Ja: We not changing anti-barty-man law

PRIME Minister PJ Patterson made clear again this week that his government would not be forced into changing Jamaica's anti-homosexual laws because of agitation by the gay movement in England.

"We stopped being a British colony," Patterson told reporters Tuesday, when asked about the campaign by OutRage, the UK gay organisation.

OutRage and the human rights group Amnesty International have cast the recent murder in Kingston of Jamaica's leading gay rights activist Brian Williamson as a hate crime.

They also claimed that anti-gay killings are common in Jamaica and get little attention from the police, an argument rejected by the Jamaican authorities.

But OutRage, which has led a campaign to ban Jamaican dancehall DJs whose lyrics they consider gay-bashing and homophobic, has also pushed for Jamaica to remove its law against buggery.

But Patterson, in making it clear that Jamaica would not be pressured by such campaigns, said: "The British people can lobby their parliament (for the laws they want). I am beholden to the Jamaican public and parliament."

Good for Patterson. Let the British decide what is moral for Britain and stop trying to cram their morality down other countries' throats.

That plaint sounds familiar, doesn't it?