Why jamaicans hate gays

View the discussion thread. Skip to main content. Study says Jamaicans hate gays but believe in conversion. Photo Video. Norman Grindley. Lewis: The Government must recognise that we can no longer ignore the data and pretend homophobia and transposition aren't serious issues that we are grappling with as a society.

Luis and Robert were charged with buggery and gross indecency. J-FLAG secured the services of a lawyer, who came to the police station and recorded their statements. Other inmates verbally and physically attacked them: on one occasion, four men pushed them towards the grill of the cell and punched them. Luis and Robert shouted for help for over 15 minutes, but no one came. They were released on bail after two weeks in detention and given a court date three months later.

The lawyer explained they could either go to trial or accept a plea bargain for gross indecency. Luis took a loan from his mother to pay the fine, which he was still repaying when we interviewed him in April The stigma and discrimination that LGBT people face in Jamaica seeps into everyday activities, such as accessing health care, attending school, going to the movies, shopping, or riding a bus. Human Rights Watch talked to LGBT people who were verbally abused and confronted in public and private spaces about their real or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.

LGBT patients faced a combination of ignorance and discrimination in accessing health care, including incidences of homophobia and transphobia among health workers. In some cases, the fear of negative responses from health care providers keeps LGBT individuals from accessing care.

When they do access care, many told Human Rights Watch they are not comfortable sharing information about their sexual orientation or HIV status. When Anne I. Two nurses locked Anne into a room, apparently to protect her, and she went without treatment through the night.

The next morning, she received treatment for her knife wounds, but was also subjected to further humiliation. A senior Ministry of Health official shared the case of a gay man who had Human papillomavirus HPV that remained untreated until his health seriously deteriorated:.

By the time he got surgery at the end of , the official said, the cancer was well established and he had to have almost a total colostomy. Even seeing private physicians can pose problems. David M. The Staff Orders for the Public Service, which bans discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation in civil service, is the only legal protection in Jamaica against employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

LGBT people in Jamaica face discrimination when seeking and maintaining employment. We interviewed five LGBT people who had lost employment primarily because of their assumed sexuality.

Others said they move regularly to protect themselves from violence; the constant movement of homes, or homelessness, also hampers their ability to find and hold a job. He told Human Rights Watch that in December his manager called him into a meeting and told him he had to look for a new job.

Marsha J. They eventually suspended her from work. None of the individuals we interviewed had attempted to file a complaint or seek redress for wrongful dismissal, stating that there is no legal protection for them.

Human Rights Watch interviewed LGBT people who had been forced to move: kicked out of their homes by family members, driven from home by community members who threatened to kill them, and in some cases violently attacked and forced to flee. Some had moved many times, often with short notice. Nadine recounted:. Around January , the landlord called the police, telling them that Winnie and Nadine were abusing their sons. Errol S. On one occasion he was confronted by neighbors as he walked down the street in his Old Harbour neighborhood.

The next day, members of the community stoned his house for 20 to 30 minutes. He left a week later. Anne, the transgender woman whose experiences with violence are described in Section III, had to flee her home in St. Mary in Human Rights Watch found that many young LGBT people were almost entirely uprooted, having been expelled by their families and forced to move on from each place that briefly became home. We interviewed 13 gay, homeless youth, including 3 boys under 18 that had been kicked out of their homes in Kingston and Montego Bay.

They have few skills and limited access to resources or social support and face constant threat of attacks from both private citizens and the police. He lived with grandparents until they chased him away, and was living mostly in a sewer when we interviewed him. He now does sex work to survive. Scars that Carlton J. Wayne P. He told Human Rights Watch that he was kicked out of his home in March after his mother and aunt found out about his sexual orientation.

Kevin G. Elizabeth, where he said he was regularly sexually abused by older boys. A Safe House pilot project operated briefly in , supported by the Jamaican Red Cross and the Ministry of Health and hosting 11 young gay men and one woman, but it subsequently closed. Since , New Kingston MP Julian Robinson and the police have organized a series of town hall meetings, in which LGBT organizations have participated, focused on addressing the needs of homeless gay youth.

Participants have called for a project to be established that would provide homeless gay youth with shelter, counseling, and food. In April Minister of Youth and Culture Lisa Hanna announced that her ministry is developing new services to address the challenges, concerns, and needs of the different types of youth the ministry serves, including LGBT youth. There has been a groundswell of change in Jamaica in the way it is responding to human rights abuses against LGBT people.

Senior representatives of the government, including the prime minister and government ministers, have articulated a willingness to partner with civil society, donors, multilateral agencies, and others to push for the legislative and social changes necessary to ensure that LGBT Jamaicans can live free from harm.

In June , she indicated that she would call for a parliamentary conscience vote on the buggery laws. Public opinion appears to be deeply entrenched against legal reform that would uphold the rights of LGBT people: a opinion poll indicated that the perception of the government would be negatively impacted if the buggery law were to be reviewed or changed.

Human Rights Watch interviewed eight members of the JCF of different levels, including staff from headquarters and local police stations in Kingston, Mandeville, and Montego Bay, all of whom mentioned the Policy on Diversity.

They explained the policy was issued as guidance and was distributed to all officers, but that they had not received any formal training regarding the policy or its implementation. The policy states that diversity must be taught at all levels of the police academy and staff college, but it is not clear that any provisions are in place for officers who have already completed police academy to participate in these trainings.

The commissioner had not responded at time of writing. As a result, no formal record is available of the number of SOGI-based complaints. The establishment of CISOCA, a branch of the JCF with specialized and skilled staff trained to tackle and address sexual offenses, is a positive development in a country where rape is rampant.

However, the needs of young homeless MSM, lesbian and bisexual women, and transgender people who have been victims of rape and sexual violence need particular attention by CISOCA.

