Threats from reggae-loving homophobes? Lord-a-mercy.
/ inappropriate, but how can you take that death threat seriously?
Small consolation, but Beenie Man has publically apologised in the UK for homophobia in his early lyrics.
Whether this is a cynical commercial decision or not remains to be seen…
Oh, you mean this? (from here)
Nah. If he was speaking in patios, there would be references to Charcoal cooking and umbrella tables, mon. 
Chastain: inappropriate, but how can you take that death threat seriously?
I dunno, after I read the link about homosexuals being threatened and beaten and burned to death, I had no trouble at all taking it seriously.
Just because a certain dialect is often portrayed as all silly and endearingly goofy and childlike doesn’t mean that the people using it aren’t actually mature, articulate adults, some of whom have extremely vicious prejudices about which they are very serious indeed.
Well, I didn’t read the link.
I don’t think you need to be too worried about that. I’ve not always agreed with Peter Tatchell’s tactics, but I’ve been watching his campaigns since I moved to Britain, and with his record I don’t think anyone can seriously claim he’s not one of the most courageous men in politics. He’s already been beaten to within an inch of his life by Robert Mugabe’s bodyguards for taking a protest about gay rights in Zimbabwe right to the top, and it doesn’t seem to have slowed him down at all. He’s a genuine hero, and we don’t get many of them in these latter days.
Wow. Should this kind of speech be protected by the first amendment?
Now, so long as Rastafarianism doesn’t hold that gay people are subhuman…
You’ve got to have a hate object to focus upon! Hitler did it. Orwell wrote about it. These guys are modern-day practitioners.
Sad fuckin’ world.
If someone said that to my face, it would definitely be ‘uttering threats,’ I think even in the US.
Something about shouting “Fire!” in a movie theater seems to apply here, in my non-legal-professional opinion. But then I could be completely wrong.
There’s the exception to free speech for incitement to a crime. Interestingly, on the linked web page, there’s a very similar example question:
I suspect that if, after a show, a group of fans went gaybashing, the band could face charges; I’m not sure if this has ever happened before. I’m pretty far to the extreme end fo speech protection, but I would wholeheartedly support criminal charges against a band if that were to happen.
Daniel
These guys seriously need to go smoke some ganja.
Oh, wait…
I’m a big reggae fan, but it’s this kind of shit that has kept me from getting into dancehall. The music itself is interesting and has much potenital, and it’s slowly seeping over into American and British hip hop and rock. But I won’t listen to this stuff any more than I would listen to skinhead metal/punk like Skrewdriver. As a reggae fan, it’s really fucking sad what has become of Jamacian music.
What ever happened to the good old days, when rastas and gays could sit down together and complain about the Pope?
Just an aside, but dancehall is quite popular among many gay Londoners (where Peter Tatchell lives). There’s even a very popular and long-running club night (Queernation), which attracts gay Afro-Caribbean men and plays dancehall, hip hop, etc.
There was an article in the gay press recently featuring vox pop reactions to Beanie Man and his ilk. Most of it was a great big shrug, with surprisingly few strong negative opinions. In my experience, gay ol’ London is like that–the gay scene is so huge and strong that it’s practically mainstream. It’s easy to forget we’ve got it good. It takes controversies–and perhaps these death threats will be a sufficient outrage–to shock the larger gay population out of complacency.
(Truth be told, most of us boys are more concerned with popping pills and taking our shirts off. The political queens, Peter Tatchell and his ilk probably don’t get the support they deserve.)
Incidentally, “batty” = bum, hence the leap to “batty boy” meaning gay man. (Batty isn’t necessarily a negative term; my friends and I refer to our usual drinking spots as batty bars.)
Ain’t just London.
Right on comment, and scary, too!
What group today does not have a hate object? Although it is toned down much more than the OP example, we’ve groups in the world that profess love and holiness and then hate either: pagans, christians, witches, muslims, gays, blacks, whites, abortionists, govenment officials, police, liberals, conservatives, etc., in fact any group whose beliefs are suspected of eroding their own.
What ever happened to “live and let live?”
SnakeS ← (VERY discriminated against and killed often just cause a small subset happens to be poisonous and kills people; snif)