Dear Editor,
It is good that Junior Minister of Finance Juan Edghill and Pastor McGarell expressed their views about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered Guyanese. It is important in Guyana that people air their prejudices openly and even in jokes – people make racist, sexist jokes as well homophobic jokes – so that we could know how people are thinking.
What is sickening though, is that in 2014 Guyana, there is a Minister of Government who is ignorant of how human rights are applied and who believes that it is possible to say no discrimination against LGBT Guyanese while also engaging in activism fuelled on some of the most bizarre assumptions to ensure that the discrimination remains institutionalised in the laws of Guyana.
It should not be up to Minister Edghill or his cabinet colleagues to decide when and who they will discriminate against. The members of parliament are responsible for ensuring that the constitution and the laws of Guyana protect Guyana’s LGBT citizens according to Guyana’s human rights obligations.
What is sickening also, is how the activism to promote discrimination against LGBT Guyanese is fuelled by the assumptions that LGBT Guyanese will somehow destroy families, and the heterosexual “lifestyle.” Minister Edghill in 2010 abused his position at the Ethnic Relations Commission to say that the lives of children were endangered by an LGBT film festival. There are other claims which are made that LGBT Guyanese bring the violence on themselves, even though no one has been charged for the murders of Tiffany Holder, Delon Melville (whose righteous neighbours kept shouting at him that no “antiman” must live in Mocha) and Nandkumar Poonwassie.
Those of us who do not have the same religious views as Minister Edghill should be happy to hear the joking comments and the words which are not from the heart about the wrath of God coming down on everybody because of the actions of a few. It is good when these views are expressed publicly, because then we know what lurks in the hearts and minds of those who believe that Guyana’s mess is due to others. The wrath of God is not only about same sex love, but also about idolatory and many of us, Hindus especially, have been often reminded that unless we are saved, we will face the wrath of God. No one knows though how to interpret the wrath of God with the issues around the anti-money laundering bill (Minister Edghill and some pastors met with President Ramotar to discuss this) or whether the wrath of God will be felt if we ever have local government elections.
Minister Edghill spoke about the gay agenda and it seems that he and his colleagues feel that their form of loving would be threatened if LGBT Guyanese could be recognised as entitled to their form of consensual loving. The irony is that Minster Edghill’s homophobia is the sacred cow, protected and rewarded as is evidenced by the rewarding of his homophobic activism by a cabinet post paid for by the taxes of, among others, Guyanese who believe that LGBT Guyanese are entitled to the same rights as Minister Edghill and his colleagues.
One wonders what other prejudices lurk in the hearts and minds of President Ramotar’s cabinet, and what are the differences when they ‘represent the administration’ and when they do ‘not represent the administration.’
Yours faithfully,
Vidyaratha Kissoon
