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Last Updated: Feb 13, 2017 - 1:45:37 AM |
 On
June 7, 2016, you voted against yourselves, your children and your
children’s children. That says it all about you and your regression from
the brave, forward thinking of the Bahamian suffragettes. You chose to
believe that Eve and her female offspring were cursed in Eden, not just
to bear the pains of childbirth, but to remain forever inferior to men,
subject to their abuse. Shame on you.
The ‘Christian’ Nation
While The Bahamas is a church-going nation, most Bahamians are not
Christians, not followers of the loving Christ that I cling to. Most of
my Bahamian people, who claim Christianity, have cobbled together a
Frankenstein of a savior mainly from all the bloody eye-for-an-eye texts
of the Old Testament and choice, out of context, maliciously
interpreted verses of the second half of the Bible. You deny the Christ
of the New Testament who is a God of love, a God of embrace, a God who
says “Whosoever will may come”, a God who was accused of being a wine
bibber, a Christ who dined with sinners and promised a woman of the
streets that her name would be remembered throughout history for her
love and humility.
That particular Christ is the one you keep
in the closet of your Christianity, where you hold imprisoned from basic
human rights your homosexual brethren, people of Haitian descent,
foreigners who do not directly deposit money into your pocket and sundry
other persons, whom you consign to the hell of your prejudices and
greed.
You see, the Christ of the New Testament is one who
heartily condemned the Pharisees, whose egotism and desire for
prominence have lived through centuries to spawn many of the religious
bigots you follow today. There is plenty of evidence to support my
belief that some of the Bahamian pastors and their congregations who
incited the resounding ‘no’ vote are the philosophical offspring of
those who demanded that Christ be crucified when Pilate wanted to
release him. Jesus had the effrontery to defy their legalism that shut
the door to humanity, love, forgiveness and redemption.
And so do you, Christian nation.
So, how dare I believe that such religionists would consider worthy of
love and equality the children born abroad of single Bahamian men, the
children born abroad to Bahamian women married to foreign men, the
children born in The Bahamas of Haitian parents, the people who are
daily denied opportunities for equal pay, advancement of all kinds and
even the right to live in peace and pursue personal happiness?
At the base of all this denial is hypocrisy. In your churches you cover
up and condone fornication, adultery, large scale fraud, incest and
various forms of domestic abuse. Worse still, in some cases, you follow
pastors who have committed such infamies, yet you feel justified in
pointing fingers and condemning.
How Christian are you
churchgoers when you shut your eyes to an out-of-control murder rate,
mounting assaults against women and female and male children? Why
haven’t you been marching against the stink of families torn apart by
murder? Why haven’t you marched against the stink of corruption in the
public service, where hundreds of millions of dollars have gone missing
without explanation? More than anything else, why haven’t you launched
and sustained a loud cry against an abysmally failed public education
system? I’m convinced that educational dysfunction is the ultimate root
of many of our societal and economic problems.
Yet, you raise your
arms in holy ecstasy when you learn that you have successfully stopped
many children who should be entitled to Bahamian citizenship from
getting it. You did so because your pastor told you it was more
important to stop the fornication and adultery that produced some of
those children. You were in ecstasy because you stopped a supposed flood
of foreign spouses from getting citizenship, just like pastor said you
should.
Shamefully, you are now shouting victory in Jesus
because you stopped those dirty homosexuals from marrying each other,
just like pastor said. Never mind that there was no Bill regarding
same-sex marriage up for the vote. Let’s gloss over the fact that there
was NO bill stating ‘whosoever will may be registered as a Bahamian
citizen’. All this from people who should have read the scripture that
says “Call nothing I have created unclean”. This was said to Peter who
knew that the Lord was not talking about food, but about people the Jews
considered unclean. Obviously, you were not moved by the love of Christ
when you marked your ballot, but blind prejudices and pastor’s leash
around your neck.
