Religious Left

There was an article in the Jamaica Star on April 3, 2008 where a homosexual group in Toronto, Canada issued an ultimatum to the entire country of Jamaica. They threatened an economic boycott if Jamaica does not yield to their demands; which is essentially the launch of a national campaign to foster the acceptance of homosexuality in Jamaica. The deadline for Jamaica to do something is May 12, 2008. Economic boycotts don’t work, because what it tries to do is pressure people into submitting to money rather than acknowledging the truth. The US boycott on Cuba has done two things, kept the Cuban people poor and Castro in power for decades. Why? Because these boycotts don’t affect the leadership of the country, they affect the poor. The leaders have access to cash. Even Saddam Hussein had hundreds of millions of US dollars buried all over Iraq, not to mention the billions of dollars he had in his bank accounts. The people of Iraq suffered while Saddam flourished; if he had not been conque...

In the wake of reports of anti-gay violence in Jamaica, GLBT equality groups have encouraged a boycott of the island and corporate sponsor Red Stripe has withdrawn its support from Jamaican music events. Radio Jamaica reported that, according to the equality groups, Jamaican society is highly intolerant of its GLBT members, who are at grave risk of being persecuted, beaten, or even murdered, and that the Jamaican government has seemed disinclined to address the problem. A Feb. 24 article in the International Herald-Tribune looked into the issue, reporting on episodes of violence in which groups of men attacked gay men in their own homes with machetes, a police officer came out of the closet in an attempt to dispel anti-gay myths, and the funeral of a gay man was disrupted when a crowd smashed the church windows and then stormed inside to object to the ceremony. All of these events happened in one town, Mandeville. Gays are also encouraged to "cure" their sexuality, or to ...

Jamaican church leaders stand resolute that despite strong lobbying by international gay rights activists, homo-sexuality will not be accepted as normal. The Church's rebuke comes in the wake of a recent scathing report from the New York-based Human Rights Watch and protests last week by a Florida church sympathetic to gays. The Rev Dr Merrick 'Al' Miller, pastor of the Fellowship Taber-nacle in St Andrew, said that Jamaicans generally deem homo-sexuality wrong. "Homosexuality is wrong from every possible angle," said Miller. "It's immoral from a physical, social and spiritual standpoint." He said that despite this, the Church was willing to help and support those homosexuals who are in need of counselling or assistance to change their lifestyle. Last week that on Valentine's Day, the Metropolitan Community Church in Florida staged a demonstration outside the Jamaican consulate in Miami over what they said was a series of anti-gay murders and gay...