In 1998, the Jamaican singer Bounty Killer released a single, ‘Can’t Believe Mi Eyes’, which expressed incredulity that men should wear tight trousers, because tight trousers are an effeminate display of gayness. Fear and loathing of homosexuals has a long history in the West Indies. Jamaica’s anti-sodomy laws, deriving from the English Act of 1861, carry a ten-year jail sentence for ‘the abominable crime’. Similar laws exist elsewhere in the Anglophone Caribbean, yet Jamaica is outwardly the most homophobic of the West Indian islands. A white man seen on his own in Jamaica is often assumed to be in search of gay sex. Batty bwoys (‘bum boys’) are in danger of being stoned, cutlassed or shot. In the beginning was Adam and Eve, say Jamaicans, not Adam and Steve.
Few can agree on the source of the homophobia, but Jamaican evangelical church groups have not helped: Pentecostalists and other holy-rollers have advocated burning homosexuals. Jamaican singers known for their anti-homosexual lyrics, most infamously Buju Banton and Beenie Man (‘I’m dreaming of a new Jamaica, come to execute all the gays’), have been refused entry by the British Home Office.
Of course Jamaica has a vibrant homosexual community, yet the consequences of being ‘outed’ are so dire that homosexuals may themselves resort to expressions of violent homophobia just to deflect attention. When, in August 1997, the Jamaican government announced that condoms were to be distributed in Jamaican jails as a preventative against Aids, all hell broke loose. The implication that a portion of prison life was homosexual was enough to turn ‘straight’ inmates against ‘chi-chi men’ inmates, 16 of whom were murdered in cell riots.
Bernadine Evaristo, in her funny, brave new novel, Mr Loverman (the title is taken from a Shabba Ranks reggae anthem), explores issues of homosexuality in the British West Indies and London’s West Indian diaspora community.
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