The Most Homophobic Place on Earth? A Look Into the Anti-Homosexuality Culture of Jamaica

Abstract

This paper was presented in History 3697, fall semester, 2017, a mid-level required writing course designed to link the methods of oral history with the study of issues in the contemporary history of the non-western world. The issue for all of us in this course was social change in recent times. I chose to examine the degree of acceptance of gays in Jamaica, in an era of great change in sexual mores throughout the world. I read the literature; I interviewed Julian, a recent immigrant from Jamaica, and I drew conclusions based on integrating the scholarly material with the interview revelations. The findings were important both for understanding (the lack of) change in sexual attitudes in Jamaica, and the importance of analysis of the individual and the collective together, of the interview and the scholarly data examined together. The individual, at least my interviewee, and the society, are currently resistant to change. The main conclusion: changes in sexual mores in other areas of the world are taking place at rates very different from, and, specifically in Jamaica, at rates much slower than, those in the USA.