Let’s face it. We have handed our schools over to the reprobates.
This certitude came barrelling down like a hot steamroller recently during an impromptu meeting with a group of teachers and guidance counsellors.
The group posited that a large segment of the student population has joined the LGBTQI ranks, is supportive of the community, has experimented with same-sex relationships, or is outright identifying as the other gender.
Where were we when this was happening?
The education ministry is aware of this crisis, the health ministry is cognizant of its impact, and some parents are determined to defend their children’s choices when the matter is raised.
If the government were to deny knowledge of this, they would also have to deny knowledge of the Samoa Agreement that encourages this reprehensible behaviour through its explicit Comprehensive Reproductive Health education curriculum. They would also have to deny knowledge of the degenerate Yute Chatbot that they introduced last year.
Many members of the clergy are also aware of the dilemma. Churchmen have been rushed onto school compounds on several occasions to intervene in unscrupulous outbreaks that principals were desperate to quell.
Some in frocks have opted for silence, choosing to turn a blind eye to the fact that large swathes of up-and-coming generations of Jamaicans have rejected the divine design.
Others claim that their position on the matter has evolved and are now insisting that the behaviour should be accepted as a normal and natural variation of human sexual expression.
Children engaging in sexual activities is not new. According to current data, one-third of Jamaican youth have had sex by the age of 14 years, and nearly half have engaged in sexual activity by the age of 16 years.
Over time, it has become so pervasive that no alarm was raised a few years ago when a 14-year-old girl was celebrated, not for her academic achievement or her sporting prowess, but for being the first to give birth on New Year’s Day. There was no outrage from the authorities who delivered and presented the gift basket for the achievement.
The government should know that Jamaica has the highest rate of teen pregnancies in the entire Caribbean. As politicians sought and bought votes in the rural parts, especially in St. Thomas, Hanover, and St. Elizabeth, during election seasons, they would have seen that teen pregnancy is prevalent.
In St. Thomas, specifically, research indicates that nearly one in five girls becomes a mother by the age of 18. Recent figures show around 37-70 births per 1,000 young women (ages 15-19).
In many of these cases, teen girls are the victims of incest and paedophile attacks. They are forced to leave their homes and their formal education to become single mothers, battering from pillar to post, as if they had signed up for a life of hardship and persistent poverty.
The teen pregnancy crisis has been creeping up on Jamaica for decades. From as early as the 1970s, the alarm bells about the rising rate of “children having children” were ringing. Public discourse raged as teenage childbearing became a significant social problem.
Questions about the emotional maturity of the teen moms, their inability to provide adequate parenting, and the absence of fathers and support systems for the newborn were huge concerns.
Unfortunately, many of the children born to teen moms also become teen mothers themselves. Without righteous intervention rooted in Christian values, a wicked trend had been set in train, and the consequences showing up today are dire.
Until now, little has been said or even acknowledged that same-sex indulgence, among both boys and girls, is the new fad. It is unclear if this behaviour is encouraged by some in authority as a response to the teen pregnancy crisis.
As if this were not enough, it is within this worsening crisis that the government of Jamaica, aided and abetted by at least one human rights organisation, has been looking at decriminalising sexual engagement between children.
Citing that too many cases of consensual sex among minors are dominating the court system, Justice Minister Delroy Chuck recently announced that the law, which criminalises sex among children, is being reviewed.
Jamaican law addresses “carnal abuse”, primarily through the comprehensive Sexual Offences Act, 2009, which replaced older laws like the Incest (Punishment) Act and expanded protections, criminalising acts like rape, grievous sexual assault, incest, and sex with persons unable to consent (due to age, disability, or mental disorder). The law defines offences like rape based on lack of consent and outlines serious penalties, including long prison sentences.
The human rights group, with strong support from members of the public in general, including some educators and guidance counsellors, raised the idea during a joint-select committee meeting of the House of Representatives. Popular opinion has lashed on to the notion, claiming that the problem is really with parenting and not the children themselves.
Those pushing the idea insist that the law makes criminals of misguided children and that the responsible response should be guidance and counselling, not imprisonment.
The heart of the problem is that this nation has rejected the heart of God. The salt has lost its savor, and the light has gone out. For the most part, the church has gone silent and rendered irrelevant, and the people are parading their sins like Sodom.
Our children are acting out what they have been taught at home, online, at school, in communities, and in the wider society.
Jamaica must repent or face the fate of Gomorrah. Legalising sin is not the answer.