BREAKING THE SILENCE =
The Good ... in the Gay Community in Belize
The gay community has been slowly awakened by a number of activities that have been sponsored by Alliance Against Aids and PASMO since 2005. To be more precise, it has not been waiting for outside help as volunteer advocate Toni Beardall, has been in the forefront of innovation with the creation, by share passion, of the site gay_belize@yahoogroups.com far longer than 2005.
This online community has 62 registered members, a small site by regional standards, but the mere fact that it operates outside the scope of recognizable institutions speaks volumes about the desire of the community to have a ‘place’ and resource to seriously dialogue about what’s happening in the community.
Toni says it best in his own words, “The idea for this online group came to me long ago, this group is several years old, and may have been the first to incorporate us all as a community….”
Another member shared his thoughts on the value of the web-group,
“Many of us do many forms of ‘education’ that speaks volumes and continue to do so . If it were not for this website group, I would not know of many things happening around the country.”
The interests to address community needs have not stopped there as Lucas, an 18 year old ended up writing an article in his school newspaper on discrimination.
Expressing his modesty to the community on what he did as an individual, Lucas said,
“ Just like to point out my article was more than just about homosexuality, it was about discrimination on a whole. It’s just that the angle of homosexuality is one that's never addressed which is why I chose it as the focal point. As for advocating I still think Lowell much better than me as I've never been the advocate type even with my religion. He sure has far more guts than me as he is publicly OUT.”
What’s good in the Belizean gay community? Well its, these individual efforts that go unrecognized time and time again. Now the challenge is to find new brave souls to come out of their stigmatized shell to contribute to institutional change. More seems to be on the horizon, but for this writer eager to ride the wind of change in an ideal world, hoping is never enough, but for now, it’s good enough as we are mentally moving forward, as a community.
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Torta Loca - Belizean HIV/AIDS Advocate
