THE EDITOR, Sir:

This newly emerging evangelical Christian Right which is seemingly being led by the Jamaica Coalition for a Healthy Society and its apologists is proving to be nothing more than a band of hysterical separatists and zealots masquerading as paragons of moral virtue.

Time and again they offer the same brand of alarmist rhetoric and illogical dogma to support their position that LGBT Jamaicans have no right to legal recognition of their identities; that sexual minorities are disease vectors; and that the Government of Jamaica is not complicit in the continued hostility towards gay Jamaicans by its reluctance to amend the buggery law to no longer criminalise consensual same-sex intimacy in private.

The move by some of the influential principals of this group to deliberately exclude mention of the existence of LGBT Jamaicans in the Charter of Fundamental Rights & Freedoms and further to seek to qualify 'privacy' in the document as though it were a privilege for the sanctimonious, was evidence of the sinister nature of this movement and a betrayal of the quality of compassion that Christians love to identify themselves with.

The fact that nine of their 10 core guiding principles have to do with opposition to same-sex relationships reveals their obsession with homosexuality and their myopic view of what constitutes a healthy society.

In a society with as many problems as we face, it is absurd for such a coalition of Christians to focus so narrowly on an issue that Christ never once expressed condemnation for.

Their silence on the grave injustices faced by Jamaicans daily is telling of their unhealthy fixation on matters that should be of no concern to them. It also points to their moral bankruptcy in the campaign to create a healthy society.

BRIAN-PAUL WELSH

Brianpaul.welsh@gmail.com