battybwoys rize up wit dem gunz dem dancehall bwoys fi die

Okay,

So what's more disappointing than really getting into a genre of music only to discover that it is totally fulled by hate? When I get into music I take it down with a death grip. I find out who is important in the movement, who started it, and then start downloading as many different examples as possible. So when I started getting interested in grime, I knew that I would have to look up it's more interesting roots of dancehall. Doing this, I started downloading alot of Cutty Ranks, some Lil' Vicious, Ninjaman, and my fave Bounty Killer.

While Looking up more interesting info on Bounty Killer I came across some links to queer groups who had started campaigns to ban popular dancehall artists from playing outside of Jamaica. Then I found these lyrics posted in an article on the Amnesty International Website:
"Bun a fire pon a kuh pon mister fagoty, Ears ah ben up and a wince under agony, Poop man fi drown a dat a yawd man philosophy". What does all this Jamaican Dialect mean?........Well they also took the time to "translate" which goes roughly like this:
(Burn gay men, til they wince under agony, gay men should drown, that's the yard man's philosophy)

Jesus, what the fuck?! I, once again, just don't understand how a people that have surely gone through much persecution and strife can then, in turn, shove this same type of hate onto another similar (I know, only in some ways) group?

To a degree it is certainly true that it is not my argument being a white, straight, middle-class background, straight, amerikkkan, male. However, in so much as people are directly being hurt from this, I feel at least entitled to my two cents.

If this is cultural then I don't have any say since people must choose the direction of their own culture, and it is not my place, as an interloper, to shape that change.

However, what I am more inclined to believe, is that this has more to do with religion (which is cultural true, but you can have one even if the other is torn away), the I would say it is not "............No Masters." But it is "No gods No Masters"

This could be one more way that religion tears people apart and breeds nothing but hate. True many other human movements equally cause the same damage, but religion can unify a people behind a dogma with with blind, and life-threatening conviction faster that just about any other "cause" on earth.

So my advice to the queer community in Jamaica is simple: Shoot Back!