The End Of Gay Rights

It's not the gay apocalypse. We just want to know where the finish line is.

Rasheed Griffith

and

Shem Best

Aug 26, 2024

Listen on Spotify

Show notes

The gay “movement” in the Caribbean has stalled and we think it’s because they haven’t done their due diligence. The various rights groups throughout the region have skipped the necessary steps in the evolutionary progression of gay concepts in the Caribbean. They’ve hastily pushed to emulate their more developed American and European colleagues and now risk a paralyzing backlash that could set gay rights in the region back for generations.

How have we arrived at this critical impasse? We think the gay drain is to blame. Brain drain is a term coined to describe educated individuals who emigrate away from the Caribbean to seek out better opportunities for their degrees and fields of study. It’s no surprise that these emigrants are also, very gay. The “D.C gay” as we call them in this episode is any gay man or woman who has graduated from fighting for rights, to enjoying them. Whether they were on the streets with placard to bring them to being, or simply worked to escape the Caribbean region and join a more comfortable life abroad, these individuals have exited the conversation entirely.

With these moderate fighters gone from the equation, more radical personalities who often see the progress abroad and seek to copy it at home are all that’s left. And this overwhelming body of extremes is the new face of the gay rights movement in the Caribbean. The role models all but gone. Western societies are now at a completely different stage of the rights conversation, one that has been unnecessarily obfuscated by the introduction of concepts like trans rights, that are are not synonymous with the gay rights that were fought for earlier. This dilution of the gay rights movement via the addition of more and more letters now paints a picture of a slippery slope that conservative developing parts of the world are terrified of and keen to avoid. In our modern environment that is becoming hostile to external changes perceived as threats to culture, what paths are there to progress?

Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated by AI and lightly edited by our team. We don’t catch every error, so if you spot one, send us a message/email via shem@cpsi.org.

Rasheed: Hello, Shem, and welcome to the Chi Chi Man episode.

Shem: Hi, Rasheed. What a way to start a gay rights episode. No matter how many rights we get, that song will remain a banger. Even the name of this episode was a point of contention for Rasheed, not me. I was gonna call this the queer episode, the LGBT community episode. He had a problem with two of those words so far.

Why weren't we gonna call it the queer episode? You just wanted this to just be the gay episode?

Rasheed: Yeah, cause gay and queer are not the same thing. Queer is a negation of being gay is an absolute term that has a fixed format. The entire origin term queer was to add chaos to the entire discourse of what counts as a particular sexual identity.

Queer is nothingness. Gay is a very specific thing. So I don't think about queer rights. That's not a real thing. There's no such thing . That's not a thing either. There's no community of that sort. The letters contradict themselves in terms of rights acquisition. I'm sure we'll get into it in this episode. For example, the rights of 'T' and often ideology of transsexual ideology, not always, but often contradict some of the progress that gay men have made to make the Western world a bit more palatable for gay lifestyles. So I don't use those terms, they are actually counterproductive, in fact, perhaps even harmful.

Shem: No, we are gathered here today to have a frank discussion on the, we're not going to call it a movement. It's a loose collection of organizations. Some recognized some not recognized that are supposed to be pushing a common narrative and that is rights in the Caribbean and if they have succeeded in those rights. Now, as you know, the Caribbean region has buggery laws abound, then there's no gay marriage.

There's very little in terms of recognition for gay unions throughout the region, for most of the islands. Several islands still have buggery laws on the books, including Jamaica, St. Vincent, St. Lucia. Some of them have only just recently overturned their buggery laws their anti sodomy laws. This means guys, no, no butt stuff.

It's illegal. Someone's going to rappel through your window, drag you on the street going, "look at them!". But Barbados recently overturned theirs. Trinidad and Tobago also joined in on some of the, cause we all want the butt stuff, just joined in on the fun and it hasn't gone any farther. We've gotten nowhere from that point.

Technically speaking, the LGBTQ organizations in Barbados had very little to do with the actual overturning of that law. It was due to a case between domestic case, of course, between one citizen who voiced their concerns and successfully argued it was unconstitutional for this law to remain on the books.

But Barbados as a country really is not having that conversation, and there's no one pushing the actual necessary conversation in the narrative of those civil rights, despite having all these so called LGBTQ rights organizations smattered all over the place. We've got Equals, and in Barbados at least, we were aware of equals and BGLAAD and those sorts of things.

You're looking at me so strangely. You have no idea, do you?

Rasheed: I know Equals.

Shem: Okay, in Jamaica you have JFLAG and they're much more across the region. I think we can safely assume they have failed in their pseudo purpose. What should be a common, because they're not all unified as they should be. They failed in their pseudo purpose and we really want to get to the meat of why they have failed and what's the solution? Like where should we be going from here?

Rasheed: So in one respect, I would agree they failed in the general clause, but I don't know if they really had very specific objectives to move things forward. Now, I know many people from there will get very upset very fast. Oh my goodness.

