#BTColumn – From one slavery to another

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by this author are their own and do not represent the official position of the Barbados Today Inc.

It is ironic that in the recent Throne Speech it was announced that Barbados would be breaking ties with the Monarchy but would be strengthening its ties to the international community. From a socio-cultural perspective, this announcement amounts to nothing more than a forced advisory that the country will now shift the reasons for, and become complicit in, its own enslavement.

The various LGBT sensitization sessions facilitated over the past five years by Government, the Central Bank of Barbados, UWI, the US and Canadian Embassies among other “educational” efforts, have successfully moulded minds to believe the dictum made famous by US former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that “Gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights”.

We have been sold a sweet-sounding narrative built on the crooked comparison of “sexual rights” to the civil rights of blacks and women.

Cash-strapped, we have bought, for a penny,  the misuse and abuse of emotive words such as equality, justice, love, tolerance and discrimination. And so, our manipulated minds have no difficulty rationalizing the irrational.

According to the speech which our beloved Governor General had the unenviable task of delivering, “If we wish to be considered among the progressive nations of the world, Barbados cannot afford to lose its international place and reputation.

Nor can a society as tolerant as ours allow itself to be blacklisted for human and civil rights abuses or discrimination on the matter of how we treat to human sexuality and relations.” That is true, because we are culturally and economically entrapped by a group of dollar-dangling former British, Spanish, French and Dutch colonizers. When they say “jump”, our response must be, “how high?” And jump, we will.

As was pointed out in the Throne Speech, recognizing same sex civil unions is now “the correct direction for our cultural, social and economic circumstances.” Make no bones about it. Money, not morality, dictates our direction.

The country is driven by the legal systems of modern societies, not the written word of the unchanging God. Therefore, it does not matter if we lose the favour of God, just as long as we are in good standing with the international community and are eligible for loan funding here and now.

Not all governments have the courage of the President of Gambia to say to the cultural imperialists: “If you want us
to be ungodly for you to give us aid, take your aid away,
we will survive.

We will rather eat grass than accept this ungodly evil attitude that is anti-God, anti-human and anti-creation.”

So let us not revel in illusions of national sovereignty.

Our fate is crafted, not by the collective values, principles and vision of Barbadian citizens, but by the dollars and nonsense of colonial masters who – we believe – have the power to take us from the brink of economic peril. He who pays the piper, calls the tune. Long held spiritual values must be sacrificed on the altar of economic expediency.

May those committed to the sovereign God choose rather to be blacklisted by mere mortals than to lose favour with the eternal Creator on the matter of human sexuality and relations.

Dr Veronica Evelyn is a sociologist, director of Proteqt Inc., a behaviour change consulting firm, and an advocate of marketplace ministry and applied Christianity.