Gays, deejays and vajayjays

Daniel Thwaites, Contributor

People don't think alike, and a lot of very different people cohabit this 4,244 sq miles called Jamaica. There are lots of different visions of the good life and plans of how to achieve it.

Many Jamaicans are Christian, but many are not. Also, there are many Christians who don't believe that it necessitates cruelty and intolerance, or bossing and cajoling people who aren't Christian and wish to beat their own path straight to hell.

These thoughts occur to me because Parliament's upcoming conscience vote on the buggery law has triggered, unsurprisingly, a showdown between the Church and various groups. Really, I like neither side in this 'debate', but the churchmen, especially, are appearing unkind and intolerant.

It's true that homosexuality is biblically outlawed. Exodus 20:17, according to the King James Version, does say:

"Thou shalt not covet ... thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant ... nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's."

But there's always been a minority of people who haven't heeded the commandment, including King James I of Bible fame, who was - you guessed it - gay.

I find our churchmen shockingly comfortable with using the civil law to impose their beliefs. Whatever happened to the power of the Word, and the example of how Christians live? Why not tend and grow one's flock? Instead, there's a focus on suppressing pluralism with the help of the police force. There IS a difference between having a strong moral conviction and wanting to enforce it on people who don't share it.

The evidence suggests that homosexuals cannot help being what they are, and they offer no real danger to anyone else, except, it seems, as nuisances when they 'bungle up' in houses and wear ridiculous clothes.

THE DEEJAYS

As best I can tell, this anti-gang legislation is taking a good idea too far. The potential jail times seem staggeringly long, and clandestine courts are a terrible idea. But there has been useful anti-gang legislation in many jurisdictions, and so a proper law is definitely worth having.

The provision regarding limiting certain speech has grabbed attention because it might limit our cultural hero, the deejay, and of course, freedom of speech is such an important principle.

However, my view is that not all speech is worth protecting, and in fact, society should take steps to actively discourage certain kinds of speech and self-expression. The speech most critical to safeguard is political and religious speech, as the right was initially developed to protect. While free-speech fundamentalists never tire of saying that the boundaries of these are hard to define, this troubles me not.

Put simply, I don't think the Ku Klux Klan should be able to spout off at all, and certainly not wherever they want, and I don't think the Jamaican chapter of NAMBLA (that's the North American Man-Boy Love Association) should be allowed to set up an information booth in schools. We're trying to have a civilisation here, and a constitution is a structure for laws to guarantee important freedoms, not a suicide pact.

The part of the anti-gang legislation providing for 'secret' courts, routinely outside of press scrutiny, however, has to be struck down and out utterly. That is completely alien to our jurisprudence, our history, and our ideals. Where did this madcap idea originate? The passage of any such measure would be cause for civil disobedience.

RESPECT THE VAJAYJAY

Among the many reasons I wish I had become a doctor rather than a lawyer is that people are far more willing to tell the truth to their doctor. For someone hungry for insight into the human soul, this is a great privilege. Lucky for me, I have family working the emergency department at a large public hospital, and the stories keep me entertained and horrified.

One recurring theme is the appearance of women, old and young alike, who have partially aborted their pregnancies. The law in Jamaica nowadays, although it isn't written exactly to say this, permits doctors to assist the woman to have an abortion once she's started it and thereby put her life in danger. However, if she walks in off the street and asks for help while enjoying health, they risk prosecution.

Women desiring abortions know the system perfectly well, or, at any rate, they learn quickly. So the preferred method as of last week was to buy abortificients from roadside vendors to begin the self-destruction and qualify for medical attention.

This isn't an efficient or particularly moral way of organising things. I fully accept the refusal to treat the termination of a pregnancy with the casual disregard of removing a tooth, even though the arguments of some feminists would tend to make it like that. However, I also cannot imagine that the current system is worth keeping.

This is the context in which Minister Hanna has raised the issue of modernising Jamaica's laws about destroying foetuses.

With the world population above seven billion people, and projected to be near 10 billion by 2050, the issue isn't whether abortion is a woman's legal right so much as a moral duty. OK, I'm being facetious, but the point is that the human population isn't struggling to reproduce itself.

I read with amused contempt the nonsense that granting women reproductive rights is aimed at killing poor black children. People will immediately recognise the throwaway racialism as the most vulgar, patronising rubbish, whether you agree with abortion rights or not. Tell you what: In general, let's leave the regulation of the vaginas to the people who have them. Respect the vajayjay; try not to be one.

It would be wonderful to live in a world without abortion, and hopefully the churches can convince their flocks to avoid them. I personally don't believe in abortion, and so I won't ever bother to get one. And I recommend this approach to all the priests, pastors, ministers and clerics.

Daniel Thwaites is a partner of Thwaites Law Firm in Jamaica, and Thwaites, Lundgren & D?Arcy in New York. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.