But I think when you really go to the core of it, there wasn't any directionality in policy proposals or legal plumbing proposals from these organizations. Might be people who are sympathetic to organizations that will have these goals, but that's not the same thing. And very often times, these organizations are a lot more, again, counterproductive in the social context we live in, than they can even grasp, because they're so thoroughly entrenched in West Coast, East Coast, U.S ideology of what counts as popular culture in quote unquote gay communities, a term I think is again, very toxic.

Shem: Now, these organizations in question, you just mentioned they lack a goal.

Rasheed: Mhm.

Shem: But one could also argue that it seems that they're more organized counterparts in the more northern developed United States and want to also seem to lack a goal.

We had a conversation on this recently, the end of gay rights, which sounds like Armageddon for the rainbow community. But that's not what we mean. What we mean when we say the end of gay rights is what is the end goal? What does the achievement of gay rights look like in the end? And that, as we've ascertained that does not necessarily include trans rights as well. That is, they're not the same thing.

Rasheed: And that's why I think people don't always agree with that. Yeah, the idea of what's the end of gay rights? Literally, I use that term in the double entendre of end, as in the destination of gay rights, but also can it be squashed to a point where it can actually get to that destination in the future?

So oftentimes, the first question you should ask is then "what is the destination?" You can't just assume it's always a fight, it's always a struggle, it's always chaos needed to bring to the center. That's not realistic. Again, that is however how many people do think about this issue. There's no end goals, they don't have an end goal in mind.

Oftentimes I think the end goal is what I, it's not a very fair categorization, but often what I categorize as San Francisco gays or SF gays, and then Washington D.C gays or D.C gays. And I use that, again, this is tongue-in-cheek in many ways, in the sense that SF gays are the people who generally have a much more chaotic identity.

They are very more public in terms of trying to differentiate gayness from heterosexuality. They have like specific shows they like, specific party arrangements. They go to certain parties. They dress a particular outlandish way, or a sexually charged way. It is what a person with stereotype a gay man as essentially.

No, I'm not saying that's a bad thing. People like that. People as adults can do what you want. I am fully on board with the adult train here. In contrast, you have the D.C gay, which is generally speaking a gay man who grows up not super left wing political ideology wise. They often get married. They have a family. They might do non family things. They might have, for example, different sexual variety household management in some ways. But they're very private. They don't dress any outlandish way. They have typical government jobs. They go home. They don't really participate too much in gay activities.

And I mean that in broad cultural, the stereotype of cultural speaking. They don't know who RuPaul is. So on and so on.

Shem: They have exited the gay conversation.

Rasheed: In many ways, they, as I said, "I have the right to get married. I can adopt children. I am done with the gay rights thing", to put it crudely. "I've exited it. I am now just a fellow American who has a husband, maybe some children" . And I use D.C as the polarity to SF primarily because D.C is the highest, has the highest proportion of gay and married men of any state in the U.S. Yes, I know D.C is not a state, but it's a city, for example. And that's why I use that as the crude categories of what these people are.

And these people are not in the gay conversation. They think, "oh, we've ended this" in terms of the legal plumbing for more or less in the U.S. Where on the SF gay side, they're still going. They keep adding in letters. They keep adding in concepts. And very often these things clash. For example, a feminine gay boy, often times by SF gays, not all, but again these are crude categories, SF gays, you are actually a trans woman.

You're not a feminine boy, you should transition to be a woman. It's always funny because the T, the transsexual ideology, radical stuff, is actually very, it's a lot more gender formed, gender stereotypical than gay community. "You can't have a feminine boy, he's obviously a girl". That's what the old Christians, the very harsh, Renewalists or Puritan Christians would say. "Oh, you can't have a feminine boy. That's a, it's a girl." In Iran, they would have a situation where if you do have a feminine boy or a gay boy, they would actually push them to become a trans woman. So that's more palatable in their society. And similarly, now we are adopting that same kind of concept where it's now more palatable not to make the world safe for feminine gay boys or feminine men is to say "no, you can't be a feminine man. You are a woman."

And that is a direct clash in many ways, to the entire purpose of having the world safe for gay men. And that is, to me, the fundamental clash between the end of gay rights across , these which are not communities. These are different groups of people that have different end goals.

It's different interests, and we need to stop pretending that they're all the same thing.

Shem: What I'm getting here is that the gay rights movement, I can actually refer to the one from the United States as a movement, has reached the finish line.

Rasheed: Not, no, it's not every single possible thing it's done.

Shem: It's not all finished, but they've more or less reached the finish line, but somehow they've kept running. And not only have they kept running, they've now picked up a small transsexual child. And they're running with said child screaming, "but there's more!"

Rasheed: Yes.

Shem: Now that race in general, if you put that down into a timeline, it's not happening in a vacuum. As we discussed, the world is watching. Not just the world, the Caribbean is watching, and they're looking on. The conservative Caribbean person is looking on in horror. They're equating the gay rights movement to that particular part where you've made it past the finish line, but you somehow keep going.