Save Our Bahamas
The media reports
show you grinning in victory, but just what did you win? The right to
continue to mislead by fearmongering and deluding those who follow you
into believing that they were champions of morality? Where was the
morality in separating families, in denying rights to children or in
denying equality in basic human rights to which every citizen of The
Bahamas should be entitled? Obviously, you triage the words of the
Bible. You choose verses that allow you to string together a philosophy
that shuts out the light of Christ and his love. Your engorged egos are
showing. Your lust for secular power has emerged naked from beneath your
suits, robes and self-righteous, smug grins. You deny the dictates of
Christ who says to render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s’.
Obviously, you believe you need to and can save the Lord his planned
return trip. He can rest easy in heaven, because you have judgement and
rewards covered. You ‘gat’ this! By the power of the secular vote, by
the stroke of an indelible pencil, by the pastor-induced, deluded
passions of your congregants, you can wipe out fornication, adultery,
the marrying of non-Bahamians, homosexuals and foreigners in general.
So, by your silence in everything else, you lead me to believe that
you’re good with murder, rape, domestic abuse, incest, failing public
schools, public corruption, the lack of institutions that cultivate
logic, refinement of thought and spirit, as well as comity among fellow
Bahamians.
On the other hand, you find your voice and loudly
pollute the Gospel of Christ to justify your discrimination against
contributing, honest Bahamians, who get electrocuted daily on the third
rail of your Pharisee righteousness. Perhaps, you modern Pharisees will
lobby next for the imposition of Sharia law in The Bahamas? It is a
belief system, which allow extremists to insist that women are
commodities, who can be raped by praying men and slaughtered for the
slightest infraction. And to think that there are thousands of Bahamian
‘holy’ women who would be good with that. Why else would the women of
your congregations go out and vote against equal rights for women on
June 7? Shame on you!
LGBTQ Spokespersons
I once
believed that people who suffered discrimination would be the first in
line to fight for and uphold rights for everyone. I always did think The
Bahamas and Bahamians anomalous in many ways and you proved it during
the lead up to the June 7 vote. You spoke loudly and long for the defeat
of the Referendum. I have heard it said that you perceived a possible
loophole that would permit you to lobby for personal interests. That is
unfounded rumour. The undeniable truth is, you who have known the sting
of discrimination used the opportunity to discriminate against others
whose claims to rights were represented in the poll. I voted for human
rights; you voted against them. I heap more shame on you than all the
other benighted naysayers.
Government Hypocrisy
The
current government administration has opened a new page in hypocrisy and
casting blame on others. Have you begun to believe your own
politicking? I quote from statements made by your representatives as
published in the newspapers. They surely make the case for me:
“…Political confusion” led to the resounding no vote in the gender equality referendum.
And here was the statement that took my breath away: “The LGBT
community are the ones who are really celebrating the victory of the
‘no’ vote. Unfortunately, I think now we will have someone in that
community challenge the word ‘sex’ as it is still undefined in the
constitution and they may leave it up to the courts to define sex. All
of us, including the Save Our Bahamas pastors, will be praying that the
courts interpret it in a strict sense and not liberally.”
Obviously, the people who spent more than a million dollars asking
people to vote ‘yes’, were praying to their Franken god for the failure
of democracy.
The best statement of all: “The government respects and will abide by the will of the people pursuant to the constitution.”
What could this be but hypocrisy? When the Bahamian people voted a
resounding ‘no’ to legalizing local gambling, this same political party
that currently governs discarded the will of the people and went ahead
and legalized local gambling. How can you government leaders, despite
your grins and purple thumbs up, expect the rest of us to see anything
but hypocrisy?
You are willing to sanction the shrinking of
human rights and democracy, while allowing the spread of gambling
enterprises in every nook and cranny in this country, even in the
poorest quarters of the capital, even on islands that claim an economy
through pure hope. What could it be but hypocrisy when you rubber stamp
the expansion of an insidious addiction that induces some of the
poorest, jobless Bahamians to ‘spin’ all day long and lose the little
money and dignity they do have? Are you still claiming that you ‘believe
in Bahamians’? You can indeed claim that, if you alter the phrase a bit
and say “We believe in Bahamians and foreigners, of course, who have
the big dollars to fund another election victory or otherwise sing our
party anthem. Shame on you!
