LETTER OF THE DAY - Intellectuals' queer ignorance
Published:Tuesday | June 11, 2013 | 12:00 AM
THE EDITOR, Sir:
Dr Orville Taylor, in his column of Sunday, June 9, 2013 titled 'J-FLAGging a dead horse?', wrote: "And if a guy wants to display behaviour that is contrary to the norms, he must allow for the freedom of others to call him what they want, because this is a free country."
But, what if the behaviour is innate, part of who the guy is and not subject to his conscious control? As I understand it, the emerging scientific consensus is being gay is not a conscious choice, which makes sense. I cannot recall choosing to be straight. Did you?
If name-calling is appropriate for gays, even if they did not choose to be gay, would you then say it is acceptable to ridicule the learning disabilities of Mongoloid children?
As a black man, I must confess to being dumbfounded when I read articles such as yours, written by people I consider to be intellectuals, but which rely on bogus freedom-of-speech arguments to support conduct, which most reasonable people would consider reprehensible.
Furthermore, how could any sane person advocate the indiscriminate maligning of a group of people, which in all likelihood includes members of their own family, and possibly some of their close friends and co-workers?
Homosexuality, as far as I know, is not limited by bloodlines, economic status, or intellectual capacity.
Your apparent willingness (and that of Pastor Ian Boyne) to embrace ethnophaulisms is also perplexing. Ordinarily, one would assume that with Dr Taylor's level of education, he would know that when the pejorative 'nayga bwoy' is used to refer to black people, this is seldom the last word. Even the dumbest among us know that this slur is often code, justifying a variety of actions designed to 'keep us in our place'.
I realise that as Jamaicans, we are somewhat insulated from the realities of the world, but surely this should not apply to our intellectuals.
We, with more churches per square mile than most countries, are perennially exploited by our ignorance and the religious superstition that follows. Oddly, I can rationalise the motivation of the religious hierarchy towards gays. They have a business to run, and by maintaining a highly selective, 'ignorance-based', i.e., Bible-driven code of behaviours, sanctioning a relatively defenceless minority, gays, they can boost attendance and contributions.
This is bizarre, but rational. What is equally bizarre, but completely irrational, is why people of great learning like Dr Taylor would allow themselves to be caught in this maelstrom of ignorance.
PATRICK E. WHITE (PhD)