Homophobia and HIV, Where do we go from here .........The Caribbean story?

Have a read of yet another article supposedly on our state headlined as a Caribbean story but as one reads it is a local one laced with all kinds of half truths as if this was the nineties as penned by a controversial Jamaican advocate. All the more reason why more voices need to speak out about our local challenges and not present half truths but the facts not for personal glory but for the community's growth and development.

Here is the piece as it appeared on Immigration Equality's site:

Coming from a country with possibly the highest HIV prevalence rate among men who have sex with men (MSM) (32.9%) and which some consider to be the most homophobic place on earth (in one survey 85% of the population self-identified as homophobic) I am hardly surprised that homophobia contributes to HIV.

My own personal experience as a law lecturer and a human rights advocate engaging in documenting the abuses against Jamaican LGBT has confirmed this clear nexus. My female students at the University of Technology, Jamaica readily told me that they purchase condoms for their male gender non-conforming friends who are afraid to do so themselves. In Jamaica, condoms are sold behind the counter and one has to ask a pharmacist or cashier to hand it over. Looking too “gay” will raise the inevitable suspicion that you MUST be purchasing the condoms for sex with a man, as “no self-respecting woman” would be willing to have sex with you.

Though my female students are clearly well-intentioned, they refuse to purchase lubricant, as that would be seen to be admitting a deficiency on their part. The MSM therefore resort to the use of products such as hairspray, saliva and petroleum jelly which all destroy the condom. I have, on occasion, procured condoms and lubricants for scared MSM since my relatively privileged position affords me a fair degree of insulation from the worst homophobic attacks. Instead of walking through a homophobic mob to the nearest bus stop, I could always drive away in my car. In 2008, an angry mob converged on a group of MSM at a pharmacy in the capital, Kingston.

Tragically, it was a woman who incited the attack.

I say tragically, because women are being directly impacted by homophobia and its link to HIV. Jamaican homophobia drives men to form relationships with women as a cover or “cure” for their sexuality. I married a woman thinking that would cure me. It didn’t and the marriage failed with painful emotional (but thankfully, no physical) consequences for both my ex-wife and me as well as our son. One married MSM we know of keeps the condoms he uses with his boyfriend in the trunk of his car so that his wife (who is on the pill) will not find them. It is easy to imagine what Jamaica’s relentless heat does to the integrity of these condoms. So, even though homophobia serves as an effective bridge for HIV to travel between the MSM and general populations, there is insufficient recognition by women of the immediate benefit to them — and their children — of supporting the rights of MSM to form their own relationships.

Finally, and most tragically, homophobia prevents effective HIV prevention, treatment and care messaging to MSM. In Jamaica’s prisons, where HIV is several times the national average, the availability of condoms and lubricants has to be done clandestinely as to advertise this fact would lead to a riot, which has happened with tragic consequences. In the absence of readily available condoms and lubricants, prisoners use plastic shopping bags and axel grease. Upon their release, these men are pressured to prove their heterosexuality and so they usually have multiple female sexual partners. Many children of these fathers are born within a very short time span.

When my own son was being born, a young man (only 23) was running ragged as 2 of his “baby mothers” were delivering at that hospital on the same day. He kept shuttling between the two 2 birthing rooms as neither woman knew of the other’s existence. This tragically funny story was made even more disconcerting by the fact that this youngster was expecting his thirteenth child.

As an organization committed to removing all barriers to an effective HIV response, AIDS-Free World has been working assiduously to tackle homophobia in the Caribbean. We have therefore launched the first ever legal challenge to Jamaica’s anti-sodomy law; sponsored research into the level and drivers of Jamaican homophobia; successfully challenged the sponsorship of homophobic “murder music”; conducted LGBT sensitization training with police on how to respond to victims of homophobic attacks; met with, and when necessary, publicly challenged politicians, policymakers and UN officials about showing leadership on the issue of tolerance for LGBT; developed media products to promote tolerance; trained LGBT groups on how to document and respond to LGBT human rights abuses; and initiated legal action against Jamaican TV stations who have refused to air our tolerance ads as well as against the homophobic immigration law of Trinidad and Tobago that bans the entry of marginalized groups such as homosexuals.

While our work is a long-term one, we know we are making headway, as seen from the tremendous increase in the level of public discourse around the repeal of the Jamaican anti-buggery law; the surprising statement by the new Jamaican Prime Minister during an election campaign that she will support a Parliamentary conscience vote on the review of the anti-buggery law; and the measured reduction in national homophobia.

The reduction in homophobia is not proceeding quickly. Neither is it expected to. This is because there are many structural barriers to tolerance messaging and these barriers have largely been erected and sustained by powerful bigoted religious fundamentalists that have infected all levels of Caribbean society. Over the past 30 years, these churches, with tremendous financial and technical assistance from North American groups, have been working assiduously to subvert the national ethos of tolerance for diversity, as found in Jamaica’s motto “Out of Many, One People.” Breaking the logjam of religiously inspired homophobia will require bold advocacy. We are up to this David and Goliath battle. The stakes are too high for us to fail.

