Homobophobic

Jamaica is not a particularly tolerant place, and I don't imagine it's a good place to grow up gay. The antigay "culture" is fed by ragga artists who litter their songs with references to killing gays and the like. Among them, Beenie Man stands out as a particularly unpleasant young man.

But Beenie Man is very popular and his music appeals to youngsters. So too do other ragga artists, who have been nominated for the MOBOs.

My understanding is that the nominations are based on a popular vote. Gay activists have demanded that the nominated artists are banned and are trying to get them excluded from visiting the UK.

Here is a difficult place for liberals. I have no sympathy for the artists involved or their ugly, but sadly commonplace, homophobia -- and I'm distressed that it remains popular with the young, especially among blacks, who you might think (wrongly, of course) would sympathise with another oppressed minority. However, I strongly support the principle that we should be free to speak and doubly so that the truth ought not to be smothered for political reasons. The truth is these people were nominated. Nor should they be excluded from the UK for holding objectionable views. The government should not be tasked with keeping objectionable views from us. It has a platform of its own, and can condemn those views, but silencing artists -- however reprehensible we believe, or it believes, their views are, is something we should not ask it to do.

Peter Tatchell is, I think, a brave and principled man. He has devoted his life to a cause he truly believes in, and one that I don't doubt needed and still needs fighting for. But I believe "rights" come as a package and we must not surrender one for the sake of another. To do so leads one down the track that has allowed our governments to filch our rights in the name of fighting terrorism.

Excoriate Elephant Man. Call him a cunt in every medium. I'm all for that. I'm calling him a cunt right here and now. I'd call him a cunt if I ever had the misfortune to meet him (so long as I was reasonably assured that he wasn't armed). But silencing him is not making him wrong. Rather, it's allowing him to feel not only that he is right but that he is suffering for it.

posted by Dr Zen @ 12:13 pm