Avoiding the Bahamas and Jamaica
Hey, heard the fun news out of the Bahamas last week? No, not more shenanigans re John Travolta. A 25-year-old thug who in 2004 stabbed a gay fellow Bahamian to death on one of the Out Islands because he claimed the guy groped him was just acquitted by a jury because he was just “defending his manhood.” In 2008, four gay men were murdered in Nassau over a seventh-month period. As one Bahamas web site put it, “Killing gays in the Bahamas is practically legal.”
Yet another depressing and deadly reminder of the fact that as I commented here a year ago, gay-bashing is a way of life on many of what we are charmed to think of as the “paradise isles” to our south, especially the English-speaking ones. Sometimes it’s infuriating but relatively innocuous, as when Caymans for years banned port calls by gay cruises or a resort chain refuses to accept gay couples. But on several particularly poor, ignorant rocks in the ocean like the Bahamas and Jamaica, it can get downright deadly (on the latter, once labeled by Time magazine “the most homophobic place on earth,” the tourist office tagline “one love” doesn’t extend to “batty boys,” who are assaulted and murdered by the dozen every year, fueled by hate lyrics in popular songs.
Last spring international gay groups considered but discarded the idea of an official boycott of Jamaica. But let me ask you something. With so many wonderful Caribbean islands to choose from that not only give you far better service but are less homophobic (and in some cases gay-tolerant and even gay-friendly), why would you want to spend your hard-earned leisure and reward with your hard-earned money an island where so many people hate you enough to want to murder you – and their politicians and cultural figures either do nothing or encourage this attitude? It’s not just that local attitudes often range from indifferent to surly even under the best of circumstances; in places like this, if you’re unlucky, fraternizing with the locals can get you in trouble, and even dead. I’m staying away from Jamaica and the Bahamas, and if you know what’s good for you, so will you.
Yours truly,
Dave