You're asking for more and more. It's coming into the slippery slope argument that a lot of conservatives in the Caribbean fear. But they're dragging the actual progress of what could be a gay rights movement in the Caribbean and the developing world down. It is negatively sending us, I say us, but you're in Madrid.

Rasheed: You're currently also currently in Madrid!

Shem: But as of Tuesday, one of us has to return to the developing world. So we're being dragged back by the fake progress that the developed world is now aiming for. And that brings me to the next section where the people that are, how do you say, trying to form the Caribbean gay rights movement, where are they coming from or where they're getting their ideas from?

My theory is that they've entirely skipped most of the North American narrative and they're fast forwarding to the finish line, which is what is causing this slippery slope.

Rasheed: Well, this version of the finish line.

Shem: Of the timeline, yeah.

Rasheed: It's not my preferred version of the finish line, but their view, yes.

Shem: They're skipping steps. And because they've skipped steps, they're terrifying the people who live in the region. So we're not going for the, we're not having a stone wall. We're not fighting for drag capabilities or drag inclusion. And I think we've gone too fast, we've skipped that. We haven't even gotten gay marriage.

Rasheed: Most of the Caribbean still has anti buggery laws.

Shem: Still have anti buggery laws. The only ones that even have taste, a sample of gay marriage are the ones that have been chained to Europe and so far have been either forced or have decided, "Oh, we might as well." But the actual English speaking Caribbean, hell no.

Independent Caribbean, Sovereign Caribbean, it hasn't happened. And it's not going to happen because that's not what the movement here is pushing for. So what we're getting here now is basically angering some people. We got liberal students going overseas, studying, coming back, and they've completely forgotten where in that race the Caribbean is. They're at the finish line. They think the Caribbean should now be at the finish line. They think the Caribbean has the social maturity to be at the finish line. Not aware that we haven't even started the conversation on what marriage is, what a civil union looks like.

Rasheed: Again, some countries haven't even gotten to the point where they say that, "Oh, it actually should not be illegal to have gay sex."

We are at such different levels of policy that it is, if it wasn't so sad, it'll be hilarious.

Shem: Now, as a result of this skipping steps, which is odd because everyone in the Caribbean is aware of this phrase: show your working. The LGBTQ the gay groups in the Caribbean are not showing any.

Rasheed: Another issue of the LGBT alphabet soup is that I can find the conceptual framework to have a T inside but a Q? How is Q even remotely relevant ? You're not gay if you're in the Q by definition. So it's like, how is that now a sexuality? Anyway, but let's, I know I don't want to go too far, but the Q just is is always even more frustrating than the T in many ways.

Shem: We're not here to bash, well I'm not here to bash folks. Rasheed has pitchfork and torch in hand already, but the T does have historical precedence. Like the initial movement was transexuals, et cetera. There is some historical precedent for why the T seems to have like an honorary place there.

Rasheed: It wasn't there actually historically, that's why I knew it.

Shem: Why it's been placed, why it's been added. Why it's been added. Now the Q is being treated like some sort of catch all.

Rasheed: Which is absurd.

Shem: Which is a bit odd because it's also encouraging, it's encouraging the obfuscation.

Rasheed: Is Q question or queer? Cause sometimes it was questioning, then it was, uh, some people say it's queer.

Shem: But if it's either, it's doing the same thing.

Rasheed: It is, because also, if you are questioning, maybe you will eventually enter to use the term community, but you're by definition, you're not in it. So why do you even have some kind of representation in the letter?

Shem: Let's not invite the semantics police.

Let's not invite the gay semantics police to storm in on this. What we're getting at here is that: one, the people who are in the conversation, the Caribbean right now have exposure to the wrong part of the timeline.

Rasheed: Yes, correct.

Shem: In gay rights development.

And this brings me to the more pertinent question. Where are the people that we need to have this conversation? Enter the aforementioned D.C gay.

Rasheed: Yeah, a lot of times, as you mentioned, the people who are, who usually take the step, in some ways it is a fairly brave thing to do, to be a public face of what we used to call gay rights in the Caribbean, which is not actually called that anymore. To be some kind of public face of that, it does require some kind of bravery, sometimes also narcissism. But I will go in the good camp, I say bravery. And all the time these people, very recently, have direct educational exposure to the U. S., to the U. K., to Canada, for example. And they join the communities in those jurisdictions and imbibe that context. And then they go back to the Caribbean and just pick up from there and carry on. But they don't reassess and realize, "oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, I switched context on that plane. You know, I have to reassess what's going on so I can actually speak to what's happening here."

But they don't actually care about change. That's a harsh thing to say, Rasheed. Yes, I know. But when you speak to the people, often, again, not everyone people calm down. But many of them that have this public persona, when you speak to them, they do not really care for changing opinions where they live. They care about saying "you", meaning the average Caribbean citizen, "are a bigot. You are actually probably even evil. I am always right and you are always wrong." And you can't have a productive conversation.