Similarly, despite news reports of young homeless men living on the streets, the newly appointed deputy superintendent of CISOCA, Veronica Gilzene, claimed in an interview with The Gleaner that she was unaware of the problem. CISOCA has a unique role to raise awareness, to encourage LGBT victims of rape and violence to come forward, and to ensure that they receive the necessary counseling and these crimes are investigated.

Police have made other notable strides to address the security needs of LGBT people in Jamaica, aided at times by productive working relationships between human rights activists, organizations such as J-FLAG, and individual police officers who are either sympathetic or have become sensitized as a result of human rights training.

Positive steps in recent years include the following. Such steps have helped to increase awareness about discrimination and violence that LGBT people experience in Jamaica, and resulted in positive behavior on the ground. Human Rights Watch met with seasoned police officers who said police response to hate-related crimes had improved, and recommended more training and awareness across the JCF.

Several LGBT people we interviewed confirmed that they had encountered positive responses from the police. Ted C. When, following a fight with a rival club promoter, armed men in police uniforms came to his club and threatened him, Ted C. Ted added that the commander said while some members of staff did not agree with his club, he would do his best to protect our rights as Jamaican citizens, as long as we complied with the law.

Glenroy R. He hid, and later walked to New Kingston police station in his wet, torn clothes. When he arrived, police asked him to write a statement. They called his family, drove him around the area of the incident, and referred him to CISOCA for testing and counseling with a police clinical psychiatrist. Despite the positive steps that police have taken in recent years, there is room for improvement. For example, CISOCA leadership and staff need to be trained to better understand and address the needs of LGBT people in order to assist and promote their right to be free from violence and sexual assault see above.

In addition, at present, the human rights training of the JCF—part of the basic training of police recruits, supervisors, and corporals [] —does not specifically address sexual orientation or gender identity, according to police sources. One challenge to facilitating relationships between police and the LGBT community—such as the town hall meetings that police have convened since with LGBT activists, faith leaders, business community members, the child development agency, and homeless youth to address the growing number of homeless youth in New Kingston—is a lack of consistency, because police force members are often redeployed to other areas.

Commander Christopher Murdoch of the New Kingston police told Human Rights Watch that these relationships are too often fleeting due to personnel moving to other positions, often elsewhere in the country. Lack of transparency may prove to be another obstacle to progress. Human Rights Watch submitted a request to Deputy Commissioner of Police Delworth Heath in April , asking to visit police stations around the country in order to assess implementation of the Policy on Diversity. After initially agreeing to the request, Heath stonewalled at the last minute, stating that such a request should be made through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Some government ministries have been constructive in their actions and responses to LGBT rights, although these have often been inconsistent, and there continues to be considerable room for improvement when it comes to legal reform and ensuring non-discrimination and equal access to social services, including health and education.

Minister of Justice Mark Golding has issued positive verbal responses to calls for stronger legal and legislative protections of the rights of Jamaican LGBT people, but his statements have not been matched by significant action.

Man to woman I say. Where are the straight people? While the Ministry of Health has illustrated its leadership by expressing the importance of addressing discrimination and its effects on the HIV response, in particular as it relates to MSM and other LGBT people, it has achieved little political buy-in from other government sectors. Criminalization of private, consensual, same-sex sexual acts makes it more difficult for key populations to access HIV services, while the absence of needed protections—such as a comprehensive HIV and AIDS law, a general anti-discrimination law, or any legally enforceable laws or policies protecting against HIV-related discrimination—serves as a further impediment to access.

The ministry also needs to address serious gaps in its own service provision—including breaches of confidentiality—and to take further steps to reduce the high rate of HIV among MSM and, likely, among transgender people. The ministry should articulate how the needs of LGBT people will be addressed systematically in its policy and programmatic responses inclusive of and beyond HIV. It should develop treatment protocols on dealing with victims of sexual violence, including LGBT victims.

Thwaites continued to press positive messages on LGBT issues in May , when he participated as keynote speaker in a public forum on homophobic bullying and human rights, organized by J-FLAG. He stated in his remarks, "Persons, whatever their sexual orientation, whatever their race, religion or class must be treated as if made in the image and likeness of the Creator.

But completely contradicting these statements the following May, Minister Thwaites told journalists after a parliamentary debate that the nationally implemented Health and Family Life Education Program HFLEP curriculum contained sections that "were grooming people towards homosexual behavior. That does not represent the mood of our people and it does not reflect the common sense of what is right and moral in Jamaica.

But when compassion closes a door, hate sometimes opens a window. In fact, our sentiment is that carrying out a boycott is not helpful because our community will also be threatened with the same risk of job loss coupled with the backlash locally. Mugabe rewarded him with the deed to a Zimbabwean farm. The impact of Jamaican murder music in the United States — including any violence it may have provoked — is impossible to measure. But its popularity is evident from the huge number of video downloads, and the music and its words can easily be found elsewhere on the Internet, as well.

In Jamaica itself, murder-music concerts and radio play are almost impossible to repress. Increasingly aware that overt references to violent acts towards gays could damage their marketability abroad, artists walk the line by inventing new slang and making their lyrics more obscure. Because the truth is, the work has to be done. Search splcenter. The organisation itself has grown considerably since Nelson joined in , aged 24, when there were just three employees. J-Flag now employs 14, with more than volunteers recruited to help coordinate their growing number of events and activist programmes.

But, says Nelson, the lingering Time magazine headline is a hindrance. You think of yourself as the next victim of murder, rather than seeing yourself as an individual with agency. Before Jamaica could get to that point of tolerance, however, J-Flag activists had to learn to latch on to bigger themes.

The organisation works to reduce the spread of HIV across the island, and campaigns for the environment. Murray echoes these sentiments.