Maurice Tomlinson
Locked in a court battle with the government of Jamaica, LGBTQ rights activist Maurice Tomlinson rejects repression by religious extremists and, at the same time, is amazed at why Jamaican Christians are so fascinated by what happens in his bedroom.
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By Maurice Tomlinson
As a gay man I am always amazed how my private acts of intimacy excite so many Jamaican Christians! Their voyeuristic proclivities are really quite perplexing. Some of these “saved and sanctified” souls have even described in graphic detail what my husband of ten years and I supposedly do in our bedroom. But I am much too timid to try half the things that these sanctimonious peeping Toms propose. All I seek is consensual intimacy with an adult to whom I am romantically, physically, and emotionally attracted. That should sound familiar to heterosexuals because, while the mechanics of our sex may (sometimes) differ, our aim is the same: sexual fulfillment in a committed relationship.
This uncontroversial fact seems so alien to select “followers of Christ” that at every opportunity they bellow their support for the deadly anti-sodomy law. Yet, Christ said nothing about homosexuality and as Easter reminds us, he was harassed, persecuted and killed for denouncing religious leaders who used unjust laws to oppress the vulnerable.
Similarly, for half a decade I have been locked in a court battle with the government and nine extremist religious groups which want to use the archaic “buggery law” to persecute LGBT Jamaicans. Two recent reports of the highest human rights tribunal of the Western Hemisphere, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) condemned the antediluvian statute that violates Jamaica’s international human rights obligations and has served as license for barbaric attacks against gay citizens.
My constitutional challenge to the law is therefore not just about rejecting the policing of my boudoir by church and state, it is more fundamentally about the right to life of every queer Jamaican.
The Jamaican government can end this sad spectacle and our international embarrassment by scrapping the archaic edict. Or, like Pontius Pilate our leaders will be complicit in the abuse and death of innocent people if they bow to the inhumane demands of religious extremists.
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- Hidden no more, ‘A.B’ steps forth in battle against Jamaica’s anti-gay law
- After long delay, scathing report blasts Jamaica’s anti-gay laws (February 2021, 76 crimes.com)
- Inter-American commission blasts Jamaica’s anti-gay laws (
- Archive of this site’s articles about Jamaica
- Archive of this site’s articles by and about Maurice Tomlinson
They’re obsessed!
I bet any (straight) married people I know would find me very strange if I told them I regularly imagined them naked and intimate and disapproved of certain sexual acts I presumed they were doing. Yet these self-righteous religious extremists have no shame! What’s more, they hold YOU accountable for THEIR own prurient imaginations.
Anyone who is gay will – even if they’re initially gaslighted by homophobic society – eventually have to acknowledge that their orientation is genuine and immutable. So if there is a creator, that creator put them here with such a trait and sustains their breath daily. Why do religious extremists arrogate the right to extinguish anyone from this planet? They can’t accept reality and they’re in the wrong.
The pandering Jamaican government will not do the right thing but I wish you luck with your legal challenge. If Jamaican courts struck down a national ID law over privacy concerns but retains the extremely invasive colonial “buggery law” I wouldn’t even know what to say.