Much ado about nothing

So as expected JFLAG's "Unconditional Love" PSA has generated much furor in the bible mafia. They are incensed that people could be speaking of unconditional love (you know that concept espoused by Christ himself) in relation to the sodomites.

That a good uptown brown lady like Christine Straw is advocating for inclusion of this filth is appalling to them.

"I am prepared to be loving and compassionate to all persons, irrespective of their class or creed or persuasion, but that love and compassion to all and sundry will not stop me from speaking the truth in love as I see the truth,” said Dawes, a former journalist.

“As innocuous and as innocent as that public service announcement might appear, it is part of a wider plan by militant homosexuals to gradually desensitise Jamaicans to homosexuality, so that homosexual behaviour and practice can become mainstream in Jamaica,” asserted the pastor.

Really???

Then RJR group has rejected the ad on shaky grounds with their managing director offering this gem of logic:

"They are presenting the particular ad as a public service announcement and in our business a public service announcement has specific meaning; it is not necessarily something that you would pay for. But even where you pay for PSAs the station would retain the right to determine if this is something that it would like to be identified with, because then normally we would say that it is done in association or it is supported by the particular station," Allen said. The station, he added, was not consulted or had any input in creating the pro-gay advertisement.

This is not altogether surprising as most of us have varying levels of cynicism when it comes to the advancement of progressive agendas in Jamaica's social and media landscape, however the candour and seeming earnest belief of his own bullshit is particularly striking in this year of our lord 2011.

Don't get me wrong, I honestly never expected the ad to air without a fight, but I also never expected TVJ to be the one to reject the ad especially since I view them in many respects as one of our more progressive media entities.

So now what?

Well it's pretty obvious that CVM will not want to take up this hot potato PSA and JFLAG will be kept very busy for the next few weeks. So the ad will remain in the viral media of YouTube and Facebook and JFLAG have another battle story to tell to the donors to get more funding, and so the cycle continues.

Who wins? Certainly not these guys.

I'm not even thinking about speaking publicly about this injustice because part of me really believes that perhaps JFLAG got ahead of themselves with this particular push, but then again sob stories are very lucrative in this industry of HIV and Human Rights advocacy so perhaps this was part of the plan.

Time will tell.

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