Several months ago, one blogger reminded us of the immortal words of Pierre Trudeau in 1967 as he introduced legislation in Canada that addressed issues like abortion, homosexuality and divorce law. He said: “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation,” and I propose now to reflect on the extent to which this phrase is relevant to us in the Caribbean.
The central issue here is the extent to which voters are concerned about the bedroom business of their leaders, and this is certainly an issue that frequently occupies the minds of politicians who face what they perceive to be moral challenges. The argument that Caribbean people identify with the words of Trudeau is not difficult to advance since over the years we have elected and re-elected leaders who have wandered hopelessly away from the moral “ideal”.
In all of this it is clear that this private stuff has not coloured our belief that these persons are fit to lead.
The difficulty with this analysis is that it proceeds along the lines of the more traditional male-female relationships (of any age) and does not anticipate that at any point we in the region will have to grapple with the reality that a leader or potential leader might be inclined to pursue a same-sex relationship.
This type of challenge to our traditional perception of “moral uprightness” is yet to be tested in the Caribbean in either a practical or theoretical sense.
Globally, it is interesting that only last year Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir was appointed in Iceland and thus became the first openly lesbian head of government in Europe, if not the world. Her ascension to that lofty office has emphatically answered the question of whether or not this is possible and, moreover, the extent to which people will ever accept a lesbian as prime minister.
To be sure, Iceland is not Barbados, and the extent to which Europeans are considerably more liberal than we are is as well known as the extent to which we in the Caribbean have significant difficulties with their “liberalness”.
On the other side of the coin, Roger Karoutchi became the first French government minister (Minister for Parliamentary Relations) to disclose his homosexuality in February last year, and across the pond in the United States, chairman of the Congressional Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank, has been openly gay for years, but is better known for his left-leaning economic perspectives.
Most credible threat
In Italy there is also the case of Nichi Vendola, the openly gay governor of the Puglia region of Italy who is emerging as the most credible threat to Prime Minister Berlusconi’s dominance in years. In all of these instances, gay and lesbian politicians have been able to demonstrate that Trudeau’s statements were more or less accurate.
There is a peculiar Caribbean convention that we not discuss these matters openly and this has precluded any serious discussion on the possibility that we in the Caribbean will eventually elect openly gay and lesbian politicians (if we have not done so already).
Fortunately we are slightly more inclined to discuss issues related to homosexuality in a non-political context and, in this regard, some interesting trends have been revealed in a recently published survey.
In a 2004 UWI survey, 23 per cent of Barbadians said they would not mind having a homosexual as a child, which clearly indicates the extent of our moral challenge on this issue. Interestingly enough, when Barbadians were asked if they minded having a homosexual as a public official, some 50 per cent said they “wouldn’t mind” and a slightly higher quantity (52 per cent) said they wouldn’t mind having a homosexual as a “friend”.
‘Tolerant’ of homosexuality
Overall, the majority of persons in that survey described themselves as “tolerant” of homosexuality and these data cumulatively demonstrate where public opinion was on this issue in Barbados in 2004.
If one were to assemble this anecdotal evidence and attempt a “guess” at the extent to which Barbadians are ready to accept a gay or lesbian politician in the way that people in Iceland, France and America have, I would argue that the issue has more to do with the manner in which that person presents himself or herself to the public.
We are clearly more tolerant than we appear to be regarding holders of public office; however, we still maintain deep prejudices at the very personal level as the survey has demonstrated. The fact that we hold views but are not inclined to discuss them openly suggests that we prefer if the “elephant” that is standing in the room remains there without comment.
In other words, we know what we know, but don’t want to discuss it since we believe that a public servant should be assessed on the basis of other virtues that are demonstrated out of the bedroom. This perspective was summarised for me in an email I received from a member of the public in November of 2009.
It said: “I believe that most Barbadians don’t much care for other people’s bedroom business as long as that person is intelligent, competent and hard working (and of course makes a sincere effort to keep the bedroom business behind the closed bedroom door, where all bedroom business rightly belongs).”
Well said!
• Peter W. Wickham is a political consultant and a director of Caribbean Development Research Services.
