One Love: A Message of Tolerance

I was practically raised in church so I’m well familiar with the Ten Commandments and the sins in which mankind indulges. We each have sins which we repeatedly commit quite by ‘accident’ and we have our favourite and dearest sins. (No need to get defensive, handle that in your chamber privately with God.) But where do we get off measuring sins and deeming one worse than the other? Aren’t they all equal? I’m sure you agree that they are. Now I’ll reveal that I’m referring to homophobia. Yes, if you backpedal, you’re homophobic.
Wikipedia says homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality...It can be expressed as antipathy, contempt, prejudice, aversion or hatred.

The way I see it, everybody is not the same: we don’t look the same, we don’t think the same, we don’t act the same and neither do we all believe the same thing. We shouldn’t we have to either. While many may agree so far; many more act the opposite.

The Caribbean, while a lovely place with oh so lovely people, is hopelessly backward in many ways including our tolerance to beliefs contrary or mildly different from ours.

Throughout the archipelago, no one is exempt from severe tongue-lashings or physical lashes simply because the lasher cannot comprehend that the lashee sees things differently from him.

On a bus one hot day, I heard passengers mocking and insulting a young Muslim woman because she was wearing her black hijab in a predominantly Christian country on a particularly sweltering day. Note, the mocking passengers are not being assaulted and bound in religious garb against their will. How does that sound to you?

I often hear young men angry to the point of violence when talks of homosexual men arise. Note, there are no gay men immediately threatening rape at those discussions. How does that sound to you?

It’s not uncommon for persons to threaten the wrath of God if that homosexual’s son or that effeminate boy goes near his or her own son or if they play together or breathe the same air...How does that sound to you?

How does that sound to me? Really frigging stupid.

It’s often said, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt," and this fits perfectly in this context.

How is it that the way of life or thinking that other people may choose is so offensive to us because we choose different?

You may argue that we each have a right to express our beliefs however we choose. I argue that that’s what Hitler thought.

You may argue that homosexuals deserve to be put on blast for their “wrong” way of life. I argue that when the Portuguese first started exporting Africans they thought that their way of life was barbaric. Subsequently up to 28 million people were snatched from their homes and enslaved for generations.

A common explanation for this homophobia that I’ve come across is that God is not ok with it.

How easy it is to list the sins which are openly seen and that threaten to characterise others while our private and more ‘common’ sins are hidden away and ignored as a ‘lesser’ crime.

What makes us think that a ranking order for sins exists? That God will burn others first to get sufficient hellfire to compensate for the wrongs they have committed in their own lives?

Will fornicators, gossipers, ones who hate, vain ones, envious ones and murderers burn gently?

Will He will be so caught up in enjoying the screams of the ‘bigger’ sinners that the other petty offenders will be given a gracious pass into heaven?

Who said that God needs mercenaries here on earth to police the moral crimes of others?

Will those who turn a blind eye to those among God’s children who are being victimised go free? While openly gay men or even effeminate men and boys are the targets of sudden, unprovoked violence from men who are mentally stunted and from younger boys socialised in the same culture of intolerance.

The victimised could easily have been you if were born to different parents or in a different country or era.

Many Caribbean countries are categorised as third world countries. (Yes, just like the ones we see on TV where US $1 is 500 in their currency.) We are said to be lagging behind the rest of the world in many aspects; we are expected to be slower, less educated, less cultured and just less. Now with our gross intolerance we are essentially opening our mouths and proving ourselves foolish.

Tolerance doesn’t ask you to be friends with or change persons of different belief systems, it asks to live and let live.