It took a two-year emotional and religious struggle, between the ages of 16 and 18, for this young man to acknowledge that he is gay. Today, at 22, he says the confusion is gone and he is in a comfort zone.

Our love is unusual. It's not normal .we don't even want our partner to have a best friend, to even be close to somebody, the moment we realise we start assuming, says this gay young man who spoke to the Sunday Observer.

As a result of growing up in boys' homes across the island, he says, his life has been "mesmerised with the situation of men" since he was seven years old.
"It's such an unfair situation," he says. "A system set up with humans of the same sex is gonna create influence. Somebody is gonna become gay, three out of 10 will be gay - for me."

His acceptance of his sexuality and the subsequent foothold he has gained in the gay community have led him to share with the Sunday Observer some observations and broad declarations about that group of people, rarely ever heard from the inside. This was on the condition that his identity would not be revealed. From here on, he will therefore be referred to as the young man.
The young man claims to be gay by influence rather than by choice. Nevertheless, he says he has no immediate intentions to choose heterosexuality, because "I just have a passion for guys".

The exact number of people in Jamaica who list homosexuality as their orientation is unknown. But programmes co-ordinator and co-chair of the local gay rights group, Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-sexuals and Gays (J-FLAG) Gareth Williams, says the organisation does not operate on membership because of security reasons. However, it has a database of about 3,000 people who can be called upon to participate in activities or attend events. Williams adds that the gay community in Jamaica is "very large" and that the database is not all-inclusive.

The young man, in this interview, confirmed what many Jamaicans have known all along but which some human rights and gay rights groups have tried to convince the world was the opposite - that most of the murders of gay men in Jamaica are committed by their lovers.

"Let me tell you something, all the violence of the number of gay men who have been killed in the last two to three years has not taken place because of hate crime. It's passionate crime, a jealous situation," he says, pointing out that some of the cases, including the killing of gay rights activist Brian Williamson, were cold-blooded murder.

Funeral home workers remove the body of prominent gay rights activist Brian Williamson from his Haughton Avenue, St Andrew home after he was stabbed and chopped to death in June 2004. (Photo: Observer library)

"Right now, I am in love with a guy who broke my heart, he hurt me.it hurts me to the extent that I find it hard to think that I would be guilty of murder, but sometimes it comes in my mind that I would hire somebody to kill him, and that is what has caused a lot of killing in our gay community - that hurt and pain and passionate crime," he says.

The reason he gives for the tremendous hurt associated with heartbreak is the stereotype that gay men are irrationally jealous. The reason for that, he says, lies in the nature of their love.

"Our love is unusual. It's not normal, and the passion, it's a passion for somebody.we don't even want our partner to have a best friend, to even be close to somebody, the moment we realise we start assuming. We say, 'You a talk to dis one and you a cheat pon mi', so insecurity, lack of confidence and trust. In rational sense, I have acknowledged in this gay life, there is never somebody you must call a hundred per cent yours, never."

Williams, however, disagrees. Pointing out that he was not attacking the young man's views, Williams says it is the attachment of labels that have led to the perpetuation of these stereotypes.

"The notion that gay men are overly jealous is not so," says Williams. "In a heterosexual relationship, if a man catches another man [with] his woman, the same thing is going to happen. No one is going to take that lightly. How we resolve our conflicts and differences is the same way."
He says progress in reducing violence stemming from domestic disputes will be made "when we start looking at how individuals operate in relationships", regardless of their sexuality.

Williams claims the police and the media have also perpetuated the idea that overly jealous gay men kill each other.
"With the police, the easiest way out of investigating the murder of a gay or lesbian is to say it is love gone wrong," and the media publicise these pronouncements, Williams says. He chides the police for not doing the same for heterosexual couples.

However, at least three high-profile murders committed in Jamaica paint a different picture to Williams' claim. For instance, Dwight Hayden, who was sentenced to life earlier this year for the murder of Brian Williamson, had admitted to police in an unsworn statement that he and Williamson were lovers and did not deny his part in Williamson's death.
Hayden's statement, however, was not admitted into evidence as it was given without his lawyer present.

