Aaron Kamugisha is a lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados
By Aaron Kamugisha
Some weeks ago, Jamaican prime minister Bruce Golding appeared on BBC’s Hard Talk programme (you can see the full interview on http://www.youtube.com/results?search_
query=bruce+golding+bbc&search_type=&aq=f.)
One of the most fascinating aspects of that interview is the extent of the grilling, with scant respect, that Golding received, which could hardly occur towards a Caribbean head of state from a journalist within the region. The old imperial arrogance of the BBC is quite clear here, but so is the distressing fawning to imperial authority of Caribbean political elites. Can one imagine Gordon Brown answering similarly probing questions about British carnage in Iraq from a Middle Eastern journalist? Or George Bush wincing while trying to deflect queries about U.S. war crimes, and the possibility of an International Criminal Court trial for him and his cabinet from Al Jazeera?
Prime Minister Golding’s comments about homosexuality during the BBC interview have received the most widespread attention. Aware that language smacking of blatant prejudice has little support in international circles, Golding acknowledged that the rights of persons deemed to be homosexual are protected. This itself required some ingenuity, since, as he made clear in the interview, he is not willing to support any laws or constitutional amendments that will protect persons against discrimination on the basis of their sexuality. He will also simultaneously restrict the spaces that they can access, including his cabinet, secure in the belief that this does not constitute discrimination.
Golding’s pronouncements come as no surprise, given the culture of homophobia that pervades the region, and not just Jamaica, though many are determined to suggest that it is more intense there.
All this gives one much to ponder. Simple questions for Golding and those who support his position might include exactly who is a homosexual? And what exactly is sex? What are the linkages between eroticism, desire and fulfillment that some usually self-declared heterosexuals seem to understand so well? Is homosexuality always or only a chosen identity, or is it a category offered up by the state to categorise certain forms of sexual behavior for regulation and control? Do straight people in the Caribbean need homosexuals to serve as the object of their jokes, prejudices, and ultimately, as a way of managing their own potentially unruly desires?
Those who continually condemn what they term a gay agenda and speak darkly of a homosexual threat to the heterosexual conjugal bed live in a dream world of bad faith and constitutional ignorance. In countries where gay marriage has been legalized, no one has attempted to force religious institutions, whether churches or mosques, to marry anyone. The problem is, marriage isn’t just, or even primarily, a religious institution. It is a state sanctioned legal agreement, in which certain responsibilities and entitlements are bequeathed on another, including health benefits, responsibilities for children’s maintenance, and rights to the distribution of assets on dissolution or death. It also presumes in most cultures certain ethical obligations of care, and gives access to social honour and respect beyond other unions. While I believe this social honour is overvalued and part of the problem, there is a clear dilemma associated with Caribbean populations’ overt homophobia, and inability to recognize the differences between states duties towards their citizens, and the private associative preferences of individuals and groups. Put simply, the church can certainly choose who they wish to marry or not. But can the state discriminate against its citizens, in the manner that a private institution can?
Questions about sexuality continually bedevil us, because of the incredible investments placed in it by individuals and the wider society. Far from being just a sensory experience devoted to stimulating the right nerve endings, sex always is invested with a great deal of labour, beyond the physical, for its participants.
Some of these things, too easily confused with the word emotions, include the following. Lust. Support.
Excitement. Greed. Ambivalence. Love. Conquest. Intimacy. Austerity. Comfort.
Dread. Adventure. Malice. Power. The ability to negotiate these powerful considerations, and struggle towards truly ethical human relations is one of the most challenging tasks many people experience in their lives, and a real adventure of conscience if they choose to accept it. Rarely acknowledged, however, is that in a world structured by the past and contemporary experiences of colonialism and empire, all of the investments of sex face an additional challenge. This challenge is both categorical, and tied to the realities of colonial power.
It is categorical as we remain tied to ways of describing sexuality which emerged, and didn’t even make sense, in the insane world of colonial, bourgeois 19th century Europe. It is tied to colonial power, as colonialism built into its ideological apparatus ways of ranking and valuing different bodies, on the basis of race and gender, colour and ethnicity, and yes, sexual preference. The debates about homosexuality which have taken place in Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago and Guyana and throughout the region over the last decade merely show that despite breakthroughs, we still remain wedded to that model. If we truly grasp that people’s bodily integrity is inalienably important to them, what do we understand to be the connection between this and the pained bodies of slavery and indentureship? How do we understand the means by which the painful experience of colonialism has colonized Caribbean desire, resulting in an understanding of personhood that not only polices any sexual desire marked as illegitimate, vulgar, or barbarous, but turns a blind eye to and even applauds violence inflicted on those so marked as sexually deviant or inferior?
Caribbean societies have been structured by two of the most horrendous and demeaning forms of power created by modern human societies: slavery and indentureship. Their most pervasive legacies modern racism, super-exploited countries and global coloniality continue to resonate today. How might we properly honor our ancestors’ struggle to create new and different communities out of slave societies and economies? Caribbean people could take this to mean that one of their ethical obligations to a global community is a commitment to supporting the quests for full human citizenship from all marginalized groups in the world, including those who Bruce Golding could so easily dismiss in the BBC Hard Talk interview as being less deserving, or less worthy of state protection and respect.
It is about time that the debate about homosexuality in the region is called what it is. It is a serious human rights issue. And it is an issue that can only be understood by an interrogation of the categories through which we have come to call ourselves human and the means by which we have cast other humans as our others, and undeserving of the respect and value that we take for granted.
