IN Jamaica, where closeted gays experience the dual trauma of living a lie alongside the fears of discovery; while those who are obviously so tend to live on the edge of an unfolding tragedy as part of a wider population of religious believers who are overwhelmingly Christian, their first and ultimate place of refuge is, oftentimes,

the Church.

Convinced of their mentally imposed low self-worth, due to cradle-to-the-grave conditioning by the very religion which espouses the special tenets of forgiveness and salvation, they cling to the outer hems of the church, never quite sure when the politics of the Christian religion it preaches will totally ditch them.

Well, it did click in recently and the church — never an entity to lose an opportune moment to ‘catch a few’ votes — frothed and fumed and was prepared to call down divine damnation on all who would ever think of repealing the antiquated anti-sodomy law, known as the buggery law.

The church takes cognisance of the fact that the majority of the Jamaican population is heterosexual and belongs to a religious denomination which roundly condemns homosexuality in men and women. So, in fighting to retain a law which allows what two adults do behind closed doors in a specific way punishable under the law, the Church has submitted itself to the practice of a sort of primeval politics — the tyranny of the majority.

Now, I don’t care too much for religion or homosexuality, but as I have grown in wisdom so has my tolerance for certain things, among them religion and homosexuals. Like most heterosexuals, I find even the very idea of what two men do with each other to be repugnant. On the other hand, unlike a significant number of Jamaicans who believe that some people ‘catch’ their gayness from either a dirty old uncle or drinking fairy juice, it is my understanding that homosexual people are what they are — homosexual.

They possess no ‘on-off’ gay switch. At some stage in their early lives all of the initial signals converge to a point and at that moment of realisation, their true and formerly confusing sexual identity is determined. In the same way that I like women, and absolutely nothing could be switched on in me to make me like the fellows in that same way, so I believe it is with gays. They are hard-wired to be gay.

For this reason, who am I — simply because I stand safely in the heterosexual majority — to tell them that they have no rights to, at the very least, express themselves privately in a sexual way? Would I want anyone to burst in on me and read me the riot act when I am in beautiful sexual congress with my special lady? Certainly not!

On the other hand, the church, whose pews are filled with an obviously higher percentage of homosexuals than what exists in the general population, would not want us to believe that some of their most active members are gays who have sought the church as haven, psychotherapy and hopefully forgiveness from a benevolent God.

Like a politician who beats his wife while expounding from the noisy platform on the virtues of honouring our women, so must the church have its space at the political podium in doing what it does best. One, defending an action that is highly irrational socially, but widely popular, especially where it is used to evoke the fears of gays leaving the forest in droves to bugger our underage boys.

Two, the church has simply latched on to the nearest role that will ensure its relevance to a population of widely gullible religious people

who generally entertain hostile thoughts towards homosexuals. Three, at this time the church is caught up in trying to fashion a new refinement of itself in light of the myriad dysfunctions besetting the nation and its crusade against homosexuals is too attractive a current product for it to be pushed to the back of the shelf.

It could be that because I subscribe to no religion, I am trying to find even a perverse logic where no semblance of anything close to rational thinking exists. What I do know as a rational person is that I ought to have no rights to criminalise a private sexual act between two consenting adults simply because I am in the majority in terms of how I express my sexuality.

The church leaders make the claim that God speaks to them. When other mortals, cloaked in significantly less ‘divinity’ than what the preachers willingly adorn themselves with, hear voices, they are usually carted off to the funny farm.

In the church, railing against a repeal of the buggery law and stoking the fear of legions of homosexual paedophiles briskly stepping out on the streets of Kingston in numerous batallions, it is in one moment, comical, but in the other, it is reflective of the general ignorance of many in the population who believe that if one is gay he can be fixed — usually by an excess of prayer, months of anointing, a St Thomas bush bath and, when all else fails, a few solid slaps across the face with a two-by-four.

We are, after all, quite religious and never very far from being barbaric.