Williamson was stabbed and chopped all over his body at his home at Haughton Avenue in St Andrew in June 2004. Police say Williamson's home was a regular hotbed of homosexual activity.
Two years before Williamson's demise, the body of self-proclaimed psychic and television show host, Safa Santura, was found badly bruised and slashed at Cavaliers in St Andrew. Police say he was also murdered by his jealous lover who was also sentenced to life in prison.

In January 1985, Dr Eric Ellington was stabbed to death at his Mona apartment on the same night he picked up two male youngsters in Half-Way-Tree and gave them a ride in his car to his apartment. The two youngsters were charged with his murder but were acquitted. One of them had testified that he had stayed outside while Ellington and the other youngster went inside. The accused told the court that he heard Ellington inside laughing like a lady and that there were other men in the apartment.

He said that after a while, Ellington came outside and told him that he was missing all the fun. The witness and the other youngster testified that when they left the apartment Ellington was alive.
Among the items the police said they found inside the apartment and which was tendered as evidence was vaseline.

In his summation, Justice Victor Malcolm, who heard the case, said it was one of the most sordid and filthy cases he had ever presided over.
In addition, the murder of Wayne Pinnock early this month at an upscale apartment off Waterloo Road in St Andrew was also labelled a crime of passion by the homosexual young man interviewed by the Sunday Observer.

"Yes, Wayne was gay," he had told the Observer on the morning when Pinnock's naked body was found with eight stab wounds. "He left his boyfriend but the man friend him back up and killed him. What a wicked boy!"
Responding to Williams' claim of inadequate response in relation to the murder of gay men, Assistant Commissioner of Police in charge of the Major Investigation Task Force Les Green said historically police all over the world have not dealt with domestic violence involving gay or straight couples well, and that is also the case in Jamaica.

"We don't have any specialist investigators here, we don't even have a domestic violence unit, so that is a need there," Green says. Part of the difficulty involved in investigating domestic violence in Jamaica, he says, is that crimes involving love historically tend to be more violent, but the abundance of violent crimes here makes it harder to distinguish those.
He points out, however, that the known gay population in Jamaica is not very large, and gay murders were not very many. There have been at least six known murders involving gay men in the last two years.

That opportunistic straight young men take advantage of gay men, which has created the circumstances leading to some murders, is also the fault of some gay men, says the young man.

"These guys have dem girlfriend and baby mother to take care of and they think that one of the easiest way for them to make a way is to be with another man, even though it's not their passionate interest, but it's the easy way ...instead of going to work in the supermarket," he says.

"We [gay men] have to learn to shun and push away. Gay men love to [say], 'Lawd, mi want a heaviot, lawd da heaviot boy deh fabulous, da tugs deh'," says the young man. He explains that a heaviot is the word used to define thugs or roughneck guys from inner-city communities who gay men think are man enough for them.

That, jealously, sexual responsibility and sexually transmitted diseases are issues he believes the gay community in Jamaica will have to pay closer attention to in coming years.
He commends the work of the Ministry of Health and Jamaica Aids Support in encouraging sexual responsibility, but says the onus is on the individual to protect himself.

"I regret, even myself I never [took] precautions...I had an experience and I am glad it has been sorted out, but there are some cruel people out there in society, they will know they are infected and want to pass it on, they don't care," he says.

"And some don't want to go to the doctor. People are too embarrassed to go and seek help and see what's wrong with them. I just don't understand it. With all the message on the TV, with all of that, some people say dem love [to have sex without a condom], it's pleasurable darling, but there is a responsibility that you're gonna have to take for it when the responsibility hits you."

Williams concurs with the young man that a reluctance to access treatment for Sexually Transmitted Infections at public health facilities is a problem in the gay community, but says J-FLAG does the best it can through workshops on STIs and providing as many condoms and as much lubricants as possible.

mccattyk@jamaicaobserver.com

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