Shem: The demands, I dare say the demands are too great. The demands that they return from the developed world with from their Oxfords and their Cambridges, their demands are now too great. And it feels like it's undeserved because the struggle that the other organizations have had to endure before reaching that point, you skipped it.

Rasheed: Yeah, you don't struggle.

Shem: You haven't struggled. And because of this hard leaning, hyper version of progress that they've got in their minds, they're out of sync. They're not realistic anymore. They're actually alienating a subset of the gay, we're not going to call it community. Because at the end of the day, let's be perfectly honest.

The they/them with the pink hair is not changing legislation.

Rasheed: Yes, that's correct.

Shem: It's gonna be a boring, regular-degular Bernice in a lesbian couple who happens to have a space in Congress or on the Senate or a business owner who's eventually gonna be the one to go, "Guys, we're losing money over this shit."

Rasheed: They do have gay couples that have appeals in court and things like that.

Shem: That's what happened in Barbados and Trinidad, etc.

Rasheed: That stuff does work. But at the same time, when you see that thing happen, again, it doesn't work often. Not always, but often. There is this unnecessary backlash from the society.

The call-in radio programs, the TV, the person on the street. Because when you give a little too much it becomes this Slippery Slope argument. Because they are seeing the Pride parade in Boston, where you have the very young children watching men in thongs , with dog masks on a parade, waving them down the street.

That might sound like some harsh stereotype, but I was at Boston Pride. I've seen it with my eyes. So people see that and they think that's what will happen in the Caribbean.

Shem: Media is everything. Media is how the Caribbean consumes the external stimulus from the rest of the world. They're not seeing the conversation that the United States is having, which is, "Should children even be there?"

That's the conversation the States is having. People in the United States are not arguing "let's bring our kids to watch guys in dog suit s."

No, some

Rasheed: are. Some, yeah, some are, to be clear. In the very coastal areas.

Shem: But that's the conversation they're having. That's the conversation.

That's where they're at. We haven't even gotten to the part where we should be safely having a pride parade.

Rasheed: Sure. If the pride parade was just literally some kind of austere event, there would not be, not really be a big backlash against it.

Shem: What I'm saying is the United States has reached that point where this is the thing that they're discussing now.

This is not the window by which we should be judging the Caribbean side of things. We haven't gotten there yet. We can't have that discussion yet.

Rasheed: But you're forcing the discussion to happen.

Shem: On an unready population, and then being outraged at this population, which you are aware just in the past few-

Rasheed: But to be clear, it's not that the gay groups can help that. This is what's happening in in Boston, in SF, in New York, in Toronto. But you see it on TV. You can't tell them turn off the TV. That's not the real gay. Those are gay people having gay parades. The problem is that is the point of why it's a contentious issue on what's the end of gay rights, even there.

Because if that is what you portray as the end of gay rights, then countries like Barbados and Jamaica, Uganda, can you see that and think "oh, that is what they're going to do here in this country when the rights are given." Because that is the demonstration of what the end of gay rights looks like in Boston, New York, and Toronto.

And that's part of the really heavy burden that these Western liberal societies have.

Shem: An unfortunate burden they've also placed on their developing neighbors to figure out.

But also our paradox, our problem, not paradox. Our problem right now is where do we find the counter voice to go "No, that's not what we're aiming for. We don't want to get there." Where's the sensible person to go "you know what? We don't have that gun problem. We don't have that. We don't have those gun problems. We have sensible laws. We can work our way towards a common baseline where everybody has the inclusivity and the rights without having children at a pride parade."

Like we just said, the D.C gay is not here. In fact, they leave, they tend to leave or just live in a bubble apart from the rest of society. Let's face it. A lot of the most powerful gay individuals in the Caribbean, Barbados is particularly prone to this, they do segregate themselves from the rest of the community.

In fact, they tend to not even involve themselves with the smaller organizations that are trying to coagulate into a sort of movement. They're not a part of that. They're not becoming the face of that. They're not campaigning for that. And even if they are, we're not seeing it, like nothing's happening really.

In other words, there is no one controlling the narrative. There's no one at the helm.

Rasheed: In many ways, I don't think you can really control the narrative when it's so against you. You can't put the Boston Parade back in the box. That's not gonna happen. The thing you mentioned about the whole D.C, I love how we're using the category D.C gays.

Shem: It's a word now, it's a thing now.

Rasheed: D.C gays do exit.

They exit the conversation. And they exit because, in many ways, I have my thing. We, fought for the rights, they were right. We won them. Let me go about my non gay business.

Shem: But in the case of the Caribbean, the D.C gay is the one that says, "I've won my individual freedom. I'm out."

Rasheed: Yeah, that's also an issue.

I'm not going to say I'm a hypocrite.

Shem: Imma say you are. Where are we right now?

