We have freedom of speech in Jamaica
“I wholly disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” – Attributed to Voltaire.
READERS OF this column over the last 25 years know that I hold no brief for fundamentalists, whether in religion or in economics. I titled one of my early columns ‘Fundamentalism will be the death of us’, and so, I wholly disapprove of the brand of arrogant fundamentalist Christianity aggressively preached by American televangelist Gino Jennings of the falsely named First Church of Jesus Christ.
The Gleaner’s editorial two days ago concedes to Jennings his human right to free speech and to his followers their human right to freely associate with him in his church. This adds up to what our Constitution calls the right to freedom of religion, although The Gleaner editor-inchief does not identify it as such. Whether we like what Gino Jennings says, and especially if we don’t, he is endowed with the human right to preach his beliefs, and in return, we have the option to turn off the television or the radio while his programme is on.
Over the last few days, I have listened to activists who claim to support what they call ‘gay rights’ and ‘abortion rights’ – spurious claims at best – attack Gino Jennings while he is exercising his universally acknowledged right to freedom of religion. Yet, if you seek to put forward logical arguments against homosexuality or abortion, they will abuse you and call you vile names.
Isn’t it bizarre that those who demand that others be tolerant of their unconventional actions and beliefs are intolerant of those who hold traditional religious beliefs?
There is a growing number of persons in the UK and the USA – usually they are religious persons – who have lost their jobs or have been taken to court because they speak against the propriety of homosexuality and gay marriage, and yet, they are supposed to be guaranteed freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
GOD MADE US
The religion that Gino Jennings has fashioned uses the Bible to castigate women who wear wigs and false hair, false eyelashes, breast implants, lipstick, jewellery, nail polish and skimpy clothes. He suggests that they look like whores, and he doesn’t want them in his church. Surely he is free to come to that decision, and women who choose to wear such accoutrement are free to avoid him like the plague. But why deny him his right to speak freely what he believes?
He goes further to brand as hypocrites those adherents of Christianity who dress that way. I don’t know if Jennings is unusual in this view. Many Jamaican fundamentalists among Pentecostals and Evangelicals have the same dress code and go about in long sleeves, long frocks, stockings, and garish hats, with their faces innocent of make-up.
Conscious Jamaicans frown on those among us who bleach their skin to appear brown, not for religious reasons, but because we are proud of our race and of how God made us. Similarly, we should eschew falsity in appearance.
What seems to have caused the anger is Jennings’ charge that churchmen who have wives who dress this way in church are married to whores. At this point, he may have strayed into the realm of poor taste and personal abuse, but he still has his right of free speech.
Defence of the freedom of others is selfdefence, for if you deny to anyone the right to say what you think is wrong, it will not be long before you will lose the right to say what you think is right.
Isn’t it bizarre that those who demand that others be tolerant of their unconventional actions and beliefs are intolerant of those who hold traditional religious beliefs?