“Does this destination deserve my money?”
That provocative question was posed recently by Doug Wallace, a travel writer and contributor to the Toronto Globe & Mail, one of Canada’s leading daily newspapers. Wallace wasn’t focusing attention on Barbados alone. Instead, he was referring to the situation in at least 20 Caribbean tourism destinations which are economically dependent on the travel and hospitality industry for their prosperity.
Several factors caused him to raise the issue. The first is the existence of anti-homosexual laws in almost every CARICOM country, Barbados included.
Secondly, more and more members of Canada’s Lesbian Gay Bi-sexual and Transgender (LGBT) communities are questioning the wisdom of spending their money in a country that would imprison them for having intercourse with their same-sex partners. Next is a recent Appeals Court decision in Belize that triggered international headlines when the justices decided that Section 53 of the criminal code of the lone English-speaking nation in Central America was “unconstitutional”.
That law holds that any person who engages in “carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any person shall be liable to imprisonment for ten years.”
Although few, if any, men were hauled before the courts of law in Antigua, the Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, Grenada, Guyana, and their neighbours for engaging in same-sex relations in the past quarter of a century, the fact that the laws remain on the books is enough for some Canadian LGBT advocates to propose mounting economic boycotts of specific Caribbean countries in order to force them “to repeal their discriminatory laws”.
However, a large scale and highly successful shift is unlikely to see the light of day any time soon and for some very good, reasons.
Heading the list is the fact that while LGBT advocates in many of the Caribbean nations may wish to see the laws changed, they are unlikely to support a travel embargo because of the economic damage it can cause in the destinations. In addition, many gay Canadians and their businesses wouldn’t support it because the results wouldn’t justify the effort.
Just as bad, they would end up getting a bad name as people who want to hurt innocent nationals of countries that are already struggling to kick start economic growth and prosperity.
Next, Caribbean governments and churches are unlikely to change their opposition to homosexuality because of a threat of a boycott. Yes, the countries may lose millions of dollars in tourism revenue, but they are unlikely to buckle under foreign pressure.
Dr Rinaldo Walcott, a Barbadian professor at the University of Toronto and a highly vocal member of Canada’s LGBT community said recently he wouldn’t join any protest action because any movement for change in Barbados should originate in the country and not from outside of it.
Interestingly, he has taken that stance while supporting applications of Bajan and other West Indian immigrants seeking Canadian refugee status because of human rights violations back home.
In an article in the Globe & Mail, Wallace, a Canadian LGBT advocate for change in anti-homosexual laws across the Caribbean, signalled he too opposed any tourism boycott of the region.
“Why should the people of a less enlightened government suffer from my lack of tourist dollars, when it’s their leaders and law-makers who are the idiots? Isn’t it better to have your voice heard, to challenge the lack of human rights in these places? It may be that being in people’s faces is how to get the point across, how to sway foreign countries to recognise LGBT rights,” he wrote.
“I can’t help feeling that a trip to St Lucia with my partner and six of our friends would chip away at the stereotypes and homophobia, even just a little bit.”
As a matter, Wallace added, “some conservative populations are already there.” And the example, he cited was, you guessed it, Barbados.
“We love gay people,” a Bajan taxi-driver “yelled at us at the cruise ship dock in Barbados, as 2 000 men spilled off an Atlantis Events gay cruise this past March,” Wallace told at least half million Canadian readers of the major paper in Toronto. “When even the cab drivers are saying ‘you are welcome’ you have to question all the boycotting.”
Asked about the economic boycott discussion in Canada and elsewhere, a senior official of the Barbados Ministry of Tourism said politely “we don’t talk about LGBT and repeal of the homosexual laws in our country. It’s not something we focus on in our marketing. The truth is that we don’t have a major problem on this issue.”
Walcott, a tenant and close friend of the late Austin “Tom” Clarke, the celebrated literary icon who died recently in Toronto, thinks Barbados should change its anti-homosexual laws not because of a threat of a boycott but because it’s the right thing to do. Never mind that the church would vigorously oppose any such move.
In any case, the tide is moving towards repeal elsewhere in the region. Belize’s court decision can be a catalyst for change. Jamaica’s Prime Minister, Andrew Holness, wants a referendum on the issue while the country’s main daily, The Gleaner, argued, quite correctly in a recent editorial that the state “has no place snooping around the bedrooms of consenting adults.” Guyana’s President David Granger, was quoted earlier this year as saying his administration “would respect the rights of any adult to engage in any practice which is not harmful to others.”
The laws in Barbados and its neighbours are a relic of a Victorian age and as in the case of Belize and its courts may turn out to be unconstitutional.
