Every year in early Fall there are Caribbean Festival Parades in the Islands the States Canada and the U.K. The largest in Brooklyn for decades. About that parade which my family and I attended every year. For a few years, it included homophobic floats. The crowds applauded their calls to kill "Batty Boys'. Caribbean slang for Queers.
These were eventually banned.
Tho' I live near the route I've never been back. Despite friends still involved with the parade. To me personally it wasn't the hateful floats. It was the cheers they got that decided me. I no longer and maybe never belonged there.
Amnesty International once called Jamaica the most dangerous place on earth for Queers. Poland got the crown it next as it like Russia passed draconian laws. Then it was awarded to Chechnya. They for a time had internment facilities for us. Uganda has just passed anti-Queer criminal laws including the death penalty. So it and Saudi Arabia share the crown now. Jamaica officially did not and does not execute us, but the authorities look the other way as mobs hunt then killed us.
Happy Labor Day.
The freedoms in the West by the numbers are exceptions to world attitudes. Justice is not a straight road. It turns twists or in places stops. We've seen that it can stop here to. Millions literally millions want it to stop. These are our times.
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