Shaken up by shacking-up

On Saturday last, 15-year-old Amoya Brown was chopped to death alongside her 25-year-old (and it pains me to have to write such slackness) boyfriend by a neighbour who had gone berserk in the community of Drumilly, Claremont, St Ann. Amoya lived some miles away in Good Hope district, Kellits, Clarendon, but had left her home to spend time with her boyfriend. Jas Christ!

The police say residents of Claremont knew she was underage, but they said nothing about her live-in relationship with an adult bus conductor. Amoya's family didn't bother to report her missing. Maybe they knew where she was and endorsed the arrangement. Which would be criminal!

There are many things wrong about this tragic incident. How could a community not have told the deceased man that it was wrong to have sex with a minor? How could the man, Demar Smith, be unaware that what he was doing was unlawful and immoral? How could the adults in the girl's family allow her to shack up with a grown man?

gangrene of slackness

I have written and spoken many times about the gangrene of slackness that has infected this country. That tragic incident last Saturday exemplifies the illness. Big people in this country do not know right from wrong, and this mentality of allowing everyone to do as they please in exercise of their so-called rights is going to be the ruin of us as a nation.

But the incident has got me thinking. In this age of rights for everybody, how does one even begin to tell an adult man that he does not have the right to have sex or cohabit with a girl under the age of 16? Do we quote to him Section 10, Part Three of the Sexual Offences Act? Do we draw his attention to Section 10, Subsection Four of the same piece of legislation that sets down a punishment of life imprisonment for an adult in authority who engages in sex with a person under 16?

How do we impress on him that only a man without morals, with no sense or appreciation of values - a real 'dutty' man - would seek to have a sexual relationship with a child?

But wait. Which segment of society can preach this sermon without being torpedoed by a sharp counterargument from such a man? Can this preaching come from the Church? Can Government, the Simpson Miller administration to be precise, lecture anyone about respecting the rule of law and acting in a morally upright manner? Can civil society, with its colony of closet reprobates, begin to have this conversation with such a man and others like him?

What if such an abominable character as one who has sex with children were to look at any person representing those groups mentioned and quote sections 76 and 77 of the Offences Against the Person Act? What if he were to assert that he should have a right to have sex with whomever and whatever he chooses?

what's left?

What if he were to say that those who advocate for men to have sex with men, or support the rights of those who want a certain kind of recognition and facilitation for the LGBT community, are therefore ineligible to lecture him about what rights he should seek to assert for himself? And when influential groups such as those who are like soldiers at war for the LGBT community are leveraged outside the circle of such a crucial discussion about underage sex, what are we left with?

The biggest roadblock that can cripple the movement of what I call the Rights Brigade is that argument from other smaller colonies that they, too, should be free to do as they wish, no matter how abominable society, tradition or history suggests it is.

But as I grieve for the children caught in the web of those sexual predators masquerading as men, I remind myself that the new world mantra dictates that everyone is entitled to their rights. And as decency, morality and the respect for the rule of law are eroded daily, I wonder what will happen in this country when there's an almighty clash between and among the various rights being asserted by those pushing a designated bandwagon.

Selah.

- George Davis is a journalist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and george.s.davis@hotmail.com.