Years ago he was a contemporary of some of those who now tread haughtily through the halls of political power. He was one of them then when they would meet to smoke herb as sacrament and to engage in forums of social and political thought.

Years ago when they opted for closer engagement with the political process he chose the lesser lights, preferring to confine his teaching to the community, the children and especially the young men of the present generation who seem to be going nowhere fast.

Today he remains physically lean as he always was, while his political friends of the past have been oiled and fattened by the juicy hog of politics.

He sought me out because he had a burning desire to present a Rasta view on homosexuality especially in light of the recent mob actions (Half-Way-Tree and Montego Bay) against men said to be 'openly homosexual'.

"For obvious reasons, I do not want my name to be published because our society is a small, closed one where ignorance abounds and there are always aplenty, those who would want to victimise some of us who have too strong a viewpoint on a subject as touchy as male/male sexual pairing," he said.

Soul Rebel: Well, I don't make comment on politics like you do but whenever I have something to say I usually express them strongly like you do sometimes. That strength of expression I believe militates against me and the result is, no publication.

MW: Why would a Rastaman, an elder want to express a view on so touchy a subject as homosexuality? Certainly there are many other pressing issues in the society such as violent criminality, rampant indiscipline and widespread corruption. Why this?

SR: I had intended to follow the considered advice of a friend who felt that the DJ's and the media in general had so furthered the sordid cause of the homosexuals by devoting so much attention to the issue of homosexuality that I should avoid it. But an irate female relative, incensed at the bold, 'in your face' approach of these latter day 'sad' fellows, pointed out that the issue had to be joined on a number of counts.

SR: Bear with me. Let me put it all into context. You Wignall have in the past expressed views on the subject which find similarity to my own. For one, these 'sad-ists' with their media and institutional clout cunningly manage to convey the impression that silence or disinterestedness on the part of normal folk means tacit approval of their deviant lifestyle. Secondly, on the other hand, they have the effrontery slyly to suggest that anyone who rigorously opposes their sexual orientation is really, deep down, cut of the same cloth as they, that subconsciously, the homophobe (another loaded word meaning, according to standard dictionaries, one who has an extreme and irrational aversion to homosexuality) really harbours repressed desires to be a homosexual. That is a most lame attempt to hornswoggle psychology and have it both ways. In other words, if you are silent you are with them and if you speak against, you are still with them.

MW: But might it not be true that some of the DJs who jump up and down on stage, openly preaching hate and death against them are really repressed homosexuals?

SR: Yes, that is possible but I don't believe it is in fact so. Most of our DJs are street fed, street led and street educated. The crudity which comes out is, I believe, their responses to what they see as a pressing homosexual incursion on 'normal' society. To understand dancehall in its present dispensation is to accept that crudity is a part of its language. To understand our DJs is to appreciate that the line between crudity and inciting violence is oftentimes blurred.

SR: Thirdly, they have succeeded to some extent in upending language and certain concepts in a manner ominously reminiscent of the practice of certain Satanists. Thus, their 'sad' behaviour is now universally termed 'gay', extending the original meaning of the word from 'light hearted' to a reckless extreme. Then, attempting to sanitise their abnormal, patently unnatural inclination, they refer to it as an 'alternative lifestyle'.

The abnormality of the practice is tastelessly underwritten by those cynical exceptions - the male who invades the female anus and the ladies who, ostensibly disliking male sexual intimacy, have recourse still to imitation male organs.

SR: I respect you, Wignall. That's why I approached you with this and no one else. I want us to take this respect to a mutual level and keep it there. Let me know if your sarcasm is directed at me or you are just being humorous.

SR: Listen man. They have sought with some measure of success to equate the civil rights and liberation movements for responsible freedom with their 'freedom', their devilish desire to 'make close contact with human waste matter'. And therein lies the real rub and nub of the matter, for it is this aspect of the practice that makes your average Jamaican see red.

MW: In other words, you are saying that when the frills and the froth are cleared away, what really galls us 'normal folk' is this physiological reality of the places and the items that are involved in male homosexual contact?