ENDS

My comment which I suppose may get published was as follows:

This is a Jamaican story not a Caribbean one as headlined, so much for misleading persons.

Oh so here is Maurice Tomlinson yet again using the community in this wave the old narratives to the world ploy while he is out of touch with the real world and has to rely for the most part on reports as he parades himself as the LGBT spokesperson while not living in Jamaica anymore or so he says at the expense of a gullible population on the ground. The LGBT community especially the MSM group is not the same as the years gone by and as for HIV rates of infection the agencies named ALL have direct access to the community all they have to do is have far more presence and do the necessary work to bring down the numbers but instead they expect the community to come to them then they say that the community is underground when the groups can be easily found, some of the those group members are on the properties of some of these agencies everyday literally speaking as they have no where else to go, the poor outreach and frontline work (condom issued mostly) by the agencies themselves are to be blamed for those high figures too. The groups suffer from condom fatigue and HIV prevention message overkill sometimes.

The agencies also continue to ignore the real issues affecting the homeless for example mostly the pyscho social ones they are yet to be dealt with just yesterday the police had to deposit several homeless msms on the Jamaica AIDS Support for Life property in a bid to take them off the streets due to challenges on the roads and internal conflicts but as was promised by JFLAG on television to find a space for them to be housed as the authorities have become impatient with the anti social behaviours (see video above) and sheer numbers of them in the business district and entertainment strips we still await a shelter response following a townhall meeting on November 7, only on December 3 there was an ugly brawl with some of the men and staff of JASL there while the JFLAG employees looked on terrified as the drama unfolded. The men have been using other properties to get shelter without water for that matter so they access water from the JASL office. That tense situation has been off and on since 2010.

As for the buggery law and the charter of rights the parliamentary submission was the last time that JFLAG had a real presence in challenging the law on the ground way back in 1998, they were absent during the intermittent charter of rights debate and allowed the church groups to control the conversations and clauses, their adding or removal chief among them the discrimination by sexual orientation protection even as the invented gay marriage rights opposition ploy was used by the previous government to deny us any recognition in the charter and we sat and watched it all go down, very few of us kept the agitation alive.

As for buying condoms and distribution there are 5 agencies now (including anti gay faith based linked groups surprisingly) that reach MSMs including the various regional Health authorities of the Ministry of Health in particular and all distribute condoms with some peer educator training and the former stigma associated with condom and lube purchases (KY) and indeed fleet enema purchases as well have almost disappeared as more and more pharmacies carry fleet enemas now and one DOES NOT HAVE TO buy them under the counter. Even street side vendors have got in on the business realising that the MSM commercial sex workers also need their condom "stash" while swallowing their once homophobic positions they know the men are gay but for business they engage them.(despite the saturation of the market with the cheap looking brands the men will purchase brand named ones once they have cash) The old programmatic agenda that gay men do not have access to condoms is out the window. I purchase my fleets at the leading Kingston Pharmacy, York, and they have them displayed openly on the shop floor along with the KY lubes all one has to do is purchase and leave. Times have changed!!!!!!!! the most effeminate of men walk in as well and do business unimpeded. Other pharmacies are following suit and also have them displayed openly as I have found fleets at out of Kingston shops as well.

Sometimes the homeless msms complain that they are overstocked with "boots" the colloquial name for condoms and seem weary of the overkill of HIV prevention messaging, HIV testing and condom distribution which makes one wonder where are the other self efficacious activities for personal development? Plastic bag use as condoms are a thing of the past and does not happen with the regularity as before not even in prisons if one were to be truthful despite the item is a major contraband creative ways are found to get them in. What needs to be improved are the anal hygiene knowledge levels for MSMs in particular.

The tolerance ads of which he writes while having the right message are also poor in production value an observation made by several media experts including an executive of the leading media communications institution. 

As a former board member of Jamaica AIDS Support for LIFE he along with the others sanctioned the closure of a homeless shelter pilot project in 2009 where MSMs were to be housed and assisted to recovery but other agendas were more important and also bearing in mind some of the men were HIV+

We always knew of these religious groups with overseas contacts but we sat complacent and did not properly rebut their anti gay and anti buggery posturings it is now when they have turned up the heat persons like Maurice now realise they exist?

Enough of these narcissistic people who use intellectual dishonesty to push their agenda. We need to speak the truth when we want to engage the world to assist the cause but the old programmatic narratives are not working anymore. STOP THE DISHONEST LINES and present the PRESENT TRUTHS. We find ourselves here because we have failed to address some of the key issues but the way how some activists parade themselves as victims to mislead international agencies one wonders for how long this strategy will last? 

This is 2012 for God's sake not the 1990s.

Things have changed and are still changing slowly. Where the emphasis needs to be placed is on personal development for vulnerable groups not just seeing such groups as potential HIV+ persons via HIV prevention messaging and condom distribution targets only. 

Mr Tomlinson must stick to the evil that he knows.