Dear Editor,

In 1992 the World Health Organisation removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses, putting an end to over a century of institutionalised homophobia in the medical field. In 2003, the American Psychiatric Association stated that “homosexuality is not a disease that can be cured or ‘altered’, it is just another expression of human sexuality”. And while no “gay gene” has been isolated, there is evidence that homosexuality occurs in many species in nature.

Yet many Jamaican churchgoers believe in and preach deliverance for homosexuals. Some go further and claim that the right of consenting adult males to conduct their sexual relations in private should not be recognised as a civil right. To these persons, Rev Clinton Chisholm among them, homosexuality is fluid and unstable as gays choose to sleep with men or women as their desires dictate. The irony is that these same persons accept that religious expression is also fluid as you can be born into one faith and change many times over your lifetime. Yet the right to such fluid religious expression is constitutionally recognised.

It is highly hypocritical to say that your freedom to worship an invisible deity should be recognised while your right to love and engage; in private consensual adult sexual relations with a visible human being is not. But doesn’t the Bible warn of such persons who claim to love a God they cannot see but hate their brother whom they see every day?

Maurice Tomlinson

St James

maurice_tomlinson@yahoo.com