Are Jamaican gay hate "stars" on the down low?

This article by xtra.ca's Matt Mills explores homophobia, hypocrisy and murder in Jamaica.

The drive from Kingston's Norman Manley International Airport to the centre of the city's business district, New Kingston, winds through one of the Jamaican capital's underprivileged neighbourhoods.

The taxi driver keeps the accelerator tramped to the floorboard as we speed through a maze of gritty, sun-baked streets lined with low, ramshackle buildings. People stare as we pass by. Urban decay is not the right description for this. Those words imply that a once-new prosperity somehow slipped away over time, but there are no obvious relics of better days here.

In this class-stratified city, Kingston's various rough neighbourhoods are the childhood homes of dancehall musicians, heroes of the ghettos, some of whose lyrics call for and glorify the murder of batty men (Jamaican patois for "bottom men").



READ THE REST OF MATT'S EXCELLENT ARTICLE HERE.