Deborah Pitt MD
8 Trio St. (temporary)
PO Box 15, Belmopan
April 22, 2014

Dear Editor,

Since coming to Belize six weeks ago, I have learned about the campaign against Sec. 53 of the Belize Criminal Code and about the Gender Policy. The latter contains much that I, a woman who graduated (1972) in a man’s world, medicine, can agree with.

However, I urge the government and people of Belize to reject the decriminalization of homosexual acts.

The UK, where I am from, decriminalized homosexual acts “between consenting adults in private” in 1969. Since then, an increasingly aggressive and vociferous homosexual rights lobby has pushed their cause. There are regular lewd “Gay Pride” festivals and now legal equality (The Civil Partnerships Act 2004.)

In 2013, the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act was passed, despite the biggest-ever petition against a government bill. So the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman was changed for everybody to appease a small minority, not all of whom wanted the change anyway.

One of the main pressures on the government was the European Court of Human Rights, a supranational court whose rulings, along with those of the European Union, account for more than 50% of U.K. law.

Soon after the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth, Australia, 2011 UK Prime Minister David Cameron spoke on TV of his desire to decrease the country’s foreign aid to Commonwealth countries that did not conform to his pro-homosexuality views. This did not go down very well with those countries, and Mr. Cameron was reminded by Zambian minister Given Lubinda that international law states that “no country will use its aid to influence the policies of an aid-receiving
country.” (Paris Declaration 2005, 2008 Accra Agenda for Action.)

It appears that just as the UK was under supranational influence, so is Belize, with pressure from the U.N., the USA, and various NGO’s to change its own policies.

If Belize decriminalizes homosexual acts, I predict that the following developments that other countries have experienced will soon follow:

A) Homosexual behavior will increase and become more open and aggressive, with activists within and from outside the country. They will push relentlessly for more rights and concessions until they, too, obtain gay marriage.

Then, or before, homosexuals will insist that homosexuality is taught in primary schools as being as normal as heterosexual sex. This is already happening in the UK and USA (along with other explicit material and sinister “gender-bender” information) under the guise of sex education and anti-bullying information, but will also be recruitment tools to the homosexual lifestyle.

In the UK, there is a fanatical wing to the homosexual rights movement that promotes “Queer Politics.” It celebrates the greatest possible variety of sexual expression and wants the repeal of anti-pornography and anti-prostitution laws, and the “transformation of society to ensure the sexual liberation of everybody;” sex with whomever, whenever and at age whatever.

This is not freedom, but bondage, sexual addiction and anarchy. In other words, there is a bigger agenda behind the overt agenda.

B) Along with this “liberation” will come increasing mental and physical health problems and costs. As a physician in the USA during the HIV epidemic in the ’80s, I looked after drug addicts and homosexuals with AIDS. I had seen rabies in Nigeria, but AIDS can cause even more horrible deaths.

In the UK, half the HIV population are homosexuals, even though they are only 2% of the population. 1 in 20 homosexuals has HIV. There are over 120, 000 cases and an estimated 40,000 cases undiagnosed. The cost of lifetime treatment is 320,000 pounds per person, etc., etc. The suffering from this and other sexually transmitted diseases, including cancers, caught/triggered more easily through anal sex, is staggering.

Incidentally, contraceptive measures in the UK have not stemmed the tide of hetero and homosexually transmitted diseases; STI’s are at record levels; many infections are viral and therefore untreatable, and gonorrhoea is soaring amongst the young with serious concerns about antibiotic resistance.

As a psychiatrist in the UK, I can attest to the mental health issues associated with the homosexual lifestyle. Briefly, these are not associated especially with “homophobia,” but with the nature of the community’s inter and intrapersonal difficulties. All these health issues are well researched and documented.

C) Homosexuals, who for any number of reasons no longer want that lifestyle, will face considerable difficulties in leaving. Many, either with support or not, do make the change. It may surprise, but “there are more ex-gays than gays.”

