ALLEGATIONS by a Jamaican woman that she was finger-raped by an immigration officer before being thrown out of Barbados, has brought the spotlight on poor treatment of Jamaicans visiting that eastern Caribbean island.

Shanique Myrie complained bitterly to the Observer yesterday that when she attempted to enter Barbados on March 14, 2011, she was subjected to two demeaning cavity searches by a female immigration officer who continuously spewed venom about Jamaicans. It was her first trip out of the island.

 

MYRIE… I felt like I was being raped. (Photo: Michael Gordon) 1/1

 

Myrie’s story was corroborated by former Jamaican honorary consul to Barbados, Marlon Gordon.

Gordon, an attorney, said even though some Jamaicans do enter Barbados and get involved in nefarious activities, that was no excuse for wholesale discrimination against Jamaica nationals.

“This arbitrary kind of behaviour that is being exhibited by the Government in Barbados has to be looked at. You can’t penalise an entire nation,” Gordon said.

Jamaican Jaydene Thomas, a former journalist and now a practising attorney in Barbados, said the Jamaican foreign ministry had for too long ignored the cries of Jamaicans who suffered at the hands of Barbadians when they visited that island.

“Every time that a flight arrives from Jamaica, the nothing-to-declare line is automatically closed, she said. “We are treated like criminals by the authorities.”

Myrie, in relating her story to the Observer said: “The lady took me into a bathroom and told me to take off my clothes. I did as requested. After searching me and my clothes she found no contraband or narcotics. She then asked me to bend over, open my legs and spread (my private parts). She said that if I did not comply then she would see that I end up in prison in Barbados.

“When I bent over and spread my (private parts) I felt something enter my (private parts) and when I looked between my legs I saw her gloved hand in my (private parts). I screamed and stood up. She then told me if I obstructed her doing a cavity search she would have me locked up. I bent over again and spread. She again inserted her fingers and poked around. I felt like I was being raped. I was so hurt and ashamed. I felt dirty and defiled,” she said.

“I asked her who she was and she said ‘I am your worst nightmare’. She then said ‘All you (expletive) Jamaicans come here to do is either steal people’s man or bring drugs here,” Myrie recounted.

Myrie said the immigration officer removed her identification tag before humiliating her and that she complied because she was alone with the woman and feared what she would do to her.

She was interrogated and her luggage searched by at least four other immigration officials at intervals and was further cursed by the woman who searched her.

“She said I hate these (expletive) Jamaicans,” she said.

Even though she was originally given clearance to enter the country, she said a male officer took her passport and returned with the entry permit cancelled and left her in a waiting area for more than two hours before carting her off to a small room and informing her that she would be spending the night in the cramped setting.

“It was only a board cot with a small, raw sponge, there was no pillow or bed linen. The room had no windows,” she said.

When she entered the room, Myrie said, another traumatised woman was already in confinement.

“The cot was definitely too small for both of us to lay on at the same time so we took turns laying and sitting while we recounted our ordeal. We did this through the night,” Myrie said.

Myrie said in the morning the door was flung open and three women informed them that their flight was about to leave at any minute and they would have no time to shower so they were only able to wash their faces and brush their teeth before they were carted off to the plane and sent back to Jamaica.

“I did not resist any orders, nor did I refuse to answer any questions. No drugs or contraband was ever found on me or my luggage. Therefore, I must ask if the treatment meted out to me was based solely on the fact that I am a Jamaican?” Myrie said.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade said yesterday that it had received a letter of complaint from Myrie and other Jamaicans and promised that the matter would be dealt with on a government to government level.

“We have received a number of complaints on a regular basis and those matters will be investigated. The matter has been brought up at the Caricom (Caribbean Community) level and we are aware of the situation,” Ann Margaret Lim, the ministry’s head of communications told the Observer.

However, the ministry was not able to provide actual figures of the number of Jamaicans treated unfairly in Barbados

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With the schism in the Anglican communion, the Constitutional amendment in the United States to define marriage as between a man and a woman, and in light of various ‘human rights’ laws around the world that vilify those who speak against homosexuality, more Christians are asking what the Christian position towards homosexuality should be. While only a tiny percentage of people are homosexual, the gay lifestyle is becoming mainstream – at least in some circles and in the media. Let’s examine what the Bible says about homosexuality, and clear up a few myths in the process.