Rasheed: No, it's not being hypocritical. Okay? It's just doing the thing that happens with this event. So I am a gay man from the Caribbean, from Barbados. I left Barbados because there are not many rights there, but also there are other things, of course. But then I'm married, have a house, I have a good job, I have good hobbies and so on.

I've become that kind of very standard D.C gay in many ways. And I'm very sure there are many people from Barbados that will go " ah, he can do that. That's cool. He can, he has a normal life." My fingers are getting tired with ear quotes. Of course they don't see me.

I grant that. But it's a part of the problem. Because I do have this, it means I really don't need to be in this squabble to put it very crudely. I don't have to be a part of these gay events that happen in Barbados, which are led primarily by these radical activists.

Shem: And essentially you leave and it is no longer your problem.

Rasheed: It is unfortunate. I do get that, but at the same time, people have lives.

Shem: Life goes on. Life goes on. I don't know if there are any studies on this. We always talk about the brain drain. What about the gay drain?

Rasheed: It's a good question. Because oftentimes, as you would know...

Shem: The intelligent people are gay.

Rasheed: Yes. So there actually, there are studies on that particular point. By the way, there is actually an entire book about D.C gays called the Gay City, which is because again, D.C is a very gay city, but it's never thought of as a gay city. Okay.

Shem: It's the capital first.

Rasheed: Well, it's whatever but not the gay city.

No one says, "oh, what's the main gay cities in the U. S.? They're never gonna mention D.C.

Shem: It's always San Francisco first.

Rasheed: It's San Francisco, it's New York, it's Atlanta maybe, it's Miami, but it's never D.C., right? D.C. does something else. But it's a very gay place anyway. So there is a book actually on D.C. gays, funnily enough, called 'The Gay City', and it's about this actual issue. So a lot of very smart men. Or then boys, but men now. They often have to leave their city because of different gay homophobia issues that were very prevalent and still are in many places. And they know the only way of escape is actually good education, a good job, you have to get far away.

Same with the Caribbean. A lot of very smart people who leave the Caribbean are gay men because that was the real way to escape. So it is substantially unfortunate also when the brain drain is also a big part of gay drain as well in the Caribbean. So people that will become, let's say, the less radical activists, to be frank, people like me, we leave.

And we leave for a bucket of reasons. But that is an issue because now the people who are remaining in the Caribbean for various other reasons, they don't get access to people like me, for example. And I do find that in some ways that does weigh heavy sometimes, but at the same time, that's life in my view. I live in Madrid, I live in Spain, where there's no real pressure to have a good gay life in the cities.

Yes, they have radical activists too, and that's a whole Western problem, but in the Caribbean, it's obviously more acute.

Shem: In other words, we're lacking role models.

Rasheed: I think so.

Shem: We are increasingly, as we, have discussed in some articles on cpsi.media, self plug, wink wink, nudge nudge. The Caribbean is seeing an outflow of people.

And this is just one of the factors that exacerbates that problem over time. Barbados has not seen positive migration since what? Since it has become a country? Yeah. Despite attempts to stem that outflow through things like the welcome stamp, it's not working because why would a gay person come here and have less rights?

Rasheed: Yeah exactly.

Shem: I do know one couple in particular, they're already married. They're already married. They're in a bubble. The welcome stamp does allow people to live in a bit of a bubble.

Rasheed: No money allows that.

Shem: Which you have to have for the Welcome Stamp in the first place. You can't come here poor. We can't come here poor. I'm going back there poor. I got a problem.

But the fact of the matter is the Caribbean does not foster a place where anyone in their right mind, who is even remotely gay would want to stay. The people that do get away, they literally cut it off.

Rasheed: Yeah, the homophobia is very grating. It's literally not possible to have family legally for a gay man in all the Caribbean except Cuba, but they have other issues.

And the homophobia is so grating that you need to leave for various reasons. And the Caribbean is very homophobic.

Shem: So homophobic, in fact, that there's Uganda levels of homophobia. It's not Uganda, guys. But I think there's a similar level of hopelessness. I was hoping to avoid this word.

Rasheed: We can't avoid the word.

Shem: We can't avoid it. The hopelessness prevents the Caribbean from seeing any return of the D.C gay, because the Caribbean being in the mire, the stagnation that it is, not just on gay policy, but policy in general, this complete lack of dynamism is forcing individuals who do escape to do a double take when it comes to contributing back.

And because of that, the D.C gay vanishes into the sunset, into D.C. They vanish. They're in Madrid. They're in London. And now the Caribbean problem becomes so other that they don't even identify with it anymore . And what we've concluded is as the filter of reasonable level headed individuals just seeps out of the Caribbean, you just get a concentration of the crazies.

Rasheed: Yes, correct.

Shem: You're just left with and this is no offense to anyone who's dyed their hair. There's there's a stereotype now. There is a stereotype. You guys are producing the stereotype that every conservative church group Etc is gonna beat you over the head with because there is no diversity really left in the activist pool. And now you're the image of everything that is wrong with the movement.

