News flies fast. Unpleasant news flies even faster. One can stay all the way up here in the sub-zero temperature of North America and hear about every bangarang that happens in warm, sunny Jamaica.

And, some of it is kind of sad. We hear so much about the escalating murder rate and the gun crimes that it almost seems like the norm. Recently, we heard news that were a bit different but not entirely unfamiliar: Three young men had to be rescued by police after being stuck for hours in an uptown pharmacy, hiding from approximately two thousand people who had gathered to massacre them, because they looked and behaved 'funny'. A few days later, three male children, all younger than twelve years old, were badly beaten because of suspicion that they were experimenting sexually with each other (and one of them has since disappeared).

Now, when you are overseas and people discover that you are from Jamrock, they usually expect you to be able to explain, rationalise, defend or refute all the news from yard; so quite a few people have been asking me "why are you Jamaicans so homophobic?" Admittedly, those kinds of questions annoy me. But, I try not to get dark and ignorant. I tell them that I can't speak for all 2.5 million people who live on the rock or the other 2.5 million who live elsewhere in the world. I can only speak for Blakka. And Blakka is not homophobic. Phew! There, I said it!

Undesirable lifestyle

The way I understand it, a phobia is an irrational fear. And I happen to have a rational, objective attitude to the issue that does not include fear. Simply put, I do not endorse or approve of homosexuality. At the same time, I think something is seriously wrong with people who feel so threatened by it, that they need to beat or kill anyone who is so inclined. If you ask me, homosexuality is an unnatural, immoral, and undesirable lifestyle. But hey, I don't have either the right or the need to impose that position on another person. If you can't accept my intelligent opinion, I don't have to beat you into submission, or vice versa. But the way many Jamaicans love to invoke the name of God and provide biblical justification for their urge to brutalise other people, you'd think that we were all given a special mandate by the almighty to personally punish any deviant sexual behaviour.

And you would also think that all Jamaicans are genuinely God fearing people who live completely by the Bible. Yes the Bible describes it as an abomination, but it is not the ONLY abomination. Biblically speaking, homosexuality is just one of many, many other sins. So I fail to understand why so many people who are themselves living sinful, and corrupt lives feel that they have the moral authority to pick this one single sin to get self-righteous about. It just doesn't make sense to me.