The Tribune

By KHRISNA RUSSELL

Deputy Chief Reporter

krussell@tribunemedia.net

ACTIVISTS condemned as “fake” and “dangerous” a Facebook page that aimed to teach underage children that it is acceptable to be attracted to the same sex or that “sometimes the best boys are the best girls”.

Erin Greene, a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex community activist, urged people to not only report the page to Facebook, but to make their concerns known to the Central Detective Unit.

She said the page called “Bahamas LGBTQ kids ages 4-12” was created with malicious intent and expressed fears it could cause increased violence to those in the small LGBTQI community.

Bahamas Trans Intersex United’s lead spokesperson Alexus D’Marco also condemned the page insisting it was an attempt to smear the community, adding it was a passive attack with the potential to damage the progress in terms of social tolerance to those in the LGBTQI community.

The creation of the page incited anger on the social media platform. However, as both were advocating on social media that there be action against the page, it was removed from the site. Still, discussion sparked by its creation raged online.

“The law is very clear,” Ms Greene told The Tribune yesterday. “It is against the law to provide sexual health, sexual reproductive health or information about sexuality or services to anyone under the age of 18 without the authorisation of their parent or guardian. So the group in and of itself on the service it purports to be providing is against the law.

“Second of all, in no developed society do we have conversations with children or about children about sexuality in this manner, the page itself is intolerable in a civilised society. This is not the way that the LGBT addresses the issue of sexuality or the issue of young people of youth and sexuality.

“These types of discussions are for parents and guardians and children. The internet and social media is not a space for that conversation and in a civilised society we don’t engage the subject of children youth and sexuality in this fashion.

“I think the intent is malicious with sole intent of inciting hostility towards the LGBT community and the advocacy community,” Ms Green continued, “but that being said, I don’t care what the intent was, the most important thing is to identify the creators of the page, to bring them to the attention of the authorities and to have the page removed from Facebook.”

She said people were right to be concerned, but lamented that their outrage would be directed at the wrong people.

“People are concerned about the safety of their children across the board, so it’s reasonable to see people get upset about what appears to be an attempt to introduce young people to the subject of sexuality and homosexuality and people are rightly outraged.

“However, I am concerned that that outrage will be directed towards the LGBT community generally and its advocates and not directed towards the people who created that page.

“It’s not unreasonable for people to be concerned that gay people created the page with the intention of introducing the subject of sexuality to children at an inappropriate age, that’s clear, but we understand that we will probably see a rise in hostility toward the community because of the post and I understand why people would be upset, but it’s very important to determine who are the authors of that page and what their intent was and to have the law deal with them,” she said.