6734: Gays in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Just came back from attending a Miami showing of "Before Night Falls", a 
film based on the memoirs of the late Reinaldo Arenas, Cuban writer and gay 
activist. If his story is true, then life in Cuba is much harsher for gays 
than it has ever been in Haiti.  I will venture to say that the acceptance 
or rejection of homosexuality in Haiti or elsewhere is contigent upon many 
issues( class, religion ect.),the only difference being that unlike their 
American counterparts Haitians are not yet aware that gay bashing is 
politically incorrect.

A few years ago, I met a 22 year old man "Benny"in Miami who had known since 
he was 12 that he was gay. Benny, by the way is the only boy in a family of 
4 girls.  While he had not "come out",the family knew. One summer, he was 
sent the Port-de-Paix area having been told that his people had planned a 
special party for him. The party  was a voodoo ceremony where the kinfolk 
had gathered to cure this bewildered young man of his affliction.  Knowing 
that his "condition" would bring shame to the family, my young friend prayed 
very hard that those rites would rid him of his "evil ways". Today, "Benny" 
has been accepted to some degree by family members, who deal with his 
homosexuality by either ignoring it or by treating it as amusingly deviant 
bit of family entertainment,( let's watch him eat like a girl,talk like a 
girl ect).

I have also talked to a woman from the Nord-Ouest who tells me that in her 
"village" there was a forty-something married woman,who in an open an 
notorious manner , "kept" several female lovers.  She was a mambo and this 
kind of behavior was accepted because of her status.


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