US and British anti-gay groups call on Jamaica to keep buggery law

At a conference in Kingston, Jamaica, anti-gay groups from the US and the UK urged Jamaicans to fight off calls for the repeal of its buggery law.

While Peter LaBarbera, of Americans for Truth About Homsexuality, told attendees not to follow in the footsteps of the US and Britain by permitting LGBT activists to “achieve dominance” in their society, Andrea Minichiello Williams, of the UK’s Christian Concern, suggested that Jamaica could lead the way in rejecting pressure to decriminalize gay sex, BuzzFeed reports.

According to the report, LaBarbera criticized the American government for its support of LGBT rights, saying he hopes the Caribbean island learns “from our mistakes and from lessons of history and avoid the inevitable moral corruption and health hazards and the danger to young people that come from capitulating to this sin movement that calls itself gay.”

LaBarbera also stressed that ex-gay therapy has been an effective practice.

Both LaBarbera and Williams reiterated their beliefs that people are not born homosexual and that homosexuality and pedophilia are linked, both BuzzFeed and Pink News note.

BuzzFeed also quotes Williams as saying gay people “hate the line of homosexuality being linked to pedophilia. They try to cut that off, so you can’t speak about it. So I say to you in Jamaica: Speak about it. Speak about it.”

After raising the possibility of a review of Jamaica’s buggery law during a televised election debate in December 2011, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller has not acted on her rhetoric. She also said her People’s National Party (PNP) believes that the human rights of all Jamaicans should be protected and that no one should be discriminated against based on their sexual orientation.

There have been several attacks on LGBT Jamaicans since her remarkable statement, among them the murder of 16-year-old Dwayne Jones, who was chased from a Montego Bay party. Jones’s body was later found shot and stabbed on the side of a road in July.

Meanwhile, a group called the World Congress of Families says the US can learn from countries like Russia and Australia about “rebuilding a pro-family policy.”

In November, the organization held a discussion entitled “Family Policy Lessons from Other Lands: What Should America Learn?” in a US Capitol meeting space secured by Republican House Speaker John Boehner after access to a Senate meeting room was withdrawn.

In a preamble introducing the Nov 15 discussion, a release on the Christian News Wire states, “While the current US administration persists in its efforts to redefine marriage and family, other nations are seeking a reaffirmation of the natural family. Australia has just elected a conservative government and given the largest budget area to Kevin Andrews, long-time defender of the family and World Congress of Families supporter; Russia recently banned the propaganda of ‘nontraditional sexual relations’ to minors; and across Europe and Africa, nations are concerned with life issues, shrinking populations, and the disintegration of the natural family.”

In urging Ugandan MPs to stop delaying the passage of David Bahati’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill, former ethics minister James Nsaba Buturo also cited the example of countries like Russia and Nigeria and their anti-gay laws, saying Uganda should follow their “heroic” lead.

The so-called Kill the Gays bill, which reportedly still includes the death penalty for those found guilty of “aggravated homosexuality,” has been making its way up and down the parliamentary agenda for months but has yet to be put to a vote.