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Those have been replaced by lyrics advocating violence to homosexuals, religious views that create hate in the minds of the already marginalized, and a number of recent murders of gay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

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