Most Homophobic Place on the Earth?

And the winner is (according to Time Magazine): JAMAICA!

Gone are the days of Bob Marley's "One Love" and images of a Caribbean paradise filled with reggae's gentle rhythms.

Those have been replaced by lyrics advocating violence to homosexuals, religious views that create hate in the minds of the already marginalized, and a number of recent murders of gay men/women and attacks on human rights activists.

"Reggae's anti-gay rhetoric has seeped into the country's politics. Jamaica's major political parties have passed some of the world's toughest antisodomy laws and regularly incorporate homophobic music in their campaigns. "The view that results," says Jamaican human-rights lawyer Philip Dayle, "is that a homosexual isn't just an undesirable but an unapprehended criminal."http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1182991,00.html

There is a bit of a silver lining within all of this; some of Jamaica's artists have signed the "reggae compassionate act" (a campaign begun by 'Stop Murder Music') which has "succeeded in convincing some of the most notoriously homophobic figures in reggae and dancehall music to stop singing violently anti-gay lyrics..." This is not necessarily out of the goodness of their hearts, but due to cancellations and loss of revenue these artists have faced...it's a start. http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1650585,00.html?iid=sphere-inline-bottom

T

World Health Day

April 7th was World Health Day...whoops, sort of missed it, better late than never I guess.

I've posted a link below for an organization that has some pretty interesting stuff on HIV/AIDS and sexual health in general.

AVERT is an international AIDS charity; I really like the variety of media it uses to educate, to question our perceptions of HIV/AIDS, and to help us understand the issues faced by positive persons dealing with discrimination and stigma. It uses narratives, quotes, videos, quizzes, photos, editorials, etc, to really get various points across.

T

http://www.avert.org/

Absence Makes the Mind Grow Stronger?

Hi everyone, I know I've been away for some time, just trying to re-adjust to life back in Canada.
I hope this absence hasn't been viewed as a sign that I've lost interest in my thinking on human rights. On the contrary, since coming back to Vancouver, I've been hypersensitive to what's going on and"mildly" appalled at the thinking that occupies the minds of people living in this comfortable and relatively carefree environment (based on my middle-class perspective).

Random Thoughts:

We are at a point in human history when it is becoming increasingly important to know the names of cast members on a reality tv program, to try and gain 15 minutes of fame by outdoing 5th graders on basic knowledge questions, and to read mindless tabloids which make us feel better about ourselves at the expense of a celebrity's misery. Why do we do everything in our power to merely be entertained, to stop expanding our minds, and to stop questioning?

A polarity is growing between the religious right, the atheistic right, and the cause searching left (perhaps I fit into one of these categories); our inability to find common ground and to moderate our thinking in all cases is leading to a conflict brought on by a list of details occupying our "righteous" minds. We don't really want to find truths, we want to believe in our versions of them, and even uphold them when the fallacies are discovered.

It is said that the world is getting smaller in this age of globalized communication, transportation, trade, etc, but the paradox is that we are losing our connection to one another, and losing the ability to build and support relationships; we fill ourselves up with information which is usable in the here and now and we disregard meaning. Perhaps it is a coping mechanism for the increased bits of data we receive each day, but it seems detrimental to the "rational nature" of our species. Discussion, dialogue, and philosophical debate bring us closer to an understanding of ourselves, and to eachother, but we are learning to disregard those methods at the expense of newer and faster systems.

And my point is:

Fundamentally, it is stated, that each person in the world wants one thing...to be valued as a human being, and to be treated with respect and with dignity. It sounds like pretty simple stuff, so how is it that we have gotten to a point where a human life is a commodity which can be thrown away, sacrificed, given less value than another commodified life, or simply ignored? We value image, we ascribe status, and we forget to connect with the fundamental reality which lies behind that which our minds have created.

T