Joshua Sur­tees

An at­trac­tive cou­ple strolls along the banks of the riv­er Seine in Paris hold­ing hands, stop­ping to kiss in the evening sun.

They take in a movie, laugh, dine al fres­co, go home, make pas­sion­ate love and next morn­ing they get en­gaged un­der­neath the Eif­fel Tow­er.

They mar­ry six months lat­er and with­in three years they have two chil­dren, a house, car and dog. Nice sto­ry, isn't it?

The cou­ple I've been de­scrib­ing are two men. Two friends of mine.

For some peo­ple, that sto­ry sud­den­ly switched from be­ing nice to some­thing sin­is­ter or un­com­fort­able. But it's still the same sto­ry.

In Lon­don, gay cou­ples hold hands and some­times kiss while walk­ing around town.

Ask your­self, what's your re­ac­tion to that? Are you ex­cit­ed? Fine.

Are you amused? Fine.

Are you of­fend­ed? If, so, ask your­self why.

What about two men mak­ing love? Are you dis­gust­ed, by the idea? If so, why?

Is it the anato­my?

Some peo­ple (male and fe­male) are dis­gust­ed by men's penis­es. Some peo­ple are dis­gust­ed by women's vagi­nas. They think sex or­gans in gen­er­al are gross.

Those peo­ple are dis­gust­ed by sex in gen­er­al. I don't un­der­stand them and I don't un­der­stand those who find gay sex dis­gust­ing.

Most straight men watch porn. It's strange how they aren't dis­gust­ed by men's erec­tions in that con­text.

I first be­came aware of gay sex aged nine, watch­ing Mau­rice, a film adap­ta­tion of an EM Forster nov­el about a young man (played by Hugh Grant) who falls in love with an­oth­er male stu­dent at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty in 1909.

The film had ro­man­tic bed­room sex scenes. As a young child I didn't feel dis­gust. It was just like any oth­er cin­e­mat­ic sex scene, on­ly more dar­ing and in­ter­est­ing.

Did it turn me gay? No. Did it turn me off gay peo­ple? No.

When the T&T Film Fes­ti­val screened the award-win­ning Ba­hami­an film Chil­dren of God last month the film had erot­ic scenes be­tween two men. I wasn't dis­gust­ed. I was im­pressed.

So, what is ho­mo­pho­bia, re­al­ly? It's a ques­tion I've asked my­self and found no ad­e­quate an­swer to.

I know what racism and sex­ism are. Learned be­hav­iours pro­duced by ide­olo­gies of in­fe­ri­or­i­ty. But no­body claims gay peo­ple are in­fe­ri­or. They claim they are many things but not in­fe­ri­or.

Words I have heard from the an­ti-gay squad in T&T in­clude "aber­rant, de­viant, ab­hor­rent, dis­turb­ing, a threat."

Mean­while, those who sup­port gay peo­ple are afraid to use words like "beau­ti­ful, sexy, al­lur­ing, kind, good."

Politi­cians are afraid to show pub­lic sup­port for gay rights.

Two weeks ago, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie were not afraid to show sup­port for the fam­i­ly of Matthew Shep­ard, pub­licly em­brac­ing the par­ents of a young Amer­i­can man whose son was killed in a ho­mo­pho­bic at­tack in 1998.

But nei­ther the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al nor the Chief Jus­tice want­ed their com­ments on record that night.

A week lat­er, Ram­lo­gan e-mailed me a state­ment say­ing: "...The is­sue of gay rights re­quires much pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and dis­cus­sion as part of the de­vel­op­ing in­ter­na­tion­al law on hu­man rights. It is a sen­si­tive, del­i­cate and con­tro­ver­sial is­sue which ig­nites the pas­sions of many re­li­gious and so­cial groups."

Fear on both sides of the de­bate. But what are ho­mo­phobes re­al­ly afraid of? Sex­u­al pen­e­tra­tion by an­oth­er man with­out con­sent? And what about women? Do they fear their sons or part­ners might be as­sault­ed?

Male on male sex­u­al as­sault is rare, but ho­mo­phobes in the Caribbean, of­ten mid­dle-aged men, of­ten say their first en­counter with ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty was old­er men prey­ing on younger boys.

None of them tell you they were preyed up­on, they say they heard about it.

It hap­pens of course, less fre­quent­ly than old­er men prey­ing on young girls, but it does hap­pen. It's called sex­u­al as­sault, not gay sex. Not gay love.

Apart from the er­ro­neous link made be­tween ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty, pae­dophil­ia and de­vian­cy, there are oth­er fears.

News­day, last week, pub­lished a let­ter from Dr Clif­ford Ram­cha­ran of St Au­gus­tine, who said he is lit­er­al­ly afraid of the end of the world.

He wrote: "Just imag­ine if the world was peo­pled on­ly by ho­mo­sex­u­als and les­bians, what would hap­pen? The world pop­u­la­tion would dwin­dle to alarm­ing pro­por­tions with no new births and...that would be the end of the world and civil­i­sa­tion by en­cour­ag­ing gay rights."

Dr Ram­cha­ran's weak un­der­stand­ing of de­mo­graph­ics, ge­net­ics, sex­u­al­i­ty and pop­u­la­tion stud­ies aside, it is at least a more imag­i­na­tive fear–a bib­li­cal fear of self-im­posed hu­man sex­u­al apoc­a­lypse.

As­suage your fears Dr Ram­cha­ran. Bug­gery and naughty sex will not bring about the end of the world. Nu­clear bombs and glob­al warm­ing is what you should fear, my dear learned doc­tor.

Mor­gan Free­man re­cent­ly re-tweet­ed the quote: "I hate the word ho­mo­pho­bia. You're not scared. You're an ass­hole."

Racism has re­treat­ed to the point where the US Pres­i­dent is black. One day the US pres­i­dent will be gay.

I like to imag­ine (and sure, ac­cuse me of stereo­typ­ing) that when that day comes the world will be­come a more peace­ful place, with less nu­clear bombs and glob­al warm­ing and just about the same amount of gay sex.