Never mind the One Love thing or the fact that Noel Coward lived there for years. For many gay travelers, Jamaica is not on the list of places to visit. And so whenever I tell same-sex friends in New York that my husband and I are headed there for another vacation, I get looks of something between fear and disdain.
Call us ignorant and politically incorrect for giving our tourist dollars to a country that makes sex between men illegal and with a murder history that includes the recent death of a transgender teenager with the police not making a single arrest. Call us naive or insensitive for checking into resort after resort as a same-sex couple in a country in which dancehall reggae and other national music genres have lyrics about killing batty boys, their slang for gay men.
We like it there. It’s an easy nonstop flight to an old British-inflected island full of some of the liveliest and most articulate people on Earth that definitely needs the infusion of money that tourism provides. It doesn’t just have beaches, like Tulum and Anguilla. It has mountains and music. It has a burgeoning organic farming culture, too. And it has Chris Blackwell, the community-minded music producer turned forward-thinking hotelier, who is hopeful that things will turn around.
Image via Apple Maps
The post Gay Travel in Jamaica appeared first on Purple Roofs Gay Travel Blog.