Lesbian activist: It’s time for LGBT people to pay more attention to faith
Caribbean lesbian activist Angeline Jackson joins the board of the Global Interfaith Network.
In November, members of the Global Interfaith Network chose a new representative, Angeline Jackson, originally from Jamaica, to represent the Caribbean on the GIN board of directors.
In this position, she succeeds Dillon Mohamed of Guyana, whose term of office has expired. She holds the position on an interim basis, pending a vote by the region’s members in the near future.
GIN is an international interfaith network founded in South Africa in 2014 to bring the vision and outlook of LGBT+ people of faith and spirituality to the world and to push back against religious leaders who ostracize sexual and gender minorities.
For Erasing 76 Crimes, Angeline looks back on her career and how she sees her new mandate.
Angeline Jackson: I started working on HIV/AIDS issues in 2006 with the Parish Aids Association in the Saint Ann district on Jamaica’s north coast. There, I volunteered and worked to inform the public about the chain of contamination.
I then joined Jamaican AIDS Support for Life. They often work with a gay or bisexual public, or even with sex workers, but most of the time there’s not much for lesbians.
I’ve found the same invisibilization of lesbians at [the Jamaican LGBTQ rights group] JFlag, and I think it’s largely due to donor funding lines that are more health-oriented.
However, it was at JFlag that I met Maurice Tomlinson, and at a workshop he led in 2012 in the Portland district, it was the first time I heard about the role and place of faith in rolling back LGBTphobia. [Maurice Tomlinson is a Jamaican/Canadian lawyer, nurse and Erasing 76 Crimes correspondent who devoted many years to the fight to decriminalize homosexuality in the Caribbean.].
For me, Maurice was a mentor in my activism, and later I received financial support from the St. Paul’s Foundation [this blog’s financial sponsor] to register the island’s first lesbian women’s organization, Quality of Citizenship Jamaica (QCJ). Today, the association no longer exists, but for a few years we did advocacy work and wanted to promote research into lesbian women.
Moreover, in connection with questions of faith and social peace, and with the support of the St. Paul’s Foundation, in 2014 I had the opportunity to take part in a conference on the place and role of women in favor of a peaceful society, at the Roman Catholic University of San Diego, in the company of Ugandan [Roman Catholic health activist] Maxensia Nakibuuka and Canon Albert Ogle.
Erasing 76 Crimes: What do you intend to bring to the Global Interfaith Network as a representative of the Caribbean region on the board of directors?
Angeline Jackson: I’ve been following GIN’s work for several years now, and in September 2022 and also in 2023, I had the opportunity to meet some of their staff here in the Caribbean.
More than ever, I think it’s time for us to invest more in spaces dedicated to faith and spirituality, because the language of faith is important in our societies.
We also need to be present on these issues, so that a certain acceptance of religion doesn’t become the norm either, because one person’s freedom ends where another’s begins. And that’s what respect is all about.
On the other hand, we Caribbeans are people who are part of long-term migrations, and even if I know I’ll have to leave Jamaica, I can always come back, because this is my home and this is where my moral interests lie.
CLICK HERE for more on Angeline Jackson.
This article was revised on Dec. 9 to add the information about Dillon Mohamed and the upcoming vote to elect the permanent member of the board to represent the Caribbean.