First, let’s start with some fundamental groundwork. Some people, uneducated in scripture, are under the mistaken impression that all forms of sexuality are sinful according to the Bible. With this misconception, they readily disregard anything the Bible might say with regards to sexuality, choosing instead to side with their sexual desires. What they don’t understand is that they are completely wrong. Sex is a creation of God, who pronounced all His creation “good!” Sexuality is not sinful. It is a wonderful part of God’s plan.

God put a limit on sex, though. Yes, a limit – only one. There is no long dissertation on the do’s and don’ts of sex. The only caveat to the enjoyment of sex is this: sex is meant to be enjoyed in the context of marriage – not outside of it. Unfortunately, these days we must be specific. Sex is to be enjoyed within the context of a marriage between a man and a woman. That’s it! That’s the limit. Genesis 2:24-25 says, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” Hebrew 13:4 says, “Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.” All sexual sins (i.e. promiscuity, adultery, homosexuality, prostitution, etc.) are sins because they do not conform to the limit of sex being a marital activity. Now of course some of you will point out the list of sexual activity prohibited by the Mosaic laws, but let’s not address those issues of the law from which Paul said we are now free. Instead, let’s stick to those ancient commands that endure eternal. To that end, the above-mentioned single rule is how we are to judge sexual morality.

The men of Sodom and Gomorrah were the first recorded in the Bible to face punishment for their sexual perversion. In Genesis chapter 19, we find two angels that pay a visit to Lot’s home in Sodom. In verse four, we find that “all the men from every part of Sodom” surrounded Lot’s house, and told Lot to bring out his visitors “so that we can have sex with them.” The pro-homosexual revisionist argues that the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah was that the residents wanted to commit an act of rape. That the rape would have been homosexual is not an issue, according to their argument. However, Jude 7 indicates that Sodom and Gomorrah’s punishment was due to their sexual perversion. Their sin was not simply one of violence (rape) but of sexual immorality (homosexuality). As further evidence of the sinful nature of homosexuality, Leviticus 18:22, and 20:13 both describe homosexuality as “an abomination.”

Contrary to the opinions of some, the Old Testament is not the only place in the Bible that condemns homosexuality. We previously mentioned Hebrews 13:4, where Paul exhorted us to honor the marriage bed and keep it pure. In Romans 1:26-27 Paul is very specific, “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.” In 1 Corinthians 6:9, Paul wrote, “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind.” The Greek word from which the King James Bible gets the word “effeminate” is malakos, which literally means something soft to the touch, but is used as a negative metaphor to refer to a boy kept for homosexual relations with a man. The “abusers of themselves with mankind” are those men who engage in unnatural sexual relations with other men – homosexuals. That is also how the NASB, the NKJV, and the NIV translate that verse. Also in the New Testament is verse 7 from the book of Jude, defining exactly why Sodom and Gomorrah were punished – homosexuality.

Having established that homosexuality is a sin, we must now face that we live in increasingly pro-homosexual societies. The media and the schools have become mouthpieces for the gay subculture, and are working hard to marginalize those of us who take a moral, biblical stance on the issue. School sex education programs based on the curriculum developed by SIECUS champion homosexuality as being normal and healthy, while encouraging teenagers to ignore the values of their parents if their parents feel homosexuality is wrong. “Gay” television shows are popping up on networks like Bravo and on other networks as well.

In many nations, current and existing laws are including slurs against homosexuality in the definition of hate crimes. In fact, some in Canada have found themselves in legal trouble for reading the first chapter of Romans over the airwaves. This is a pattern that is sweeping the Western world, and I predict we’ll see similar legislation in the United States within the next few years. While the Canadian Parliament claims that a religious exemption in their recent hate speech bill will protect speech of a religious nature, in practice Canadians have already been prosecuted by human rights tribunals for things as simple as listing the same Bible verses above in a newspaper advertisement.

Even the church today is not immune to the mainstreaming of immorality. The Anglican Communion, including the Episcopal Church in the United States is suffering a rift because of the appointment of an openly homosexual bishop. This rift is widened because some of its leaders have deemed it appropriate to perform homosexual marriages. The Methodist Church has allowed openly homosexual ministers to retain their positions. Let me make this clear: I do not oppose allowing homosexuals to attend church. In fact, I think that’s where they should be. However, we must not condone sinful immorality by allowing our clergy to practice it openly. Homosexuality is a sin. Homosexuals are unrepentant of their sin. If they were repentant, they would no longer identify themselves as homosexual. Just as no church would allow their minister to engage in an ongoing adulterous affair and retain his position, so we must not allow homosexual ministers to retain their positions of leadership.

