it imagines is widescale abuse here against male homosexuals.

Homosexuals have always found that their viral-like attachment to key groups in civil society and other bodies where social activism is a calling card has always assisted them as a launching pad from which they can subtly foist their sexuality on a nation of people totally turned off from and sickened by the abnormal and filthy act of one man having sex with another man.

While I agree that the laws against buggery should be repealed, it should be done of our own volition, in our own time and with an understanding that a cultural backlash may occur.

It galls me that some pansies parading as paragons of justice should be citing Jamaica as a destination where widespread abuse against homosexuals is practised without producing a body of evidence to support the charges made in its report.

Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group, had the gall to accuse Jamaica of torture! Go to Abu Ghraib! Accuse the US, which has the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction! Accuse the US, which has the largest market in the world for illegal drug use. Accuse the authorities in those jurisdictions for allow ing that particular bit of human rights abuse!

If we take it as a given that in the last 50 years the group or entity that has made the most important inroads or had impacted most on Jamaican society is Rastafari, then it would seem that the other entity out to claim a similar social passage in the last 10 years is the male homosexual community in Jamaica and their surrogates abroad.

We still have a cargo cult mentality in this country where goodies are always expected to arrive from 'farrin'. And then, of course, when these goodies arrive, without testing for quality, it is taken as a given that the foreign fare is of superior design and delivery.

When Brian Williamson, head of the homosexual group J-Flag, died, the Buttercup and Daisy activists in Jamaica spread the word that Mr Williamson's death was a hate crime and Jamaica was not safe for homosexuals.

All the early evidence pointed to an in-house murder typical of such deaths in Jamaica. In other words, something had gone sour in the mind of the murderer.

Of the columns I have written, none attracted the feedback as the one I wrote titled 'Those Flamin' homosexuals'.

What this told me was not that Jamaica was suddenly overrun with men who preferred men rather than women, but that the homosexual community was organised around one main focal point - that of showing the rest of us that they were 'coming out' and we had better step back or be steamrolled in this effort.

The local male homo community and their powerful allies abroad have missed this simple point. Not many of us are saying that they don't have a right to cuddle and say sweet nothings to each other. All we are asking is that when they decide to indulge, they do it behind closed doors, as much as us normal folk do.

Most importantly, we do not want a mountain of a crusade in our society acculturated into a belief that male/male sex is sinful, sick and alien to a nation of people who have bought into the idea that a vagina is a penis' best friend.

I will bet you that if a man is caught in a crude sexual coupling with an attractive female on a bench at Devon House at 2:00 pm, they would both be chased out by the authorities.

Not many male homosexuals have been considering that, and certainly not Human Rights Watch. On the other hand, I would agree that should Daisy and Buttercup decide to get it on on one of the hard benches outside the ice cream shop at Devon House, they would be soundly beaten and would have to scramble faster than Greg Louganis could make a high dive.

For Human Rights Watch to accuse the PNP administration of facilitating abuse is taking the idea of international crudity to a new low. For sure I know that 'sovereignty' is oftentimes the claim made by countries that others should keep out of their business, especially where it applies to internal abuse of their citizens.

In the present case I am convinced that the matter has little to do with human rights abuse as much as it is the representation of the homosexual agenda of one or two local VIP homosexuals through Human Rights Watch.

In this sensitive matter, we must deal with what ails us. This 'hot activism' by the homosexual community will, if they believe they were alienated before, push them to the back burner even more.

Too much of the actions of the groups purporting to represent the interests of disfranchised homosexuals are nothing more than the actions of a few men huddled together in an ego-filled basement.

We need to ask male homosexuals if they have faced widespread abuse in Jamaica. If the example of the bank is anything to go by, I was the one registering the most hostility that day, and the 'hostility' did not even reach the level of open disgust. In the bank that day were working-class and seemingly less-educated, intolerant males and they did not even bother to look in the direction of the talking two.

