Or maybe it
was the bad Spanish, which admit it, had to have been learned within the last
months. But that’s hardly likely, since James “Wally” Brewster, Jr. only spoke two sentences (the first
being, “¡HOLA, mi nombre es Wally!”)
Right—let’s
get to brass tacks. What’s pissing off folks in the Dominican Republic about
Wally, the new ambassador for the United States? The fact that his spouse is a
guy.
Brewster,
according to his account, grew up in a little Texas town; he went into business
there and eventually moved to Chicago, where he started in 2010 a company
called SB&K. Along the way, he raised funds for Obama, which is a nice way
to get to be an ambassador. In fact, The Daily Mail reports
that he raised more than a million dollars for the 2012 presidential campaign.
And he’s
been active in LGBT issues as well: he’s now serving on the Board of the Human Rights
Campaign Fund.
So the
reaction to Brewster? Well, let’s put it this way: over 60% of the country is
Catholic, so what did the cardinal, the top dog over there, have to say? Well,
he referred to Brewster as a maricón (faggot) and gay people as “social trash.”
And then
there’s this:
"He
has not considered the particularities of our people. The United States is
trying to impose on us marriage between gays and lesbians as well as adoption
by these couples," said Father Luis Rosario, director of youth ministries
for the church.
Then
thousands of evangelicals took to the streets, and organized a “black Monday,”
urging people to put black ribbons on their cars to protest. But not to worry,
because the groups came out with this statement:
Expresaron
que aman a los homosexuales y a los drogadictos, pero no su actuación.
“Si hoy aceptamos esa ley que nos quieren imponer, luego tenemos que aceptar
una para patentizar las drogas”, señalaron.
(They
expressed that the love homosexuals and drug addicts, but not their behavior.
“If we accept this law that they want to impose on us, later we’ll have to
accept one that patents drugs,” they said.)
Though
homosexuality is legal in the Dominican Republic, there is—as you can tell—a
strong cultural bias against it. Worse, the situation seems to be getting
worse, and not better. Here’s
what the French paper Le Monde
had to say about it:
“En
Haití, la República Dominicana, Jamaica y otros países de la región, los
ataques contra homosexuales y transexuales han aumentado en los últimos meses.
La homofobia no es nueva en la Cuenca del Caribe”, señala el reportaje.
(“In
Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and other countries in the region, the
attacks against homosexuals and transsexuals have increased in the last months.
Homophobia is not new in the Caribbean basin,” the report indicated.)
Brewster
isn’t the first gay ambassador—there have been five or six others. He is,
however, the first ambassador to be named to such a homophobic country.
Good luck
to him!
