The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune

Recently, the government and many in our nation have expressed outrage upon learning that Carnival Corporation cruise ships dumped almost 500,000 gallons of sewage in Bahamian waters in 2017, and rightly so. However, there has been little to no outcry against the dumping of moral sewage into the moral water table of our nation by the Christie-led PLP government’s introduction of carnival that has taken place for the past four years.

And barring divine intervention, for the fifth year the dumping of moral sewage will continue this weekend when carnival participants take to our streets and public spaces in pornographic displays of public nudity, brazen vulgarity, unbridled debauchery, and wanton lawlessness. And what’s worse is as they break our laws governing public nudity, public drunkenness, public nuisance, littering, and road safety, the police will look on, and in some cases aid and abet them in doing so.

Imagine having members of the Royal Bahamas Defence Force using their sea craft to escort and protect Carnival Corporation’s cruise ships on escapades through Bahamian waters, facilitating and permitting them to dump actual sewage. That would be scandalous and outrageous. Yet, in a moral sense, that’s exactly what members of the Royal Bahamas Police Force do with carnival: they escort and protect carnival participants on our streets and public spaces and facilitate and permit them to dump moral sewage into our moral water table. And many are ignorant of or indifferent to effect of this facilitated public moral pollution.

I know some will ignorantly say that I’m trying to impose my morality on others. I’m not. I’m simply advocating for commonsense considerations and government controls for how we conduct ourselves in shared space. The government has a duty to uphold our public decency and other laws, not facilitate the breaking of them. Why are carnival participants permitted to do as they please on public streets and public spaces and break our laws? As I’ve said before, the fairest solution is to allow them to take their pornographic parades and concerts to private property where they can debase themselves in private, and those who wish to view such debasement can join them. But for the government to permit such vulgar conduct on our streets and public spaces is not governing; it is a dereliction of duty.

It is also troubling to see legitimate corporations like BTC fund carnival and all that it represents. Surely, BTC can find worthy causes to fund that will build up The Bahamas, not break it down, and I trust that they see the wisdom in discontinuing their support of carnival.

BTC and other legitimate companies should leave the funding of carnival to illegitimate companies like the numbers houses (my view of them). Let them use their easy come, easy go slush fund which they heartlessly amass from the needy and greedy who gamble.

The truth is that while we need to be greatly concerned about Carnival’s dumping of actual sewage, we need to be equally concerned about carnival’s dumping of moral sewage. However, as the government has foreshadowed passing laws to protect our natural environment, the concerns about actual sewage dumping from Carnival Corporation will go away. However, unless and until the government similarly sees the need to protect our moral environment, in terms of how citizens are allowed to conduct themselves in shared public space, the moral sewage which carnival is once again poised to dump in our moral water table will continue to fuel our descent to national disgrace, something that cannot be fixed a better economy.

Once again, those of us who belong to Jesus Christ need to pray that God will give our leaders the courage to lead and make the hard decisions for the common good and not just for the good of a few who enjoy the moral cesspool of carnival and are insistent that they enjoy it on public streets and in public spaces.

And let us pray that God will grant us national repentance, remembering the unchanging truth that righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people (Proverbs 14:34).

PASTOR CEDRIC MOSS

Nassau

April 29, 2019