Rasheed: And so now we have a clash. Now we have this not clash, this tangle of radical gay acceleration-ism, which is the concentration of the radical activists in the Caribbean who are primarily either all literally educated in the UK, or the US, or Canada, or so on. Or are just imbibed with so much US media that they think they live in Boston.

Plus, the international organizations from those countries that fund the radical activists back in the Caribbean. And you were at an event recently, right?

Shem: Oh, which one?

Rasheed: The UN one.

Shem: Oh.

Rasheed: What were some of the main topics discussed there at this gay rights event, I believe it was called that, right?

Shem: It was interesting.

Rasheed: In Barbados, yes?

Shem: In Barbados. It was interesting. They were trying to determine what resources, because let's face it, funding is drying up. Funding is actually drying up for a lot of organizations. But the event was mainly about getting more funding and getting resources, creating a framework, like infrastructure, a platform for persecuted gays to be able to look to these organizations and they were going to do this without- they have no support of the D.C gays.

They don't have that support base at all. And they themselves now are dealing with a PR issue. They have an image problem and just following those pride events after that event and everything, they had the pride parade, which was just a couple of dozen people marching along the streets, et cetera. And what jumped out to me is the media reporting on it.

And then what was actually happening in the comment section.

Rasheed: Explain.

Shem: The media goes, "Pride Parade goes off. It basically goes off without a hitch." The person writing the article is trying to be as objective as possible. They're saying things like, goes off without a hitch. Barbados just hosted blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

The comments basically reinforced what I said earlier. Steps were skipped, and badly so. You can't come back from the United States assuming that we've done everything where we deserve a pride parade when the state doesn't even recognize why you're having this parade, the state doesn't recognize it.

The general population is clueless as to what you're really talking about. They don't care. What they know is that you did this on a Sunday. There's a reason you did. This was not going to be able to go off on any other day, which kind of diminishes the entire impact they were aiming for. It goes off on a Sunday for any context, listeners, Barbados basically shuts down on Sundays.

So they have this pride parade through the city on a Sunday with a couple dozen people, a truck playing some music, a couple members of the trans community and whatnot waving flags, etc. The sole news outlet on the island posts it as an update and then the population tears it to shreds in the comments.

They're like, "Fiya fi dis, fiya bun. Like, what is this? Take this back." And the most common narrative you're seeing is "this is America's fault. You guys need to take this back where you got it." Now on one hand, wow. On the other hand, they're not wrong about where we got it. That's where it came from. There hasn't been a trial of any kind on marriage.

There hasn't been any attempt to bring civil unions. Heck some of these organizations are struggling to get the constitution to even acknowledge that they exist. Because Barbados' constitution, we became a Republic back in 2021. It is now 2024. And there's no constitution written to define this Republic, or at least the rights within this Republic.

And one of the things that is stalling this new constitution is the inclusion of a line a line that goes "regardless of race, creed, or sexual orientation". You haven't even managed that part, but you had a pride parade?

Rasheed: I'm not sure I am Categorically opposed to the idea of a pride parade and the pride parades in Caribbean for various Hopefully all these reasons are not as wild as anything in North America.

Not Even approaching that kind of wildness and in a country where it is extremely homophobic, the idea of a pride parade does have in some sense some failures.

Shem: Don't get me wrong. I do believe that is something we should be able to have at some point to celebrate that. But at the same time, keep in mind the pride parade, the phenomenon of the pride parade now has the worst PR associated with it in most of the islands' mind. When they see a pride parade, they're seeing the kids on the side. What I'm trying to say is find something else.

Rasheed: Yeah, it also is funny because the country also is so small. You don't need a pride parade to form like a quote, unquote, safe space. You don't need that because you can get the people to a particular location at any point in time without having some public triggering.

That's true. That's true.

Shem: Barbados is not a big parade place anyway . We have two major parades a year. Kadooment, which is less of a parade, more of a street party and independence day. And to be very honest, the independence one has declined because there's less alcohol. It's declined quite a bit.

It's moved from being through the city. Now, sometimes it's hosted by the garrison.

Rasheed: Fine. In that context, I would say, yeah, there's no actual purpose.

Shem: But the mere fact that nobody is sitting there and going, "maybe a parade is not the best way" means they're stuck in the American mould. They think that in order for us to be legitimate, we have to have a parade.

I'm like, is there any other way that you could shout that you're here than having a kind of tone deaf, ignored parade through an empty city.

Rasheed: Yeah, true, true, true. It's very self referentially absurd.

Shem: Yeah, it's like you're parodying. At this point, you're parodying and you're not gaining any followers.

Because the only people who now agree with you are the people that were already on board. The whole point is pride. Are you instilling pride? Not really, because only a couple dozen people showed up.

Rasheed: Right.

Shem: You're not going to get people who are in the closet to come show up to this parade.

Your allies are not even going to come out to this parade because this parade is so small that any one person can now be identified and picked out and be probably be discriminated against.

