Murderer of U.K. Diplomat in Jamaica Leaves Anti-Gay Message

Jamaica, which numbers among the nations of the world with the highest murder rates, is also reputed to be one of the most homophobic. That impression was deepened with reports that a murdered U.K. honorary consul, John Terry, was found strangled in his home, along with a note warning that "ALL gays" would suffer the same fate.

A Sept. 11 article at the Web site of the U.K. newspaper The Guardian reported that the note also referred to the 65-year-old Terry as a "batty man," or homosexual.

The note was scrawled by hand and signed, "Gay-Man," the report said.

The note also declared that, "This is what will happen to ALL gays."

Terry was found strangled to death, with a cord tied around his neck, the article reported.

Terry was born in New Zealand, and had served as an honorary consul in Jamaica, where he had lived since 1967, for over a dozen years, according to the article.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband praised Terry, stating that, "I, and all his colleagues, were deeply saddened to hear of the death of John Terry, the British honorary consul in Montego Bay in Jamaica.

"John Terry was a key member of our team in Jamaica and had been an honorary consul for 13 years, but with many years of other service to the British community in Jamaica before then," continued Milibrand.

"Honorary consuls like John play a valuable role in our work overseas and this was especially true of John, who helped many, many British visitors to Jamaica over the years.

"My thoughts are with his wife and children," the foreign secretary went on. "He will be greatly missed too by colleagues and all those who knew him."

The article noted that in 2008, Jamaica saw over 1,600 murders. Though no mention was made of how many of those were gays or lesbians, the island nation is notorious for the anti-gay prejudice that pervades its society, from anti-gay reggae lyrics celebrating the murder of gay men to mob violence directed against people on the basis of their actual or perceived sexual orientation.

An Associated Press article from earlier this summer detailed how gays are systematically attacked, with the police showing little interest in protecting them--when, that is, the police are not the actual perpetrators.

The article also carried a quote from a minister who suggested that gays had only themselves to blame for the violence directed against them.

Promninent evangelical Bishop Herro Blair was quoted as saying, "Among themselves, homosexuals are extremely jealous," suggesting that when gays are attacked, it's the result of gay-on-gay violence.

But Blair went on to imply that heterosexual violence against gays is to be expected, saying that, "...some of them do cause a reaction by their own behaviors, for, in many people's opinions, homosexuality is distasteful."

A Gaywired article from February, 2008, also reported on the violence to which gay residents of the island are subjected, detailing how a mob stormed the house of three gay men, beating them all severely enough to send them to the hospital with various injuries, incouding broken limbs.

The same article recounted how a mob of 100 surrounded a church on Easter Sunday in 2007, hurling bottles through the church's windows and threatening to kill the 150 people inside, who were attending a gay man's funeral. When police arrived, they joined with the anti-gay mob, the article said.

That same year, a crowd of 2,000 stoned three gay men; children were among the rock-hurling throng, the article said.

The country's politicians have systematically demonized gays, as well, with even the Prime Minister denouncing gays and vowing never to repeal the colonial-era law that criminalizes consensual sex between adults of the same gender.

The social stigma against gays runs so deep that heterosexual men are dying of preventable causes: many will not consent to exams that could detect prostate cancer, and as a result mortality due to the disease has spiked.

Recently, protests against Jamaican reggae star Buju Banton led to the cancellation of four concert appearances by Banton at House of Blues locations around the country.

Banton is the artist who recorded the 1988 gay murder anthem "Boom Bye Bye," which describes shooting gay men in the head with Uzis and then burning their corpses.