Imani Tafari-Ama | Diplomacy, culture and the buggery law

Jamaica recently refused to grant immunity to the partner of a diplomat from the United States (US) because the couple is involved in a same-sex union. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade (MFAFT) explained that to grant the immunity would break the existing “buggery” law that criminalises homosexuality. This is not true. It criminalises sex between men but homosexuality itself. This stance seems to have irked Uncle Sam.

Will this stalemate be the endgame? Those not suffering from shortterm memory are speculating that the almighty US visa may, as in the past, be used by the US as leverage to secure Jamaica’s compliance. People on the street are saying that the US bright though. In local parlance that is dismissal of US Monroe-Doctrine-based bully tactics. As one man said to me, “President Biden would not send a Muslim to Israel; why would he send a homosexual to Jamaica? Him want fi mek we bow.” In other words, he wants us on our knees, complying with a cultural taboo.

The symbolism of submission is not accidental. Epigenetics research and anecdotal evidence suggest that DNA memories of past trauma experienced by Africans in the Maafa, the Holocaust of enslavement, are triggered in the present. In Jamaica, the public sodomising of African men by European colonisers, was a power mechanism of demoralising the entire enslaved community. Horror at this memory keeps the buggery law on the books. This retention undergirds the refusal of successive governments to relent to demands for decriminalising homosexuality It is not a crime.

Jamaica is renowned for making it to the Guinness World Book of Records by having the most churches in the world per capita and square kilometre. And being born and bred in the arms of Jesus, most Jamaicans are of the view that it would be cutting against the laws of God and man to condone same-sex mating. Jamaica’s vehement anti-homosexuality voice also reflects the enduring legacy of centuries of Christian conditioning of the population.

Christian models come armed with a hierarchy that privileges white imagery above black. Its modus operandi portrays God as a white man, his mother as a white woman, the angels as white and the devil and his angels as black. Yet, reinforced by the Bible, Christianity is the moral yardstick used to measure practices of good and evil. But, although Father Sean washed the feet of a gay church member to show that the winds of change should blow away church intolerance for homosexuality, this inclusive approach has not found traction with the body politics.

PSYCHOSOCIAL CONTROL

As a colonial mechanism of psychosocial control, Christianity was part and parcel of the apparatus of mental enslavement from which Marcus Garvey and Bob Marley recommended emancipation. The Christian religion was weaponised as a mechanism of producing self-hate in a so-called race, who were taught to see God in the imagery of their oppressors and not their own embodiment. This paradox is at the root of self-destructive practices like skin-bleaching. In a bizarre turn, people who feel invisibilised by their blackness, feel socially validated through the brownness they acquire through intentional chemical self-erasure.

The conundrum of the clash of Church and State in Jamaica’s political culture is at the heart of the uncertainty of Jamaica’s next move in the gambit with Washington over an issue that has haunted US presidents for sometime. President Barak Obama’s visit to Jamaica included explicit advice to then Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller to be more tolerant of persons whose sexuality challenge the heterosexual norm. However, Sister P did not have the courage to confront a populace hell-bent on maintaining the Christian register of family to mean male plus female and children. This would have meant political suicide with a predominantly Christian electorate.

What might seem like a small tit-for-tat spat between Washington and Kingston could escalate as big oaks from little acorns grow. That is the lesson former Prime Minister Bruce Golding learned the hard way. When he was asked by the BBC Hard Talk host if the buggery law in Jamaica would be decriminalised or repealed under his watch and if he would accommodate gays in his government, he was adamant in his refusal. His famous declaration of “not in my Cabinet,” accompanied by didactic chest thumping, was epic. But the rest, as they say, is history. His political demise played out in the debacle of the US’ extended extradition request for strongman Dudus from Tivoli Gardens, then Golding’s constituency. The May 2010 incursion is still an open wound.

POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES

The far-reaching political consequences of adopting a public anti-homosexuality stance surfaced recently in a viral YouTube rant posted by reggae entertainer, Queen Ifrica. In this digital document, she alluded to a direct connection between her own advocacy against the normalisation of homosexual identities and the cold shoulder she has been experiencing on the entertainment front. It is no secret that other reggae artistes, including Beenie Man, brokered strategic agreements with the global gay lobby, to enjoy the freedom of movement that is critical to their touring trade.

Of course, it would be remiss of me not to mention in this mix, the saga of Buju Banton’s decade of penance spent in the US prison system. The gay lobby power brokers engineered an entrapment device of a cocaine deal for the super star, which worked, with his complicity. However, his offence of singing violence against homosexuals was seen as a bigger crime by the gay community. In his defence, in hindsight, we could speculate that cultural conditioning informed his lyrical coinage of an allegorical metaphor that advocated for the elimination of homosexuals.

Political violence in the corridors of diplomacy demands finesse and not the elephant in a China shop performance of the awkward Information Minister in his initial public briefing on the matter. Perhaps some kind of Angel Gabriel should step in to sort out the paradox of Jamaica being an autonomous state, despite its archaic laws and location in the backyard of the US.

Regardless of imagined entitlements contrived by the Monroe Doctrine, the US should be mindful of the snail pace of transformation in Jamaica. It is a double whammy though, to be decolonising minds, laws, the Constitution and whatever else, yet holding on to the coat-tails of the pipers that continue to call the tunes.

- Imani Tafari-Ama, PhD, is a Pan-African advocate and gender and development specialist. Send feedback to i.tafariama@gmail.com