by Sir Arthur Foulkes
The idea of cruise ships bringing openly homosexual visitors to the Bahamas in recent years prompted some of our citizens, including a few religious leaders, to fly into an apoplectic rage. Rather ugly demonstrations greeted the so-called gay cruise passengers as they disembarked in Nassau.
In an attempt to cool passions and limit the damage done by negative publicity abroad in 1998, then Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham made a fairly exhaustive statement in which he assured his local and foreign audiences that:
“The Government of the Bahamas does not promote nor encourage homosexual lifestyles but neither does it condemn or exclude persons who reveal themselves to be homosexuals.”
Mr. Ingraham said he had been chilled by the vehemence of the expressions against gay persons. He admitted that there had also been expressions of reason and understanding but that these had been largely lost in a sea of bitter diatribe.
Mr. Ingraham observed that hysteria is dangerous. It breeds a mob mentality which ignores fact and frequently leads to the disregard of the rights and liberties of others. All too frequently indeed. Throughout history we have seen the terrible consequences of this process of first demonization and then persecution of whole groups of people.
The inflammatory language used to attack gay people has already led to physical attacks in Europe and the United States and also in some Third World countries where animosity against gays is even stronger. Just last week at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica the police had to be called in to protect a purportedly gay man from an angry mob.
Here in the Bahamas there is a glimmer of hope that we might be making progress. The current debate about the banning of the movie Brokeback Mountain has been far less shrill than the diatribe of recent years.
Talk show host Mike Smith on Love 97 Radio last week conducted a debate between two ladies on opposite sides of the homosexuality issue, and it was an example of how such issues can be approached in a mature, civilized and democratic society. But there is still a lot of misunderstanding and confusion to be addressed.
One point to be made is that in this democratic country all are free to hold and to express their opinions about the rightness or wrongness of homosexuality and to debate the issue in whatever media are available to them.
The fact that the majority might express one view does not mean that the minority should not also be able to express its view or that the minority should be abused for doing so. No one is forced to listen.
The debate over homosexuality is being carried on even inside Christian churches and more than one denomination faces the possibility of irreconcilable division over it. There is still a lot to be learned about the complexities of human sexuality but scientific studies indicate that some people are born with homosexual tendencies. It is a phenomenon that has also been observed among animals.
The most important point to be made is that it is utterly wrong for any one group – majority or minority -- to use the state to force its views or beliefs on others or in any way to penalize or discriminate against dissenters.
Homosexual conduct between consenting adults is not a crime in the Bahamas nor should it be. Most people believe that it is sinful but those who do not believe are also entitled to hold and to express that conviction.
Certainly, no sensible person will advocate that the state has a responsibility to punish citizens for sin. As Mr. Ingraham said in 1998:
“Whether a private sexual act between consenting adults is homosexual or heterosexual is not my business, and I do not think it is your business either. We cannot, and ought not try, to dictate or to legislate morality.
“In any event, all past efforts to do so have always failed miserably. A good example is the success of the laws against adultery. Certainly adultery is a far greater threat to Bahamian family life today than is homosexuality. Could we build a jail large enough to house all Bahamian adulterers?”
Not only does the state not have a responsibility to punish sinners, it has a positive and inescapable constitutional duty to protect the civil rights of all citizens regardless of religious belief.
The Christian, the Jew, the Muslim, the Hindu and the atheist, all are entitled to the same rights and freedoms. The same applies to the homosexual as to the heterosexual. Tolerance is the watchword required by the constitution. There is another watchword for Christians – love.
CHURCH AND STATE
In this column last week I referred to the relationship between church and state in the Bahamas. I believe that we have, up to now, struck just the right balance in this important relationship. It would be a great pity to destroy that balance.
The church and state relationship has been constantly debated in the United States where, according to Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, there is a wall of separation between the two. Some want to pull down that wall and others to make it higher.
This tension is discussed in several new books including Jon Meacham’s American Gospel just published by Random House. Mr. Meacham is managing editor of Newsweek and an excerpt from the book was published in the April 10 issue of that magazine.
Says Mr. Meacham:
“The great good news about America – the American gospel, if you will – is that religion shapes the life of the nation without strangling it. Driven by a sense of providence and an acute appreciation of the fallibility of humankind, the Founders made a nation in which faith should not be singled out for special help or particular harm.
“The balance between the promise of the Declaration of Independence, with its evocation of divine origins and destiny, and the practicalities of the Constitution, with its checks on extremism, remains the most brilliant of American successes.”
Mr. Meacham observes that his nation’s Founding Fathers were men of faith who believed that God gave humankind “the liberty to believe in Him or not, to love Him or not, to obey Him or not. God created man with free will, for love coerced is no love at all, only submission. That is why religious persons should be on the front lines of defending freedom of religion. …
“The battle to preserve faith and freedom has been a long one, and rages still: keeping religion and politics in proper balance requires eternal vigilance.”
HISTORICAL NOTE
Thomas Jefferson, one of the great men in American history, was a believer. But he was also a slave owner and an adulterer.
He must have wondered, as he conducted an affair with one of his slaves, whether she really loved him or whether it was only about coercion and submission to the will of her master.
This is the first time I've visited this site, and I will make sure to do so more often, the write ups are excellently expressed.
Anywhoo, the issue at hand: I first read about the banning of Broke-Back Mountain on another forum of which I am a member of. Strange enough, I'm the only Bahamian on the forum and it was very interesting to hear the views of individuals from the around the world comment on what Yahoo News http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060406/od_nm/bahamas_brokeback_dc;_ylt=ApP7vcf_0uAmOD7c4s5GKjGs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3NW1oMDRpBHNlYwM3NTc- had to say about us as Bahamians.
I agree, that we do need to cultivate a much more tolerant attitude when it comes to such an issue, but at the same time our scruples and morality as a nation, should not be allowed to be progressively eroded by such tolerance. Intellectualism has an incredibly interesting way of doing this over time.
In my eyes, Bahamians have never really 'hated' or openly expressed hatred towards Homosexuals, they just do not wish to see it expressed openly, without discretion. We could argue about the validity of that desire for decades, but the fact of the matter is, that you have a society, that has, in this case, an unwritten law, that doesn't inhibit the actions of anyone per say, but is only a mere request for respect of the scruples of the people of the land. Is that so much to ask for?
I feel that in the same way that homosexuals demand respect for their way of life, the same respect should be given to the society upon which they are laying their way of life upon.
Posted by: Bahamerican | April 12, 2006 at 12:38 AM