I have quite liked every Jamaican person I've ever met. It's a small sample group, for sure, but they've been fantastic to the last. However, Jamaica is completely off my travel agenda, because of a piece the Globe and Mail did in the summer of 2008, documenting the experiences of a gay man who had successfully applied for refugee status in Canada. By his account, corroborated by other people interviewed for the story, life for a gay person in Jamaica is unimaginably difficult. If a person is even suspected to be gay, there is the constant danger of being accosted by the police, beaten until you can't stand, and then being turned over to the hands of the murderous crowd that has formed so you can be literally torn apart. "Hyenas" is the only word that comes to mind, and a boycott of the society where this is tacitly accepted as the status quo seems the least I can do.

For the same reason, I find Catalyst's campaign this week, for gay awareness and acceptance, to be a tad vestigial. The movement that arose from the Stonewall riots of the 1970s has hit the wall with its ideology, for this society, but hasn't yet changed direction. On the path between the library and the fine arts building, there's a quote chalked on the pavement from a Vietnam war veteran, exclaiming the injustice of being kicked out of the military for being gay after winning medals for his service. Leaving aside the fact that this occurred well before the vast majority of Mount Allison students were even born, it's a protest of injustice that doesn't apply in Canada. Being gay is legal, the Canadian military will pay for a sex change operation that's deemed psychologically important, and people are free to marry whichever consenting adult they please. Homosexuals can adopt children, have their own, or get a dog. Yes, even gay dog ownership is accepted here.

In forming the solidarity of a worthwhile cause, movements tend to cement the radicalism that's appropriate for the circumstances of their beginnings. Because of this, it's not unusual for an ideology involving community entrenchment to last past its due date. Those watching the presidential campaign in the United States last year saw it personified by Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's former preacher. By his wild accusations of the United States as an intentional and enduring bastion of racial bigotry, even genocide, he presented a target for those who sought to prevent a member of his congregation from becoming president. At some point, the presumption of prejudice became the cause of it.

So to is the case with Catalyst, though much less so by several orders of magnitude. I wouldn't say that anyone is offended or even put off by Catalyst's campaign this week, or that it would lead them to form prejudices against people of different sexual orientations. It's simply troubling that a group of people are finding community with one another by campaigning against injustices towards them, when the main evidence of these injustices is the campaign itself. To do so is almost akin to reinforcing the anxiety persistent in people who, by and large, spent a good number of their formative years lying about their sexuality.

This isn't to say that Catalyst doesn't serve as a valuable part of the Mt. A community. One of the most interesting conversations I had last year was at a Catalyst-organized forum on religion and sexuality, and their function of providing a positive space for someone with a sexual identity crisis is certainly important. On the other hand, fighting for rights that have already been gained seems a fruitless waste of energy, at best, and stirring up anxiety about a lack of cultural acceptance is equally pointless when momentum is carrying that cause on its own. So LGBTQ folks: be grateful for those who fought for the rights you enjoy, just don't necessarily listen to them about the need to repeat the fight for yourself. If you really do want to fight, do something about the very real and very serious injustices occurring in places like Jamaica, so maybe I can take a vacation there someday.