The Gleaner Editorial: It’s A Question Of Human Rights

We are often taken aback by the dichotomy between the title of the group that calls itself the Jamaica Coalition for a Healthy Society (JCHS) and the causes it advances, which, essentially, are the continued diminution of the human rights of one set of Jamaican citizens: the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.

The latest manifestations of the JCHS’s agenda were its press ads last weekend and the letter to this newspaper by its chairman, Wayne West, against last week’s visit to the island by Randy Berry, the US State Department’s special envoy for the human rights of LGBT persons, and his colleague, Todd Larson, who oversees related issues for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Dr West portrayed their visit as an attempt by the Americans to strong-arm Jamaicans into accepting “buggery and sexual confusion”, in contempt of this country’s sovereignty. A “new form of imperialism”, he called it.