It is evident that a significant portion of the Jamaican population is homophobic, undoubtedly because of their forefathers' 400 years of painful sodomisation during slavery.

In a recent comment, Sunshine Cathedral's minister Rev Nancy Wilson, said: "Over the years, a lot of attention has been focused on the male homosexual community in Jamaica where intolerance of that lifestyle is very high. In recent weeks, a number of beatings of alleged homosexual men by members of the public have been reported in the media."

Indeed, Jamaica can be considered a homophobic society, that is, a society that has a very low tolerance for homosexual activities. But what has caused Jamaicans in general to have developed such an attitude towards homosexual activities? The psychologists and sociologists have agreed that if an individual or a group of individuals have a consistency in a particular behavioural pattern, there must be some underlying causes.

Canadian writer Mark Steyn in an article in the Daily Telegraph of January 11, 2005, "Britain has been in denial for too long" has indicated how Jamaicans have developed such a passion against homosexual activities. "After all, who made them homophopic?" he wrote, and he quoted one of the writers in the Guardian: "The vilification of Jamaican homophobia," says Decca Aitkenhead, "is just an attempt to distract from the real culprit: it's a failure to recognise 400 years of Jamaican history, starting with the sodomy of male slaves by their white owners as a means of humiliation."

By enslaving them and taking them to our Caribbean plantations and sodomising them every night, we left them with feelings of rejection and humiliation that laid the foundations of their homophobic architecture. The point to remember is, as the writer put it, "Their homophobia is our fault."

The black slaves and most of their descendants developed this hatred for homosexual activities because of the painful experiences that their forefathers endured during slavery.
It is alleged that if and when a white slave master suspected that black male slaves were showing any sign of resistance to their enslavement, the most cruel and brutal treatment would be meted out to them. One such treatment would be sodomisation.
Sodomisation could take place in one of three ways:
. The white slave master could sodomise the black males privately or publicly.

. Black slaves could be forced to sodomise each other in front of slave masters and other members of the plantation.
. Wooden objects known as ramrods would be used to sodomise the black male slaves, until at times blood and excreta would spurt out of their bodies as water gushes out of a broken fountain.
It is this painful and humiliating experience of 400 years of slavery that gave rise to Jamaicans' homophobic attitude.
The Jews exhibit a similar disposition to a painful experience of their ancestor, Jacob.

Genesis 32: 25: When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Genesis 32:32: Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob's hip was touched near the tendon.
After 4,000 years the Jews still remember the painful experience of their ancestor, therefore they will not eat the tendon of the hip of
any animal.

It is just about 170-odd years since the blacks in Jamaica have been freed from slavery, and the painful memory of the colonial masters' sodomisation still lingers. It may take another 400 to 500 years before Jamaicans become more tolerant to homosexual activities.
Those who find it strange that Jamaicans are so homophobic must interpret that attitude as a people saying "do not remind us of our painful and humiliating past", a people saying "don't push from the back because it is a painful act".

The declaration by the former prime minister PJ Patterson in vowing that he would make no changes to anti-homosexual legislation should be interpreted as a reflection of the sentiments of a large percentage of Jamaicans.

Christians and homosexuals
The Christian community must be free to use their right of freedom of speech to be vocal about the wrongness of homosexuality, but the church community should not join with the rest of the society and physically or verbally abuse homosexuals.

I concur with former public defender Howard Hamilton, "Violence of any kind, whether it be against homosexuals, cannot be tolerated in civilised society."
The church should exhibit love and compassion to the homosexuals, pray for their transformation, and help them find Jesus Christ as their true liberator.

Homosexual behaviour can be conquered as evidenced by the thousands of people who have completely given up the lifestyle.
If homosexual behaviour were thought to be inborn, Scripture would not have said, "Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another..." (Romans 1:26-27). The clear implication is that the homosexual acts were deliberate choices.

From a Jamaican cultural and historical perspective, even if the Bible did not make any pronouncement against homosexuality, the painful and humiliating experiences of sodomy by the white colonial slave masters would still give rise to Jamaicans saying, "Don't push from the back, it is a painful act".

John Hardy is a minister of the
New Testament Church of God in Kingston
and a freelance writer.
calltoserve@cwjamaica.com

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