At a time when arguably most of the world is busy advocating and celebrating gay marriage legalization, Jamaicans appear to be taking their time to digest the news. The US along with other countries have urged Jamaica to legalize same-sex marriage and grant more rights to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) persons.
Many Jamaicans are fearful that the ban will be lifted though a vast majority of Jamaicans remain opposed adamantly to same-sex marriage. Long before the US ruling, Dancehall icon Bounty Killer, who has voiced some strong opinions about gays in Jamaica over the years, says there should be more lobbying against crime, poverty, and pedophilia in Jamaica than gay rights.
The Killer, who was notably absent from the 2015 staging of Reggae Sumfest said, in 2014, during an interview with Winford Williams of OnStage after his set, the promoters of the show should consider not booking him this year because he “speaks what is right,” and it is his job because he is “the voice of the people.”
The dancehall icon alleged that Sumfest has started condoning the “wrong things.” The 42-year-old added that “Everyone is lobbying about this ‘homosexual thing’,” but “who is lobbying against poverty?” he asked.
He affirmed his stance that, “homosexuality is no a problem to our country like poverty. Everyone is lobbying to get homosexuality out in public, why aren’t they lobbying to get poverty out of the public?” He is adamant that “both of them are important, but poverty is more important because poverty is the most significant thing that leads to crime.”
It’s good know that the once illiterate “Poor People Governor” knows better than our own Minister of National Security, Peter Bunting, who doesn’t see the direct the correlation between poverty and crime. “Social exclusion, whether it is in Baltimore’s inner city or Kingston’s inner city, or whether it makes people more vulnerable for crime; but by itself, I do not believe it causes crime. If poverty had that direct correlation, then Haiti would be the most violent country in the Caribbean. In fact, it is one of the least violent in the Caribbean,” Bunting argued.
