The Editor, Sir:

'How will you know them, Mr PM?' is what many are asking in response to Mr Golding's BBC Hardtalk stance that gays and lesbian would not form part of his Cabinet. How would he know them? I do not think the PM desires to know who is gay or not, and it is unimaginable that he asked when selecting his party candidates, or when making his post-election appointments.

But, the prime minister fully understands the Jamaican psyche on the issue of homosexuality, fearing the giving an inch, taking a yard. Picture a minister of government/MP marching on Half-Way Tree holding aloft a placard in a gay-pride parade. Imagine the consternation of national proportions and the distraction for any Jamaican government. Of course, there must be well-qualified people in the gay community, but appointing openly gay people to government, in the Jamaican context, we know would not go down well with the majority of people.

Straight people confine their sex life to their bedrooms; I wish gay people would do likewise. It is overtly flaunting homosexuality that stirs up these unjustified, unlawful, cruel, acts against them, our fellow Jamaicans. The rights gays have are the right to their sexual preferences, the right to live their private lives, but not the right to promulgate or impose their lifestyle on others in society.

Many of the letters and callers to the media fear economic backlash consequent on the PM's BBC interview, but if the governments of Great Britain and North America chose to apply economic sanctions for standing up for what to us is a moral issue, then so be it.

I am, etc.,

CLAUDE WILSON

jaclaudw@yahoo.com