However, psychologist Dean Byrd records “…. their lives and those of their families become a ‘living hell …’

Why? Because of gay activists who don’t like such “betrayal.”

Also, the idea of change is so politically incorrect that attested therapies are now being seen by the powers-that-be in the psychiatric and psychological fields in the USA and the UK as malpractice!

Extraordinary. This is really sinister. So the “pariahs” in the USA who want to change are forming self-help groups along the lines of AA.

Unbelievable. No one would deny an alcoholic who wanted to abstain from his/her previously accepted behaviour. But if you are a homosexual who wants to, keep your head down.

D) If homosexuality in Belize is decriminalized, there will be an increase in homosexual sex tourism, as has been documented recently in Mombasa, Kenya. Sex tourism is a huge problem in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean.

In my opinion it is not worth the extra money such tourism may bring into a country.

E) The churches will come under increasing pressure, and perhaps as has happened in the UK and USA, from within their own ranks, to change their historical beliefs that homosexuality is a sin, and that heterosexual marriage is a God-given norm for society rooted in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and the reflection of Christ’s relationship with His bride, the universal church.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has recently become concerned that the Anglican Church may be seen as “irrelevant” if it does not keep up with society and is seen as having “attitudes akin to racism.” He need not worry. The causes of homosexuality are no more genetic than any other behavior; disagreement with homosexuality is therefore not “akin to racism.” The causes are rooted in psycho-sexual-social development and there is no over-riding factor that results in people becoming homosexual.

All behaviors have some genetic component, but even our most deeply rooted instincts and drives can be over-ridden under certain circumstances. There are purely genetic causes of certain, fortunately rare, illnesses, but not of behaviors.

“Born gay” is a myth, but in our age, a very powerful one that is used by some to. promote their cause and push for special rights and to undermine societies’ traditional norms of behavior.
As for “relevant,” the church’s role involves being to some extent counter-cultural. As one famous Anglican said, “The church that marries the spirit of the age will be a widow in the next.”
F) Christians and others of faith, or none, who protest the new gay orthodoxy and express disagreement, even in an out-of-work context, have in the UK faced harassment and vandalism, loss of jobs and livelihoods, have been arrested, or forced to take legal action to ensure their rights to live by their religious beliefs as per the UN charter are respected, and that their right to free speech is upheld.

Unfortunately, anything said against the practice of homosexuality provokes cries of “Hate speech! Hate speech” from tyrannical activists who have no respect for fairness, reasonableness, or the rights of others. If such desecrations of the right to free speech can happen in the UK, where, with respect, can’t it happen?

The most recent high profile case in the USA is that of Mr. Brendan Eich, CEO of Mozilla/Firefox and inventor of Java Script. He gave $1,000 several years ago to Proposition 8, a public petition in California to preserve marriage as between a man and a woman.

For that terrible “sin,” he was forced off the board of the company he founded. Is this the picture of things to come, as all reasonableness and balance of competing rights in the public square are discarded in favour of the interests of a growing movement that has so many characteristics of fascism and fanaticism?

No legislation is perfect, but it seems to me that to keep homosexual sex illegal in Belize would prevent many intended and unintended bad consequences that the UK and USA and other countries now have to live with.

I respectfully entreat the government and people of Belize to do what my own government did not do: WATCH AND WAIT. To investigate what has happened in other countries and keep track of developments. To not be persuaded to conform to so-called “international standards” by, or follow the examples of arrogant countries such as my own, or the USA, or the EU.

Any enquiry into the scandalous national debts and other financial and economic affairs of these countries which have so seriously affected the whole world economy in recent years casts serious doubt on their worthiness to tell any country how to run its affairs.

We may live in a “global village,” but there is still vast ignorance about different cultures. I sincerely hope that Belizeans will make up their minds according to what they know about their country and their traditions.

I pray for your prosperity and happiness in years to come.

Yours very sincerely,
Deborah Pitt, MD.
Email [email protected].
Ph. 624 6717