Rasheed: I guess people that turn up don't care, because they're already out.

Shem: The pink haired extremists.

Rasheed: Yeah, yeah, they're extremists.

Shem: Not extremists. Guys, we're not labeling you as extremists, but you look like-

Rasheed: I am.

Shem: Wow.

By elimination, you become the extremist. The D.C gay is not there.

Rasheed: No, they're quite far away. On vacation.

Shem: They're about 6,000 kilometers away, sitting opposite me right now.

Rasheed: This does really drive the question of the circumstances where you have so much, let's face it, negative portrayal, you have so much negative portrayal of what is called gay men. Because, let's be clear, a lot of the Pride Parade isn't about gay men in the explicit sense. There are all kind of different sexual categories that are not always gay, oftentimes not gay at all. So how do you work in that context where you're in a developing country and you have to try to claim that that won't happen here. We are a different people.

They don't say that because they don't believe it. It is part of the radical extreme thing. They don't believe it. They expect and want that kind of radical nature of the Pride Parade to come to the Caribbean. They want a Caribbean beach Pride Parade that's like Boston, which is quite, let's just say it's quite a toxic event.

And because of that, and plus you don't have the, let's call it moderate, sensible gay men in the Caribbean, if they even live in the Caribbean, they never participate in those events and the other ones just leave entirely. How do you moderate that? That is the struggle I don't know how one squares off and that to me is a very deep problem.

And I do think it's a question one has to talk a lot more about.

Shem: The D.C gays are stumped. Some of them are stumped. Maybe many heads together could bring about some sort of solution, but I think the first step is understanding why you can't use the exact same approach as your American and European counterparts in this particular struggle.

Rasheed: The approach is somewhat similar. Okay. So this is why I still use the word D.C gay, SF gay, a lot of like American-centric terms. I do think really the global progress of gay rights is an American invention, which is something they should be lauded for and celebrated in many deep philosophical, practical, sociological, all kinds of ways.

America needs to get a lot of props for this progress. Yes, the European countries did have gay marriage first, but the real, global push was really an American thing. And in many ways, I do wish American foreign policy did have much more concrete, contextual foreign policy to actually try to drive more change in the rest of the world in terms of gay rights.

But the way how it's approached, for example, the U. S. embassy in Barbados flying pride flag, or I guess the old pride flag based on current events during their pride month, that could go many ways. I don't think it should have happened, but the ways in which they should actually be helping, they don't help because the gay rights movement in that country has come to a chaotic end in terms of a public perception.

Because again, they have this other problem. They have this extreme toxic chaotic system where it's being taken over by radical queer theorists, essentially, that think this is some different new thing, push and push. So let's say more elegant, contextual, foreign policy for developing countries on gay rights can't happen because those, the people who would do it, they exit, right? They do work in D.C, but they exit any kind of gay things. So I really do think we live in a conundrum.

Shem: A rather complicated one of that. Now of the D.C gays, I'm going to keep calling them that forever. Now of the D.C gays have exited what you're left with are people that don't know when to put down the axe. They don't know how to put down the battle axe.

Rasheed: It's the extreme SF gays. The extreme SF gays are people who not only do they not, I don't think it's simple as they don't want to, they don't know how to, they don't want to put done.

You have many people, many SF gays who do not like the idea of even having a monogamous relationship. There are many who have never even had a long term monogamous relationship. There are many who scorn the idea of marriage. There are many who will never adopt children. There are many who are very content in just circuit partying from Mykonos to Fire Island and back every year until they die. The problem is that those people are adults and they can do what they want, but they chose this and because they chose this, there is no way to come to a point where you can move from the extreme of the distribution to the center.

So you always have now to push the extreme further out because as you go, extremes eventually tend towards the center. You have to make sure the tendency doesn't come too close to the center because it will really mean you are the outcast. You are the outlier. But no, they want to be part of a system where they are not an outlier.

So you have to always keep pushing further away from the actual mean. That is the issue there. So now you're not gay anymore. That's too basic. That's too central. That's too, you know what? That happened. That is done. We understand that. No, I'm queer now.

Shem: We have reached the slippery slope that everyone was fearing. North America and Europe have reached the slippery slope that everyone was fearing because of a loud minority. Is that the loud minority?

Rasheed: I don't even know if it's a minority. That's part the issue.

Shem: Subset, a loud subset of the smattering, not even community, the smattering, the diaspora is now trying to make their own personal depravity, everyone else's.

Rasheed: Again, I'm very, I'm a big fan of personal depravity, once it's all consenting adults.

Shem: But it's supposed to stay personal. There's this meme on the internet, "bring back shame."

Rasheed: I'm a big fan of that.

Shem: Not just bring back shame, I feel like we could all do with knowing a little less about each other. There's no problem. It's not in the closet. It's called being reasonable.

Rasheed: Exactly, exactly.

