The gay issue is right in our face. Let’s deal with it.

This past weekend a local website commenting on the current furore over the gay, lesbian and same-sex controversy sweeping the land, had this to say:

“All around us, the walls on this subject are collapsing and The Bahamas should not live in isolation removed from reality . . .  with the church teaching a code of no adultery, the births out of wedlock over seventy per cent, with murders out of control, violence against women at an epidemic proportion, we are to be condemned because some people want to have the right to equality and freedom for their lives.”

The point was extremely well-taken, and we wonder how many Bahamians – particularly those forever preaching against what they see as an erosion of freedom and assaults on democracy in this Bahamas, now almost forty years old.

Obliquely on the same subject, few weeks back Chief Justice Sir Michael Barnett, in addressing the National Judicial Council of the National Bar Association, included in his remarks a view on the issue of same sex marriages, noting that eventually The Bahamas will have to deal with that situation. This is what he said.

“I have no doubt that it is only a matter of time when the courts of The Bahamas will address the issue of same sex marriage. 
“I also have no doubt that in deciding the issue we will have respect for the decisions that emanate not only from Commonwealth countries like Canada and Australia, but also to the decision of the courts of the United States of America.”

Well, that comment by the chief justice in a community which has long looked at the gay issue with jaundiced eyes caused quite a stir in several areas, as Bahamians through the years have attempted to look the other or swiftly to change the subject when the issue of gays and lesbians arose.

Many perhaps felt the subject should not have been raised by someone in the high office of chief justice, particularly when he was addressing primarily an audience of American lawyers. Yet in Sir Michael’s defence, and as a matter of common sense, perhaps the time has come when the issue needs to be given official airing.

Not long after Sir Michael’s address a young Bahamian journalist now residing in Canada admitted that he has married a male lover and that because of this country’s strong aversion to gays, he will never return to The Bahamas.

A number of church leaders such as Anglican bishop Laish Boyd, pastor Cedric Moss and Bishop Simeon Hall have expressed varying views on the subject, and in the air there has also been suggestions for the issue of same sex marriages to be put officially to the Bahamian people in the form of a referendum question.

Every decade or so, especially on different governmental watches, there is a firestorm over this needlessly vexing issue of gays and lesbians, and of same sex marriages. Where will it all end?

Today a fairly liberal media in The Bahamas, including a somewhat militant army of private radio broadcasting stations which came into effect since 1993 – and don’t forget the so-called social media – both advocates and objectors are daily assured of wide and varied avenues for their views on the subject.

Yet freedom and democracy are streets – avenues, nay, superhighways – broad enough to accommodate all travellers, no matter their direction of motives, just as how, six or seven years ago, the objectors to the film“Brokeback Mountain” were assured an open and unencumbered lane in that highway, except, of course, in The Bahamas.

There are in existence laws of decency which cannot be breached with impunity, and most intelligent Bahamians know well what those laws are and strive to respect them.

We must be extremely careful how and what we censor or control in a society in which full and total measure of freedoms is still in pretty much an experimental stage, and indeed in which basic democracy yet awaits some fundamental Constitutional amendments.

Importantly, those of the intelligentsia and others who simply have a gut feeling for what is right and what is wrong must not, for fear of being mistakenly identified or of other reprisal fail to stand up and shout for right and condemn wrong.

We remember about three and a half decades ago when The White Boy wrote a stage play,“God and the Naked Nigger”, based on the story of Thomas Becket, Henry II’s Archbishop of Canterbury.

Staged at the Dundas Centre for the Performing Arts, the play was was produced by the University Players, directed by Fritz Stubbs, and which starred now attorney Anthony Delaney in the lead role.

Thomas Becket, before ordination to the priesthood and consecration as a bishop and enthronement as archbishop, had led a life of debauchery and profligacy, often in the company of his dear and trusted friend, his equal in debauchery, King Henry.

“God and the Naked Nigger” zeroed in on that salacious aspect of Thomas Becket’s life, and the Plays and Films Control Board, then under the chairmanship of the late Archdeacon William Thompson, forbade the University Players to stage the production.

The objection was primarily because the young Becket was meant to be having sex onstage with a lady, a white lady, albeit ought of sight behind a sofa, because the play contained harsh language, and because the Board objected to the us of the word “Nigger” in the name of the play.

The official censorship came near to opening night, and the play, unchanged, went on, to a huge, applauding audience, and was staged again and again to delighted patrons, even whilst the cast, the author, the director, and the producers stood under threat of prosecution for disobeying the Plays and Films Control Board.

They were determined and unafraid Bahamians standing up firmly and defiantly and saying a resounding NO!

More than anything else, the patronage and enthusiasm of the vast audiences at “God and the Naked Nigger” demonstrated overwhelming endorsement of that defiance by the case, author, director, and producer, and the Control Board and the government fell into a thunderous silence.

Today the question of gays and lesbians, and of same-sex marriages, whilst it might well offend some areas of the church, is still a question of personal freedom, of choice, and as retired Archbishop Drexel Gomez preached long ago, one must be disposed to “hate the sin but love the sinner.”

The bottom line is that those in this community who are gays and lesbians, some of whom might desire same sex marriages, are Bahamians with fundamental constitutional rights, and are privileged to enjoy the same freedoms of the straight sisters and brothers.

The difficulty in this too-selective community and perhaps pother such pastoral communities is that the aiming of the guns of outrage are too often at pre-determined areas of society.

So in The Bahamas back in 2006 they banned a movie because it dealt in graphic detail with homosexuality. What they would have been the next step? What today is the next step, especially as the chief justice has indicated that the law must at some point deal; with the issue?

Will the population deal with this issue, as America was forced to do back in the late 1950s, go into the libraries and rip up volumes of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Fanny Hill?

Will this society, led by the church, go through the Bible and excise the story of Onan spilling his seed upon the ground, or the whole scenario of Sodom and Gomorrah in which men were sleeping with men and the drunken Lot’s daughters were having their way with their father?

Will the society stand silently by, idly, unresisting as a puny congregation of paper saints take The Bahamas backwards, backwards, BACKWARDS to a time when a whole village had to gather around a crackling radio and only a handful could read and write?

On this issue of gays, lesbians and same-sex marriage, the quoted website noted, “the walls on this subject are collapsing and The Bahamas should not live in isolation removed from reality.”

The issue is with us in all its flambouyant reality. We can deal with it legally, sensibly, and effectively, or, alternately, we can simply pray . . . for what it’s worth.