When the UNIBAM issue first caught a-fire in the Belizean consciousness, our editorial position at this newspaper was basically this: let the gays fight this out amongst themselves.
The two most powerful religions in Belize are the Roman Catholic Church, with headquarters in Rome, Italy, and the Anglican Church, with headquarters in Canterbury, England. Internationally, both these organizations have been wracked by sex scandals in the last decade, the Roman Catholics by the child abuse scandals and the Anglicans because they have been ordaining gay clergy.
Much of the power of these two religions in Belize derives from the fact that they control the educational system, and what the vast majority of Belizean parents desire, above all, is the best possible education for their children. Hence, Belizean parents are generally careful to stay on the good side of the clergy who run the schools.
In Belize, we know more about the Caribbean than we do about Central America. That is why we can say that we believe Belize is the most liberal country in the Caribbean where homosexuality is concerned. We don’t know enough about Central America to compare Belize to the republics on this matter. The homosexual community in Belize has been thriving for decades, and the gays are very powerful in all spheres of our society.
The colonial law on the books says that homosexuality is criminal behavior, but that law is not enforced in Belize. Homosexuality is specifically condemned in the Old Testament section of the Holy Bible, but the homosexuals have become so powerful in both the United Kingdom and the United States, the two nations which have probably most influenced the attitude and behavior of Belizeans, that they have created arguments, seemingly successfully, to neutralize the Old Testament, and they have made it so that homosexuality is not considered a sin in the mainstream Christianity of the U.K. and the U.S. Things have now reached the stage where the Christian governments of the United Kingdom and the United States have now begun to demand that Third World countries like Belize abolish the laws which criminalize homosexuality.
In Belize, the clergy, including leaders of the Roman Catholic and Anglican branches of these religions here, are insisting that homosexuality is a sin, and that it should remain a crime. They say that UNIBAM is the spear point of an international agenda which is seeking to institutionalize same sex marriage and other rights for homosexuals which will undermine the most important unit of human society – the family.
In the Kremandala yard, which houses this newspaper, KREM Radio, KREM Television, and the Library of African and Indian Studies, the UNIBAM issue has begun to divide the people who work here, even as it has divided the larger society of Belizeans. The editor-in-chief of Amandala has gone public in his utter condemnation of the UNIBAM agenda, but it came to our attention this week that there are Kremandala personnel who support UNIBAM in theory, their main argument being that of human rights.
On the face of it, there is nothing wrong with UNIBAM’s attempt to have homosexuality in Belize legalized. De facto, it already is. It would only be a formality to legalize homosexuality in Belize. The problem is what the church leaders and their supporters say will come after the legalization – same sex marriage, right to raise children, and so on and so forth.
A while back, human science/technology reached the point where they began making babies in test tubes. It’s not as simple as that, but it means that homosexuals can now make babies. So now, they want to have families, which hitherto had been the absolute domain of the traditional heterosexual unit. This complicates matters no end. Seriously. It was bad enough when they, seemingly successfully, established that their unnatural behavior was not sinful: now, the gays are saying they are normal enough to raise children in homes where the parents are gays. This is happening in Britain and America, but we believe that that would be going too far for Belize.
In these pages, we have told you before about “thin edge of the wedge.” If you get in the thin edge, you can drive in the fat edge of the wedge. All on its lonesome, there is little dangerous to our Belizean society where the legalization of homosexuality is concerned. If that homosexuality legalization, however, is only the thin edge of the wedge in Belize where international homosexuality is concerned, then, Houston, we have a problem, a big problem. The thin edge of the wedge argument is basically what our local anti-UNIBAM clergy have been using.
When the international child abuse scandal began, nevertheless, there were some of these same avenging angels who essentially were sweeping child abuse under the Belizean rug. At this newspaper, we are still angry about that, and we want to know how you can ignore child abuse and be so “gung ho” about fighting homosexuality. It doesn’t make sense to us. People have to come clean if they want to lead us.
This is the rub. There are people who want to point fingers who don’t want to come clean. Belize is a small place, and we know one another’s business. Consider the historic hypocrisy, in the larger sense, of the British. Our African slave ancestors built St. John’s Cathedral, a worship structure for a religion which preached that we were all made in the image and likeness of God. That was contradiction enough. The British church and the British state are as one. The British church is ordaining homosexuals, the British state is threatening to cut aid to us if we don’t legalize homosexuality, but the Belizean Anglican clergy is leading the fight against UNIBAM. How you figure?
Belizeans are divided, and the divisions will become more emotional and quarrelsome in nature. But, more than being divided, many Belizeans are confused. So are we. We can’t claim to understand men who want to be women, and women who want to be men. Our plea is ignorance.