Opposing Parties
Many of
you had to have voted ‘no’ and it could be for no better reason than to
take revenge on the Progressive Liberal Party for campaigning against
the same bills in 2002. Did you think deeply about who would be hurt by
your actions. You couldn’t possibly think you were hurting the
well-moneyed PLP administration. No—You victimized the many young
people, who struggle with all the negatives of joblessness and being
denied equitable participation in the benefits and responsibilities of
their homeland.
You victimized the young people who were born
in this country of Haitian parents but have never set foot on Haitian
soil. You slapped in the face all the migrants and children of migrants
who brought many gifts to this country: Let’s start with both sides of
the Maynard family, the founder of the Dupuch family, and the many
gifted contributors across the economic spectrum—even Lynden Pindling
whom we have elevated as the “Father of the Nation”. You have denied a
legion of people opportunities for equal pay, opportunities for
advancement, opportunities for real leadership in governance, in the
world of commerce and in winning lucrative government contracts and
other choice economic and social fruit. Some of you spend so much time
with infighting, it will take a miracle to get people to believe you are
worthy of taking over the government. I’ll say one thing for the third
party leader, empurpled thumb up, grinning broadly, he owned up to
voting ‘no’. Shame on all of you egotists and get your act together!
Who lost in the Referendum of June 7? We all did.
Only difference is that we will all feel the impact in different ways
and at different times. The failure of the four bills are four nails
that will seal many a metaphorical coffin. It put paid to any chance
that the current government administration had for creating a legacy
that could be respected and extolled by people of goodwill, the people
who uphold truth and human rights. The same goes for all the politicos
who voted in the negative to take revenge on the PLP.
Save Our Bahamas and associated congregations lost.
You spurned the advice and warning of the God I know: “What you do to least of these, you do to me.”
Democracy lost and The Bahamas will continue to lose the fuel to power
us out of what is bidding fair to be a downward economic and social
spiral. You deny rights to and hamstrung a wealth of people, male and
female, who could add to the innovation and energy we need to rise.
Shame on all of us as the international community looks on to see our
gorgeous outer apparel no longer covering our dirty undergarments. We,
who have been so richly endowed in assets, destroy them one by one,
while we happily, greedily and spitefully create a new Dark Age to
blight the world.
I end with two extracts from W. H. Auden’s
“Funeral Blues”; somehow, they seem appropriate here—Never mind that
Auden wouldn’t have been allowed into the sacred precincts of the
Bahamian Church Inc.
Funeral Blues
Silence the pianos and with muffled drumBring out the coffin, let the mourners come…
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,Pack up the moon and
dismantle the sun,Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;For nothing
now can ever come to any good.
June 7, 2016 is a day that will live on in infamy. Forty-three years on and still no “One Bahamas”.
Patricia Glinton-Meicholas, vice president, Creative Nassau, is an
educator, author, poet, cultural critic and avid researcher of Bahamian
history, culture and arts. First woman to present the Sir Lynden
Pindling Memorial Lecture, she also won the first Bahamas Cacique Award
for Writing and a Silver Jubilee of Independence Medal for Literature.
Her poetry collection,
Chasing Light, was a finalist in the 2012
International Proverse Prize Competition sponsored by Proverse
Publishing Hong Kong, which published the book. The College of The
Bahamas presented her with a Lifetime Achievement Award for culture and
literature (2014).
Glinton-Meicholas has written 18 books,
including An Evening in Guanima (short stories),
A Shift in the Light
(novel) and
Robin’s Song, which are used in the schools. She contributed
eight biographies to the Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin
American Biography (OUP 2016) and a chapter for a book on international
children’s literature (Rutledge’s Companion to…series). She is
completing another book of short stories.)
© Copyright 2016 by thebahamasweekly.com
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