Melville Cooke LAST WEEK Thursday, 21-year-old Sheneika Smith and 18-year-old Janice Burgess were sentenced to life imprisonment (15 years before parole) and 18 years at hard labour respectively. The two, lesbians (Smith is bisexual), were sentenced for the murder of Detective Inspector Ancel George Dwyer on November 7, 2003. He took them to his home for a threesome and ended up with 79 stab wounds. They took his gun and car and made off.
I doubt very much that this will make the campaigns of the gay posse. After all, in Jamaica it is the lesbians who are supposed to be getting raped and abused at random.
JUSTIFIED
A few years ago, The Star carried a story about a gay man being chased out of the St. William Grant Park in downtown Kingston. A man was walking through the park and the gay man made a suggestive call to him. A 'psssst', if I remember correctly. The recipient of the approach put an 'i' in it and was most 'pisssst' so much so that he went for arms and arms to use them. The gay man had to run.
It was a turn of events that was justified.
In the late 1990s when I was the closing sub-editor one evening, a longstanding and outstanding journalist at The Gleaner told me a story. He was part of a jury for a murder case; a man had killed another in a jail cell. When the jury retired, one woman held out on the verdict of not guilty, insisting that the man had murdered the victim. That was undoubtedly so, the journalist and other members of the jury told her, but cause was key. The dead man had attempted to sodomise the man who was now on trial for murder.
The jury returned a unanimous verdict of 'not guilty' and rightly so.
I will not go into the incidents of gay on gay violence The Star carried an extensive story on that after Brian Williamson was murdered.
NO LIES, NO STRETCHING
Speaking of Brian Williamson, from what I have read of him and an interview on a website, he seems to be someone I would have had no personal problem with. He spoke frankly, saying that although he had not been attacked and abused because of his sexuality, he knew of many persons who had. The website gave links to testimonies of the abuse.
I also personally know of a case where a gay man lived in a semi inner-city area (now that is splitting class hairs). It was known that he was a homosexual, but he was not harassed at all except when he had no money to give the many men who would beg him 'a ting'. Then he was called 'battyman'.
He left Jamaica for a while, during which time his home was broken into repeatedly. The matter was reported to the police, who were informed by people 'on the ground' that "a battyman live ova deh". The police did nothing about it.
That is reprehensible. The gay man was a hardworking, tax-paying citizen, someone whom the police are sworn to protect. The law should not be confined to any parti-cular class, colour, sexuality or financial standing. That is a given for any society but this not a society, this is Jamaica.
It is not only reprehensible, it is also true. The tale needs no embellishment, no lies, no stretching, no homofibia.
The irony of the lies unnecessary lies, to boot being told by the gay community about what actually happens in Jamaica is that they may just cause more animosity towards them. Then again, that may just be the point, as the more animosity there is, the better their case, so the lie leads to actions that make the lies the truth.
Melville Cooke is a freelance writer.
