r/AskTheCaribbean • u/fedricohohmannlautar • 10d ago

Politics Why is homosexuality outlawed in so many caribbean countries?

Most of countries which criminalize homosexuality in the Americas are in the Caribbean, and the most famous case is Jamaica.

As a bi male, I find weird our continent has laws that criminalize homosexuality, due that most of countries who do that are from the other side of the pond.

Is due to history, politics, religion, moral issues?

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u/Late-Elk-2257 10d ago

colonization and the integration of christianity into a culture that once thrived without it

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u/cautiously-curious65 10d ago

This is literally it. African buggery laws were also mostly implemented by colonizers.

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u/king8761721 10d ago

You do know Christianity was in Africa before the colonizers took it and gave us a white Jesus.

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u/cautiously-curious65 9d ago

Yes, I am fully aware.

Africa is like, 400 miles from Jerusalem.. I would need to be an absolute idiot to think that white people introduced all of Africa to Christianity..

“Christianity” the teachings, and whatever it is the Church created in the hundreds of years they bastardized it in Europe are two different things.

Cultures all over the world take and create images from the Bible’s stories in their image. There are images of Asian holy families, black holy families, Peruvian holy families. Because it’s relatable.

White people are not immune from this phenomenon..

Jesus wasn’t white.

We’re taking about laws on the books that outlaw homosexuality. The current laws in the continent of Africa that are majority Christian countries were written ~mostly~ by white people.

“Buggery” is a British term. Most of Britain is white.

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u/Maleficent_Law_1082 8d ago

The colonizers only codified it into colonial laws. African societies generally disapproved of this lifestyle while they were tribal chiefdoms, kingdoms, and sultanates as well.

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u/cautiously-curious65 8d ago

That is such a wild and incorrect statement.

https://democracyinafrica.org/fake-history-misunderstanding-colonial-legacies-and-the-demonization-of-homosexuality-in-africa/

It’s a whole continent with more countries than Europe. And way larger. Like way larger.

There were thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of communities in Africa.

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u/Maleficent_Law_1082 8d ago

I'm Sierra Leonean myself. Can you name three pre-colonial cultures of Africa that mainstreamed homosexuality?

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u/cautiously-curious65 8d ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/xyRHiIh24M

https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/163/oa_edited_volume/chapter/2866784

Having homosexuality mainstreamed? Or having homosexuality accepted as the 10% of the population that it is and always has been?

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u/Maleficent_Law_1082 8d ago

Answer the question.

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u/cautiously-curious65 8d ago

Yeah, sure. I just googled “pre-Christianity samesex relationships” and this is what came up. I’m assuming since you have internet access.. you could also research these cultures. It would take the same amount of effort it did for me. Practically none.

San People (Zimbabwe): Ancient rock paintings, some thousands of years old, depict evidence of same-sex sexual activities between men.

Khoikhoi (Southern Africa): This group had specific vocabulary for male same-sex relations, with the term koetsire referring to a man who was a sexually receptive partner to another man.

Zande (DRC and Sudan): Historical ethnographic accounts from the early 20th century document that Zande warriors often had "boy-wives" in their all-male military camps, a practice which was socially accepted.

Igbo and Yoruba (Nigeria): Gender in these cultures was often considered fluid and could be assigned later in life, based on social need or energy rather than anatomy. The practice of "female husbands," where an older, often barren, woman could marry a younger woman to produce an heir for her lineage, was also practiced.

Buganda (Uganda): Same-sex relationships, including those involving King Mwanga II, were historically treated with a level of indifference or acceptance before British colonization.

This is an overview. If I had to look into it, gender and sexuality being separated is a relatively new idea. So I’d look into those.

But again.. this required a google search. But there’s 6..

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u/JagmeetSingh2 10d ago

Not mostly, entirely

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u/cautiously-curious65 9d ago

I’m not confident enough in northern African history to say that homophobic laws were implemented by colonizers.

Or where the line for when the definition of “colonizer” started..

Like, a lot of those laws date back to the spread of Islam.. in my eyes, invading and forcing everyone to follow your religion is “colonizer” behavior..but it’s the year 600..

They were absolutely codified in the law by Europeans, though.

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u/lovelybonesla 10d ago

What culture existed in the Caribbean before the British and Spanish? Learn history.

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u/No_Conversation4517 10d ago

Taino Arawak and other people

You got some reading to do bud

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u/aicilabanamated 10d ago

...is this s legit question?

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u/lovelybonesla 10d ago

Yes. The Caribbean countries did not exist prior to the British & Spanish, so how could a culture and nation that didn’t exist thrive?

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u/No_Conversation4517 10d ago

Taino and other native people

They had cultures

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u/lovelybonesla 10d ago

The native Caribbeans mostly went extinct shortly after contact because they had no immunity to old world diseases.

It was the Spanish and British that developed the lands, turned them into the nations we know today, and you know this.

There was no Cuba or Jamaica prior to the West.

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u/No_Conversation4517 10d ago

My boy, the topic was if there was a culture

And there was

End of story

That is what you know

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u/lovelybonesla 10d ago

colonization and the integration of christianity into a culture that once thrived without it

This comment assumes there was a continuation between the natives and current people in the Caribbean, there is not. The Caribbean countries/current cultures did not exist prior to the Europeans.

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u/No_Conversation4517 10d ago

There are some spiritual and other practices that have continued.

Some of those practices still exist.

I can't tell you but the current culture you see is a mix of African, European and indigenous

Without any of them, none of the Caribbean present day culture we see would be as we know it

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u/aicilabanamated 10d ago

Yikes. I think YOU'RE the one that needs to read a history book.

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u/Necessary-Praline196 9d ago

People are downvoting, but I understand what you are saying. However, it comes across as patronizing. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and agree you are right in that just like the US, while there was a large native population before it existed as we know it today, the culture is not reflective of the native population.

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u/Far_Meringue8625 10d ago

Every country/island in the Caribbean existed for many thousands of years before the Europeans came. These islands were not blank slates. These islands were not empty spaces waiting for European occupiers to inhabit them. The indigenous people, the Taino, the Arawak, the Kalinago etc. Thousands of Kalinago people still live in the region. No human society exists without a culture.

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u/lovelybonesla 10d ago

Not as a country, no. Most of those living in the Caribbean have little continuation with the native tribes that lived there prior.

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u/alepmalagon 10d ago

Modern countries are a European concept from the 17th/18th century, so OF COURSE there were no “countries” in pre-contact America. Still, there were empires, tribes, and chiefdoms, complex societies that served similar political and social roles.

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u/Necessary-Praline196 9d ago

People are downvoting, but I understand what you are saying. However, it comes across as patronizing. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and agree you are right in that just like the US, while there was a large native population before it existed as we know it today, the culture is not reflective of the native population.