Homosexual advocates will contend that homosexuality is natural, and some will point to homosexual activity within some animal species as evidence. However, it’s not hard to figure out that homosexuality is decidedly unnatural. My wife and I used to have a couple of pendant necklaces. Each of us had half of a pendant on our necklace. When we put our two halves together, the zigzag pattern meshed together flawlessly to create a single, whole pendant (which, by the way, bore the words of Genesis 2:24). God made men and women different, both emotionally and physically. Physically, we were created to fit together anatomically much like our pendant. Our parts just match up! Remember the child’s game of matching the round peg into the round hole, the square peg into the square hole, etc.? The homosexual is trying to force two pegs together, in blatant disregard for God’s natural design! The argument above also falls flat on its face when you consider that some animal species also eat their young. I don’t think we can extrapolate that into an acceptable practice for human beings.

These same homosexual advocates will claim that homosexuality is genetic. NOT TRUE! Nobody is ‘born homosexual.’ In 1993, Dean Hamer of the National Cancer Institute claimed to have found a genetic link to homosexuality. Yet in 1999, the results of an intensive study by the University of Western Ontario found that Hamer was in error. The fact is that after all the attempts to show a genetic cause for homosexuality, no such genetic cause has been found. A British psychologist has had enormous success in providing “reorientation” therapy to homosexuals who want to change. This is not a surgery or a medical treatment, but it is effective. How could it be effective if the cause of homosexuality is physical? Well, it couldn’t be. Homosexuality is a choice, not a genetic predisposition.

Also untrue is the label applied to those who don’t approve of homosexuality. “Homophobe” has been applied to anyone speaking negatively of homosexuality or of homosexuals. But in 2002, a study by the University of Arkansas was publicized that showed that term to be inaccurate. While a phobia is a fear, researchers found that those termed “homophobic” exhibited no traces of fear. The study subjects’ reactions ranged from disapproval to disgust, but none showed any fear.

God’s laws were handed down for our benefit. HIV and AIDS, while no longer exclusive to homosexuals, are still much more rampant and spreading more quickly among the gay community (at least in the western nations). Our children are at risk as well. While GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network) will tell your seventh-grader during a school assembly that heterosexual men molest more children than homosexual men do, they are not telling the whole story. That statistic is only true because homosexuals make up less than 5% of the population. Statistically though, a homosexual man is 10 to 20 times more likely than a heterosexual man to sexually abuse a minor.

A few “Christians” have hurt the cause of morality by acting out violently and/or hatefully against homosexuals. When Matthew Shepherd was killed for being homosexual,* a Baptist congregation gathered outside the courthouse during his killers’ trial. They held up banners that stated how many days Shepherd had been in hell, and used some disgusting names to describe him. They seemed to be happy that he had been brutally murdered. Hate is not the answer to anything. Every one of us is sinful, yet every one of us is loved by God. Jesus did not celebrate the death of Matthew Shepherd, and neither should we. “Hate the sin, but love the sinner,” is how the saying goes, and that applies to homosexuals as well.

With that said, we must not be afraid to stand up and champion the cause of morality. Some will call us bigots and homophobes for our belief that homosexuality is a sin, but we cannot let name-calling soften our beliefs in God’s moral code. The pro-homosexual movement can only marginalize us if we allow ourselves to be marginalized. There are two ways we can do that: a) we exhibit hate toward homosexuals rather than love, or b) we remain silent. We must proudly champion God’s love toward the homosexual without condoning his or her behavior. Let His love shine through us, and may we all be examples of the morality God desires.

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Why do Butch Lesbians feel they have to go out to prove that they are masculine or can pick up women? It is confusing because they dont like men but they dress like them, as to the Femm lesbians…they dont like men but like women who look like men?

Why is it a woman who gets oral sex from another woman isn’t considered gay because she doesn’t return the favor, or is she?

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HI….MR MAN.. WHO A SHOP FI U?.IS WHICH SEKSHAN DEM GET DAH BLOUSE DEH BOSS? YUH NUH SI DI NECK LINE AND DI SLEEVE? A WHO BUY IT?? CHUH MAN