MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica (AP) — Dwayne Jones was relentlessly teased in high school for being effeminate until he dropped out. His father not only kicked him out of the house at the age of 14 but also helped jeering neighbors push the youngster from the rough Jamaican slum where he grew up.
By age 16, the teenager was dead — beaten, stabbed, shot, and run over by a car when he showed up at a street party dressed as a woman. His mistake was confiding to a friend that he was attending a "straight" party as a girl for the first time.
"When I saw Dwayne's body, I started shaking and crying," said Khloe, one of three transgendered friends who shared a derelict house with the teenager in the hills above the north coast of Montego Bay. Like most transgenders and gays in Jamaica, Khloe wouldn't give a full name out of fear.
"It was horrible. It was so, so painful to see him like that."
International advocacy groups often portray this Caribbean island as the most hostile country in the Western Hemisphere for gays and transgendered people. After two prominent gay rights activists were murdered, a researcher with the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch in 2006 called the environment in Jamaica for such groups "the worst any of us has ever seen."
For years, Jamaica's gay community has lived so underground that their parties and church services were held secretly. Most gays have stuck to a "don't ask, don't tell" policy of keeping their sexual orientation hidden to avoid scrutiny or protect loved ones.
"Judging by comments made on social media, most Jamaicans think Dwayne Jones brought his death on himself for wearing a dress and dancing in a society that has made it abundantly clear that homosexuals are neither to be seen nor heard," said Annie Paul, a blogger and publications officer at Jamaica's campus of the University of the West Indies.
Some say the hostility partly stems from the legacy of slavery when black men were sometimes sodomized as punishment or humiliation. Some historians believe that practice carried over into a general dread of homosexuality.
But in recent years, emboldened young people such as Dwayne have helped bring the island's gay and transgender community out of the shadows. A small group of gay runaways now rowdily congregates on the streets of Kingston's financial district.
Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller's government has also vowed to put the anti-sodomy law to a "conscience vote" in Parliament, and she said during her 2011 campaign that only merit would decide who got a Cabinet position in her government. By contrast, former Prime Minister Bruce Golding said in 2008 that he would never allow homosexuals in his Cabinet.
Dane Lewis, executive director of the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals & Gays, said there were increasing "pockets of tolerance" on the island.
"We can say that we are becoming more tolerant. And thankfully that's because of people like Dwayne who have helped push the envelope," said Lewis, one of the few Jamaican gays who will publicly disclose his full name.
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