AHC: Less homophobic Caribbean

A lot of post-colonial homophobia stems from British attitudes during the Victoria era

Depends where. Latin America as a whole tends to be more conservative than the US or Canada and those are areas dominated by the Catholic Church along with those traditions.

The Caribbean was initially dominated by the Spanish after all.

So what does British attitudes have to do with it here?
 
Haiti is only one of many Caribbean countries. Also, a less homophobic Haiti would probably require a very early and pre-1900 POD, through which Haiti could be richer and more developed than in our timeline so that intellectualism and socially liberal ideas could flourish.

I am pretty sure that homophobia was strong in Caribbean already long time before 1980's.

False. Haitian culture has traditionally been accepting of homosexuality. In Haitian Vodou some of the lwa are explicitly bisexual or homosexual. It's the influence of the Catholic church, and especially starting in the 1900s American missionaries, that spread homophobia, similarly to the American missionaries who introduced the "Kill the Gays" bill in Uganda. While there are plenty of reasons you wouldn't want to live in rural Haiti in the 1800s, your homosexuality wouldn't be one of them.

Even today Erzulie Freda and Erzulie Dantor, apart from their other duties, are explicitly named as the patron gods of gay men and lesbians respectively. With a post-1900 POD, all you have to do to make Haiti less homophobic is to neuter the spread of Christianity in Haiti, which isn't too hard given that it's just a matter of keeping it out in the first place. Given the extent of intercultural borrowings in the Caribbean, it's likely in that case that an accepting and non-homophobic Haiti would rapidly see its neighbors adopting similar positions. Especially because we already saw OTL large amounts of copying/borrowing from Haitian culture in the 1960s Caribbean.
 
Last edited:

Taimur500

Banned
False. Haitian culture has traditionally been accepting of homosexuality. In Haitian Vodou some of the lwa are explicitly bisexual or homosexual. It's the influence of the Catholic church, and especially starting in the 1900s American missionaries, that spread homophobia, similarly to the American missionaries who introduced the "Kill the Gays" bill in Uganda. While there are plenty of reasons you wouldn't want to live in rural Haiti in the 1800s, your homosexuality wouldn't be one of them.
These attitudes come from colonization.
Seems like for many history began in 1492.
Ppl need to read anthropology to notice how attitudes to gender sex etc are quite different in """new world societies""" compared to abrahamic religious land
 
Have the British Caribbean become part of Canada, as was actually seriously considered after the war?

There are a couple problems with this. First, at the time, Canada was every bit as bigoted against homosexuality as the British were. Second, none of these places would've actually been made a part of Canada, they would've gone from being British colonies to Canadian colonies. By the time Canada might have been okay with admitting majority black areas to Confederation, these places would've probably wanted independence or have been independent for several years anyway.

I don't think Quebec would appreciate that many black English speakers.

It was a hundred years ago that this was considered. Back then, English Canada didn't give a damn what Quebec thought about anything.
 
What about their economic development? People who don't have the basics luke food security and shelter tend not to give much thought to the rights of a minority in a small spectrum of the legal system. Once a society reaches a threshold of economic development they can take a break from subsistence and notice that gays are being treated unfairly.
 
What about their economic development? People who don't have the basics luke food security and shelter tend not to give much thought to the rights of a minority in a small spectrum of the legal system. Once a society reaches a threshold of economic development they can take a break from subsistence and notice that gays are being treated unfairly.

Better economical situation would help situation. But probably you need surviving Western indian Federation and lesser corrupt government.
 
Better economical situation would help situation. But probably you need surviving Western indian Federation and lesser corrupt government.

Reduced corruption also comes with economic development, more people making good wages are less likely to risk that for a bribe or ten.

I've never been to the carribean, only seen it on the cricket, is it a particularly homophobic place on the world scale?
 
similarly to the American missionaries who introduced the "Kill the Gays" bill in Uganda.

Those US missionaries were total bastards, agreed.

That said, if the missionaries had gone to, say, Denmark, and tried to get a "kill the gays" law passed, they would have been hounded out of the country. So, there's probably a bit more going on than simply American Xtians coming in and turning everyone against gays.

I can acknowledge that Britain's colonial laws helped pave the way for contemoparary third-world homophobia. Though I think there is also the fact that the west generally is viewed as more socially liberal, and people might be inclined to hate anything that is regarded as a distincitve feature of a former colonial power. (Mind you, doesn't explain the worldwide romance for soccer.)
 
Those US missionaries were total bastards, agreed.

That said, if the missionaries had gone to, say, Denmark, and tried to get a "kill the gays" law passed, they would have been hounded out of the country. So, there's probably a bit more going on than simply American Xtians coming in and turning everyone against gays.

