Peter Espeut | Capricious policy research

The Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CAPRI) has given new life to the debate on whether buggery – and therefore homosexuality – should be normalised in Jamaica. In a study called Paying for Prejudice, CAPRI conjects that making buggery legal in Jamaica – and banning ‘discrimination’ against lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender (LGBT) people – would allow a whopping 11 billion new Jamaican dollars to annually enter the Jamaican economy.

This bypasses any talk of sexual morality and ethical propriety and cuts to the chase: LGBT behaviour in Jamaica should be legalised and normalised because there is money in it – profit to be made!

According to the economists at CAPRI, what they call ‘discrimination’ against the LGBT community is a huge charge upon both public purse and private pockets, and forces both to forego billions in likely earnings.

By adopting the emotionally biased language of the LGBT lobby, this study fails to be objective. In addition, there are many flaws in both the logic applied by this study and the assumptions behind it.

First of all, ‘discrimination’ is not a bad thing in itself. The word denotes a process of assessment and discernment to determine value. All of us discriminate all the time: between good restaurants and bad ones, between good quality schools and less so, between Miss Clarendon and Miss Hanover, and between religions and denominations, including whether we should avow any religious faith at all! As such, there is ‘just discrimination’ and ‘unjust discrimination’, and it is unjust discrimination that we should struggle against.

One of the weapons of the LGBT lobby is language, like inventing hate speech such as ‘homophobia’, trying to change the normal meaning of old words like ‘marriage’, and trying to sell the idea that all forms of discrimination should be condemned. CAPRI has bought into this rhetoric, which discredits the objectivity of their study.

Church schools are preferred in Jamaica because of the values and the discipline they pass on to the students alongside the three ‘Rs’. When CAPRI lobbies the Jamaican Government to pass a law banning discrimination against LGBT people, what they are calling for is the criminalising of church schools for choosing to hire only heterosexual teachers, including guidance counsellors, which breaches the human right of freedom of religion. Right now, parents are free to send their children to church schools, or to LGBT schools; why should CAPRI wish to take away this right?

NOT GOOD FOR REPUTATION

We in environmental work know that just passing a law against littering does not stop littering, nor will making illegal the killing of wildlife prevent the slaughter of birds, crocodiles and manatees. Making buggery legal will not normalize it in Jamaica anytime soon. Both CAPRI and the LGBT lobby have this false notion that passing laws will stop or prevent behaviours, and that money will just flow into the economy.

If homosexuality and transgender behaviour are ‘fundamentally disordered’ as many psychologists and psychiatrists believe, then the LGBT population, by definition, will present with much higher levels of mental illness than normal persons.

The economists at CAPRI conclude that the higher levels of mental illness in LGBT people (69 per cent compared to about 30 per cent) is the result of discrimination; they clearly assume that the LGBT condition is just as ‘normal’ as being straight, and that if we make LGBT behaviour ‘normal’ by removing ‘discrimination’, the incidence of mental illness in that population will decline.

I think the CAPRI economists have bought the LGBT gospel hook, line, and sinker, and have strayed from whatever field they may have competence in.

As for the billions that will flow into government coffers and private pockets by normalising buggery, a large chunk of that – according to CAPRI – will be from fewer psychiatric cases in public hospitals, fewer AIDS cases, greater revenue from ‘pink’ LGBT tourists, and I suppose from fines imposed by the courts upon church people who support traditional family values.

CAPRI has done good work in the past; I am not sure that this study has done their reputation any good.

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and development scientist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.