SR: Exactly so. Most commentators on both sides of the cleavage, with what could charitably be described as a misplaced sense of decorum, delicately skirt the issue and refrain from calling a spade a spade. The real reason why the average 'Jah D' in Jamaica has this extreme, rational aversion to male homosexuality is not (as a recent overseas writer to one of our dailies said he gleaned from conversation with some Jamaicans) because of 'fear of the other', it is not because of Biblical injunction; it is not because of its supposed 'un-Africanness' nor the fact that Jamaica is nominally a 'Christian country'. It is simply that he cannot condone the abandonment of the clean 'nip and tuck' of normal heterosexual relations for the unhygienic foray amid waste matter, unfriendly bacteria and toxic germs.

MW: Let me ask you this. What is the man to do if he finds he has a strong attraction to another man as normal men have for women? Should he be a hypocrite and play the game; get married to a woman and fool himself?

SR: I believe that is a position which he knows best how to deal with. My position is that with the force of the homosexual lobby, the views of the average 'Jah D' must be placed right alongside the open activism of the man who loves men. There is no hypocrisy here as yet other misguided writers aver. 'Jah D' cannot see how it can be considered normal to forgo the natural, preordained creative union of male and female; to disdain the mix of complimentary fluids whether premarital, marital or extramarital and willingly embrace a process which leads to rooting amongst waste which anal penetration necessarily involves. Or the possibility of sustaining proctitis.

SR: How long could you 'hold out' with a beautiful woman for whom you have passionate feelings? Confronted bluntly with the unhygienic aspects of their behaviour, embarrassed defenders of homosexual 'rights' then try to claim that their relationship need not involve sex. Clearly this is an attempt to introduce a red herring. No reasonable person can deny the possibility of deep friendship between persons of the same sex as in the Biblical example of David and Jonathan.

What is at issue is that the homosexuals descend from this threshold to physical sexual relations and as a next step in their agenda insist that not only must society tolerate their right to do whatever pleases them in the privacy of their bedrooms but must also support them publicly.

SR: Jamaica is next door to the USA and there, they march in the streets. We have copied all of the worst of the religious 'tele-evangelical' aspects from that country and we even now have a homosexual church in Jamaica. Should society then condone incest and, horror of horrors, bestiality? If tolerance is shown in these regards, the next plank in the homosexual agenda, as we have seen relentlessly happening abroad, is to press society to allow same sex marriage. Having obtained spousal rights they then seek the right to adopt children. Now if that isn't the classic case of setting the cat amongst the pigeons, I don't know what is.

SR: Absolutely no way! I do not support any form of violence against them. What I sense is that the voice of the homosexual lobby has grown louder than our own while just recently a female relative of mine who has always attended Boys/Girls Champs reported to me on a posse of male homosexuals who always attend the event.

According to her, each year the posse grows and it now include schoolboys. The nerve of these people. If all the world follow suit there would be no reproduction of the species but they want heterosexuals through normal procreation to provide them with an endless supply of partners!

SR: Oh yes they say that. They always point to dysfunctional heterosexually parented families. So then as a minority seeking to enlarge its constituency and one moreover that does not see its sexual preference as an aberration it is clearly not far-fetched to anticipate that the right to adopt would just be part of a recruitment drive. That categorically, cannot be allowed to happen.

MW: I share some agreement with you on the question of homosexuals adopting, either boys or girls. I cannot for the life of me imagine what sort of 'normal' life such children would have. But to suggest that they would adopt as a ruse to abuse a child, is that really on?

SR: I told you before that I do not condone any form of violence against homosexuals. It is the insidious growth potential that inflames the DJs among other things. Espousing humanitarian tenets, today's world citizen has to stop short of advocating violence but the DJs have a right to 'free-speak'. Especially since large sections of the world churches belonging to a body that claimed to be one of the main moral and ethical arbiters have unseemingly wilted under the barefaced frontal assault mounted by the men who prefer men. Remember the American Episcopalians (Anglicans) a very large body, have treated us to a 'triple whammy'.

One, they ordain an openly deviant man as a bishop who gaily admits to indulging in (two) premarital or extramarital sex with (three) another male. How can that be countenanced by an organisation that condemns normal sex outside of marriage? That is the real outrage! Some of the rest of the world may try to pressure us, but nothing like that ordination should be allowed to occur in 'Jamekya'.

MW: Thanks for a most refreshing but obviously controversial look at this delicate subject. To what extent do your views represent the broad positions of the Rasta community?

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