At least in Haiti, no one really listened to American missionaries until America occupied the country in the early 1900s, displaced local elites, and essentially turned the place into a neo-colony. The circumstances are completely different in other Caribbean islands, but the point is that the spread of homophobia in Haiti is pretty strongly tied to increasing American dominance over the Haitian economy and politics which translated to increased cultural influence. America has never occupied Denmark, attempted to monopolize the Danish economy, and replaced rich Danish people with rich black Americans.

Now there were indigenous Christian Haitians who also would have been homophobic; namely Francophone Catholics. However the spread of homophobia cannot be attributed to their influence because historically speaking they have never exceeded 5% of the population and the other 95% has been loathe to adopt anything from Francophone Haitians, to the point that in Kreyol li pale franse, lit. "he speaks French" is actually an insult. We don't really see serious penetration of Christianity into Creolophone and rural Haiti before the American occupation IMO, before that the area was pretty much 100% Voduisaint. In addition, the indigenous Francophone Catholics are actually pretty socially liberal on areas such as homosexuality and abortion.
 
I was thinking of Uganda, which of course was never a US colonly, when I wrote the post at 31. Yes, I'm sure the US had a strong cultural influence over Haiti, largely resulting from the occupation.
 
The Che Guevara forced homosexuals into work camps stating that "Work will make you men" and related homosexuality with a bourgeoisie disease that had to be exterminated for being counter-revolutionary. Maybe removing that from ATL's history could help.
 

SpookyBoy

Banned
At least in Haiti, no one really listened to American missionaries until America occupied the country in the early 1900s, displaced local elites, and essentially turned the place into a neo-colony. The circumstances are completely different in other Caribbean islands, but the point is that the spread of homophobia in Haiti is pretty strongly tied to increasing American dominance over the Haitian economy and politics which translated to increased cultural influence. America has never occupied Denmark, attempted to monopolize the Danish economy, and replaced rich Danish people with rich black Americans.

Now there were indigenous Christian Haitians who also would have been homophobic; namely Francophone Catholics. However the spread of homophobia cannot be attributed to their influence because historically speaking they have never exceeded 5% of the population and the other 95% has been loathe to adopt anything from Francophone Haitians, to the point that in Kreyol li pale franse, lit. "he speaks French" is actually an insult. We don't really see serious penetration of Christianity into Creolophone and rural Haiti before the American occupation IMO, before that the area was pretty much 100% Voduisaint. In addition, the indigenous Francophone Catholics are actually pretty socially liberal on areas such as homosexuality and abortion.
Thanks for this, I'm really interested in the more obscure parts of LGBT history that tend to be erased, especially from a non-Western standpoint
 
The Che Guevara forced homosexuals into work camps stating that "Work will make you men" and related homosexuality with a bourgeoisie disease that had to be exterminated for being counter-revolutionary. Maybe removing that from ATL's history could help.

Regardless of how you feel about Che, I don't think homophobia in modern Cuba started with the revolution. Rather it was building on homophobia that had been there for quite some time already, while the language of describing homosexuality as "bourgeois decadance" was pretty much word-for-word imported from contemporary Soviet propaganda as a way to provide a "leftist" justification for homophobic policies.
 
The Che Guevara forced homosexuals into work camps stating that "Work will make you men" and related homosexuality with a bourgeoisie disease that had to be exterminated for being counter-revolutionary. Maybe removing that from ATL's history could help.

It was more a Castro thing and related to the existing macho culture. Che left quite soon after revolution

What is interesting is that Cuba probably has the most relaxed attitude towards LGBTQ population among Carriban countries since the 1970s. Castro seemingly changed his view on homosexuality around that time.
 
Speaking on Cuba, its checkered history on improvment of LGBTQ rights is very interesting, esp. when one consider Fidel Casteo himself, openly admitted recently that previous discriminatory stance is wrong.
 
This question is based upon a lot of implicit assumptions about some kind of directionality of social change. It's a mistake to see western european attitudes towards homosexuality as some kind of inevitable end state, and the only question being how fast Whig history moves to let the rest of the world catch up.
 
There are a couple problems with this. First, at the time, Canada was every bit as bigoted against homosexuality as the British were. Second, none of these places would've actually been made a part of Canada, they would've gone from being British colonies to Canadian colonies. By the time Canada might have been okay with admitting majority black areas to Confederation, these places would've probably wanted independence or have been independent for several years anyway.

I was under the impression that after WWII, there was consideration being given to making the Caribbean islands into actual Provinces of Canada. And that the people of the islands were actually on favour of the measure but there was some point they didn’t agree on, and so it got abandoned.
 
Top