Shem: They've hijacked these what were once legitimate movements and are now pushing narratives that endanger everything the previous movements have worked so hard to put in place.

Let's pause that for a moment. This entire conversation we've been focusing on the Caribbean looking to the North as a role model. Do you think they ever look to the South?

Rasheed: No.

Shem: Latin America has had some rather free states for a while. There's Colombia. It's right there.

Rasheed: Yeah, Colombia has gay marriage.

Shem: Not just gay, it's got trans rights.

Rasheed: In many ways.

Shem: It's this weird thing. The Caribbean, particularly Barbados, I don't know if you've ever noticed it before. This is an odd segue, but I need to mention it. Where we like to pretend that it's never been done before. Have you ever seen that? Well, the government of Barbados will often pretend as though it is in uncharted waters and it's never been done before.

Rasheed: Like building new homes, yes.

Shem: No, that's definitely uncharted for them. They're never going to get that done. But do you remember the whole COVID pandemic where the WHO was lauding Barbados for its innovative approach to pandemic management, even though all Barbados did was stay open. And then when it realized everybody else had shut down around it, it went, okay, fine, we'll do it.

And the government of Barbados commonly pretends as though the country is a lot bigger than it really is. You remember we were talking about how nimble such a small state, the whole reason the CPSI exists is because we believe there's still hope for these very small states to correct course because they don't have massive populations.

They don't have giant governments that require so many cogs that it's all gunked up and we have to go clean it out. There are actual tangible policies that can be put into effect to correct the ship. The governments of these islands do not pretend that is, they don't believe that is the case.

They think they're so massive that they've gone so far down and they like to hide behind 300 years of stability. That's what Barbados hides behind when it comes to any sort of policy change. Parliament has been there for 375 years. We're not going to let you come in and change that. They like to pretend as though the current parliament is some sort of continual descendant of the original plantocracy, air quotes.

I'm fanning you now, I'm fanning you. And as a result. Even our government is now complicit in allowing that narrative to just run wild and free. Let's not beat around the bush here. We have a head of state, no, not a head of state. We have a head of government who is for all intents and purposes, allegedly- cause I'm about to go home to this country and you're not about to get me sued Rasheed- allegedly a part of the gay diaspora. Still not saying community. She's there, she's in it. She might be one of the most prominent cases of a D.C gay I've ever seen.

Rasheed: When you hear that out loud, it's the most ironic thing ever.

Shem: It is, because it also explains why she does not care.

Rasheed: Yeah. That's the crazy thing. Yeah.

Shem: She has no reason to. When the time country's gonna hop on a regional security jet and fly off to go campaign in Brussels with the other D.C gays.

Rasheed: That's true. Literally, yes.

Shem: When she's finished with her tenure- notice I haven't called her name yet because again, you are not catching me. You're not gonna catch me slipping Rasheed. When she's finished here, she has a really nice job waiting for her at the, maybe the WHO, or the World Bank, with the other D.C gays!

Rasheed: Again, true.

Shem: There's a golden parachute. Maybe government is the way. Maybe government is the way. You can ascend and float off like a flower, away from this toxic island if you just get into government.

Rasheed: Yeah, the irony is a bit too harsh for me. Yeah.

Shem: It's smacking me dead in the face. I'm going back Tuesday.

Rasheed: So you have that issue. And again, given we're at CPSI, I want to say these things because I do think there is hope and a way to change it, but you need to acknowledge the problems as they exist and not how you want them to exist, and we don't do that enough.

Shem: We're too gay. That's the problem. That's the problem with it. It's too gay. It's too gay for the islands to even look. It's so gay. It's pink hair. It's piercings everywhere. And we just, we literally just got out of "women can vote."

Rasheed: Yeah, it definitely is a tricky thing because now the concept of gay has shifted so far.

Shem: The finish line has moved and it's in a position that a lot of people in the region are just not comfortable crossing anymore.

Rasheed: I actually don't even know if in a generation they can even reach the finish line, it has moved so far ahead.

Shem: Enough damage has been done. Of course, the CPSI, we're going to work on this.

We're going to be working on this.

Rasheed: We're doing a lot more of the gay rights type focus Caribbean policy.

Shem: Caribbean progress studies Institute. That's our job right there. We're going to be working on this. This is for us as well. We're going to have to try something else. The solution here is to find another solution to this problem, because guys the Pride Parade ain't workin'.

Rasheed: Shem, we have come to our time. I definitely think we'll be getting back to this topic on another episode. And also, I should recommend people to check out Shem's podcast, Disgruntled Musings, also by cpsi.Media. And you can find it wherever you find your podcasts. And starting in the fall, we are going to be also doing more YouTube.

We have some other fellows that will be setting up with YouTube. We will have some more videos and some more activities via that kind of media. And I think this was at least a provocative conversation. I hope in some ways it was productive. But definitely provocative, which sometimes you need that too. And Shem, that will be our episode today.

We'll catch up on this topic in a few months.

Shem: See you next time, Rasheed.

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