Dominican govt says no to changes to buggery laws .......... local homophobes reject "Homophobia"

The Dominica government says it has no intention of changing the present buggery laws even as the advocacy group, Minority Rights Dominica (MiriDom) said it was seeking talks with the authorities on the matter of equal rights.

Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, speaking on the state-owned DBS radio Monday, said his administration’s position on the matter is stated in law “and this matter is still on our books and will remain there for the foreseeable future.”

He added: “I respect the views of this new group. I understand from persons they intend to write to the government. We welcome their writing to government. We welcome meeting them as as a matter of fact. They are citizens of this country and they would like to express their views.

“But one has to look at the broader context of this request and it will be dangerous for the country to move in the direction of repealing laws against buggery,” Skerrit said.

He said that “as it is now anybody who wants to engage in whatever activities can do so in the privacy of his home. But one should not believe that the government is prepared or thinking of wanting to make this a public affair.”

Skerrit said he has not heard “any compelling arguments for it to be repealed and I don’t think any compelling arguments can be made for it to be repealed.”

Spokesman for the group, Daryl Phillip told radio listeners that Dominica’s laws making homosexual acts a criminal offence have fuelled negative perceptions about people engaged in the practice.

“Over the last 20 years, there began to be .... a developing hatred and some physical abuses targeted towards those people and that’s our concern,” Phillip said.

“It is targeting homosexuals,” he said. “It is not about telling people it is okay to go in public and make out. All we want is for that law to be removed and then we can go on an educational drive.”

Earlier this month the group, in a statement, said it was also calling on the Roman Catholic Church to make its position clear on the issue, saying that the buggery laws fuel homophobia in countries where they are still on the law books.

“MiriDom believes that homophobia in Dominica and the rest of the Anglophone Caribbean is fuelled by the existence of laws that make gay sex between consenting adults a criminal act,” it said. It noted that in 2008, the Holy See urged a repeal of anti-buggery laws throughout the world and the position has been ignored by the church in Dominica.

ENDS

Meanwhile in Jamaica the anti gay HOMOPHOBIC group the Jamaica Coalition for a Healthy Society continues to use the trope of the word "Homophobia" in describing their rhetoric as meaning mentally ill when we know the word has long left its clinical origin to come to mean an irrational fear or loathing of homosexual(ity)s, yet if we are to follow the JCHS head Dr Wayne with his intellectual dishonesties with support from soiciologist crack pot Peter Espeut the word originally meant a fear of sameness as they use the etymological ambit to justify their fear and hence hardened positions on homosexuality.

The word has since come to mean the following:

WIKIPEDIA: Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who are identified or perceived as being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT). It can be expressed as antipathy, contempt, prejudice, aversion, or hatred, and may be based on irrational fear.

Although sexual attitudes tracing back to Ancient Greece (8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity (ca. 600 AD)) have been termed homophobia by scholars, the term itself is relatively new.Coined by George Weinberg, a psychologist, in the 1960s, the term homophobia is a blend of (1) the word homosexual, itself a mix of neo-classical morphemes, and (2) phobia from the Greek φόβος, Phóbos, meaning "fear" or "morbid fear". Weinberg is credited as the first person to have used the term in speech.The word homophobia first appeared in print in an article written for the May 23, 1969, edition of the American tabloid Screw, in which the word was used to refer to heterosexual men's fear that others might think they are gay.

Conceptualizing anti-LGBT prejudice as a social problem worthy of scholarly attention was not new. In 1971, Kenneth Smith was the first person to use homophobia as a personality profile to describe the psychological aversion to homosexuality.Weinberg also used it this way in his 1972 book Society and the Healthy Homosexual, published one year before the American Psychiatric Association voted to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.Weinberg's term became an important tool for gay and lesbian activists, advocates, and their allies. He describes the concept as a medical phobia:
[A] phobia about homosexuals.... It was a fear of homosexuals which seemed to be associated with a fear of contagion, a fear of reducing the things one fought for — home and family. It was a religious fear and it had led to great brutality as fear always does.

In 1982, homophobia was used for the first time in The New York Times to report that the General Synod of the Church of England voted to refuse to condemn homosexuality.

the latest JCHS campaign where the HIV is a gay disease ploy is used to justify their HOMOPHOBIA with foreign studies usually with oversease evangelical support.

Homophobia manifests in different forms, and a number of different types have been postulated, among which are internalized homophobia, social homophobia, emotional homophobia, rationalized homophobia, and others. There were also ideas to classify homophobia, racism, and sexism as an intolerant personality disorder.

Homophobia has never been listed as part of a clinical taxonomy of phobias, neither in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) or International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD); homophobia is usually used in a non-clinical sense.

In 1992, the American Psychiatric Association, recognizing the power of the stigma against homosexuality, issued the following statement, reaffirmed by the Board of Trustees, July 2011: "Whereas homosexuality per se implies no impairment in judgement  stability, reliability, or general social or vocational capabilities, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) calls on all international health organizations, psychiatric organizations, and individual psychiatrists in other countries to urge the repeal in their own countries of legislation that penalizes homosexual acts by consenting adults in private. Further, APA calls on these organizations and individuals to do all that is possible to decrease the stigma related to homosexuality wherever and whenever it may occur."

Others in criticizing the etymological issue surrounding the word suggest homosexophobia but it is clear the that modern Pharisees and Sadducees are at work and are getting large financial support from somewhere yet children are hungry, missing and in lock ups with adults and these same voices are silent in that department. Who were Jesus' opponents I ask?

More HERE from Gay Jamaica Watch

Here is a discussion (edited) with Dr Wayne West and Carol Narcisse (public commentator) on the issue

Also see: Jamaica Coalition for a Healthy Society, JCHS continued confusion of paedophilia & consenting homosexuality.

Peace and tolerance

H