The Jamaica Coalition for a Healthy Society (JCHS), says it firmly stands with Leighton Johnson, President of the Jamaica Teachers Association (JTA) in rejecting the acceptance or utilisation of the terms ‘sexual orientation’ and gender identity’ (SOGI) in the education sector.
Johnson had shared his concerns in an article in the Jamaica Observer recently. The JCHS says SOGI is neither accepted in Jamaican law nor in any binding international treaty.
Chairman of the JCHS, Dr Wayne West remarked that, “the terms ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’ are based on false and flawed ideas. A person’s sex is either male or female and is determined from conception. No matter what a person may feel about him or herself, sex can never be changed. It is biologically and medically impossible. To affirm that a man can become a woman, or a woman can become a man, by undergoing surgeries or taking hormones, is to aid and abet someone’s confusion and delusion. Such a person needs sound counselling support to regain a correct sense of self. Furthermore, homosexual and bisexual sexual preferences are abnormal and run against design and purpose of the natural order of the universe.”
The JCHS asserted that the societal chaos that would result from introducing those terms into law and policy is not imagined but can be clearly seen in the experiences of other nations such as the USA, UK and Canada which have normalised those terms.
In accepting ‘gender identity’, males who feel they are females, are being allowed to use female bathrooms, play on female sports teams, and in Canada, convicted male sex offenders are permitted to transfer to female prisons putting the female inmates are risk for sexual assault by the male imposters. ‘Sexual orientation’ is undefined and potentially unlimited in its scope going beyond homosexual, heterosexual, and bisexual and can include other criminally prohibited behaviours such as incest, pedophilia and bestiality.
JCHS Legal Counsel, Shirley Richards, added that even the use of the word ‘gender’ to classify humans is extremely suspect. Of note is that there is no constitutional basis for use of the word ‘gender’ in this manner. “The Report of the Joint Constitutional Committee, 2001, which oversaw public discussion on, and deliberated on the amendments to constitution namely the Charter of Rights, recognised that ‘gender’ refers to the grammatical classification of nouns and related words, however the word ‘sex’ is the more appropriate designation for humans. The resulting section 13 (3) (i)) in the Charter of Rights therefore expressly provides for one classification of humans, namely, ‘sex’ being either male or female.”
JCHS Advocacy Officer, Philippa Davies commented that, “most persons are unaware that it was in the 1960-70’s that Dr John Money (1921-2006) popularised the terms ‘gender’ and ‘gender identity’. He was among the pioneers of the now discredited practice of sex ‘reassignment’ surgery and was a proponent of pedophilia. His most famous and disastrous experiment was to force the parents of Bruce Reimer to raise the boy as a girl, while Money routinely sexually traumatised Bruce and his twin brother as children. This experiment ended tragically with both brothers becoming severely mentally distressed and committing suicide two years apart while still in their 30’s. The mainstreaming of the word ‘gender’ in various policy documents, and programmes in Jamaica has really been based on grammatical inaccuracy and a sordid history.”
The JCHS urges Government Ministries, Agencies and Departments (MDAs) to bring their activities and programme titles in line with the constitution by replacing ‘gender’ with sex and thus avoiding the undesirable association with an unethical history in the false description of humans as a ‘gender’.