The Government has taken the right step in not just shunning them, but in ramming the report back down their throats.

Let then deal with the mountain of abuse in their neck of the woods before trying to define the Jamaican agenda. Let them report to their informants in Jamaica so that we can know among which group of persons was any study on homosexual behaviour/abuse done.

The Patterson Administration is not without its share of blame in terms of human rights abuse. Our prisons are notorious for abuse and corruption, and his Government has failed to give transparency to the efforts dealing with ending the abuse of minors in places of safety throughout Jamaica.

The police force is still into its 'kick down, box up' phase which existed from the 1960s but which was institutionalised in the 1970s and perfected in the first four years of the 21st Century.

To the extent that our homegrown bodies have failed to address these failures, we should not be surprised when foreign entities embarrass us through international exposures.

In all the polls conducted by the Stone Team, human rights abuse as a main concern has never featured as a problem needing urgent national action. That, again, may be another problem all by itself.

The foreign groups must know this, but they are banking on riding with the tide of homosexual activism resuscitated in the wake of the murder of J-Flag's founder, Brian Williamson.

I would suggest to them that as a first resort they should respect the fact that as a nation we are not too much into what they want as par for the course. In other words, we are not too anxious to see our park benches overrun with Adams and Steves in a heated rush.

Most importantly, they should bear in mind the likelihood that not too many homosexuals care for their activism. Most, I suspect, just want to be left alone to do what they do behind closed doors without too much shouting. But then again, isn't that the main agenda for most of us?

observemark@hotmail.com

Seaga's last fan

In last Wednesday's Observer, a writer calling herself 'JusJean', (which I suspect is the moniker used by Jean Anderson, Eddie Seaga's sister living in Mandeville) asked the question, 'I wonder what Mark Wignall is going to do without having Eddie Seaga to be disrespectful to?'
The imperious nature of the letter is proof positive that siblings think alike.

Some years ago when 'Spreadout', (a self-styled bodyguard of Seaga) verbally abused me in a bar, one part of his concerns was that I should address Eddie Seaga as MISTER Seaga. In harking back to that incident, the true meaning of the Wednesday letter clicks in.
Seaga is never ever criticised, instead, he is 'disrespected'.

The letter went on to state, 'I know I am safe in predicting that despite all Wignall's critical abuse and hostility, Edward Phillip George Seaga will occupy a prominent place in the history of Jamaica for his many important contributions to nation building.'
Let me ask Seaga's sister these questions;

1 In 1977, the Israeli Government had declared a man named Eli Tisona a mobster with links to organised crime in Israel. In the early 1980s Tisona was brought to Jamaica and was the toast of Seaga as the pre-eminent agricultural expert operating the Spring Plains plant in Agro-21, the JLP's showpiece in agriculture. In 1999, Tisona was convicted and imprisoned in Florida as being the mastermind of money laundering for the Cali Cartel in Colombia.

Does she believe Eddie Seaga knows of this? Does she know if Seaga knows that while Tisona was here, he chartered planes which flew over from Colombia in the wee hours of the morning to pick up winter vegetables in Jamaica?

2 In the early 1980s a group with JLP connections, the Shower Posse, was headed by Jim Brown and Vivian Blake. Does she know if Eddie Seaga was close to Jim Brown?

3 Some years ago when Dr Ronald Irvine (an ex-minister in the 1980s Seaga Government) died, his widow refused to enter the church holding his funeral until Eddie Seaga left. Is 'Jusjean' aware of this and can she tell us why was the lady so insistent of Seaga leaving?

4 Can she confirm that all of Eddie Seaga's assets are tied up in a house and a car, here in Jamaica? Is Eddie Seaga prepared to make another declaration of his assets now?
Answering those questions will most likely assist the historians in penning Seaga's history.

Thanks, Jean for reminding me how important it is to sift when history is being made. You are a real darling.

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'

Cheeky's World