Grammy Nominee Buju Banton Promotes Murdering Gays, GLAAD Says
LOS ANGELES --- In a full page ad in today’s special Grammy-edition of Variety, more than 20 progressive organizations, lead by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center, have called on the head of The Recording Academy to use Sunday night’s Grammy telecast to denounce music that promotes or celebrates violence against any group of people and the artists who perform such music.
The ad, in the form of an open letter to The Recording Academy’s President Neil Portnow, is in response to anti-gay reggae singer Buju Banton’s nomination for a Grammy Award in the Best Reggae Album category. Throughout his career Banton has performed music that glorifies the violent murder of LGBT people, and as recently as three months ago he refused to stop performing such music. Last October he was quoted in news reports saying, “This is a fight, and as I said in one of my songs, ‘There is no end to the war between me and fa**ots.’”
In his most notorious song “Boom, Bye Bye” he sings that “batty men (slur equivalent to ‘fa**ot’) get up and run” when he comes, that “they have to die,” and that he will “shoot batty men in the head” or “burn them up bad.” His music has helped foster such an anti-gay culture in Jamaica—where violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people is common and sometimes celebrated—that Time magazine recently asked, “Is Jamaica the most homophobic place on Earth?”
“It’s outrageous that The Recording Academy has chosen to honor, with a Grammy nomination, someone who proudly and unabashedly performs music that glorifies the violent murder of gay and transgender people,” said GLAAD President Jarrett Barrios. “We need to send a strong message to let the Recording Academy and music industry know that promoting artists who advocate such acts feeds a climate of intolerance that can put members of our community at risk for violence."
In a letter to GLAAD, the Academy claims that the Grammy Awards honor musical achievement “regardless of politics” and that “artists of a variety of political or cultural perspectives have been nominated or featured on the telecast.”
“Music that promotes the violent murder of LGBT people, or any other group, doesn’t reflect a political or cultural perspective,” said L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center Chief Executive Officer Lorri L. Jean. “It reflects hatred and fosters a culture of violence. Portnow needs to use the Grammy telecast to denounce such music, in no uncertain terms, and those who perform it.”
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Well, if we all went around slaughtering sodomites then we would be guilty of murder which is worse than homosexuality , don't you think?
Not a good position to take. I am surprised that any black man would advocate that since I hear Billy Holiday singing "Strange Fruit" in my head even as I write this.
Besides, heterosexual sin is a sin, too. One goes "with the grain of nature", the other one is against nature and therefore, called perversion or perverted.
(One can legalize all the stuff in the world. Doesn't make it right. Dictate, manipulate,legislate, magistrate,whatever.... every sinner knows they are doing what is wrong . Or their conscience is so scarred over, they feel nothing at all. Doesn't matter....some day we will all stand before a holy God. And pls, spare me the "there is no God" baloney. :O)
to a point. He is right that other minorities have been the target of rap other forms of music hatred. It just so happens that GLAAD does stand up for gay and lesbian people. There are organizations in other minorities, such as the police , and if they chose to ignore it that is for them to decide. I cant speak for the whores,or white boys, I don't know if Whore's have Unions. But the point is, if you have an organization that has a position to support your people, they should speak out.
But remember this issue, not just the killing of gays , but violence in general has been a discussion for years among social leaders, and clerics stating the negative effect it broadcasts. Hasn't stopped and as long as the recordings are bought it won't stop.
When you stir the emotions of people it excites them and they feel alive, Bill O'Reilley, and Rush and some others do the same thing. They promote hatred and division of the people of the US and make millions.
The people respond like the Pied Piper and the mice. There are a lot of mice in the world.
Why would you stop at violence against minorities ? Where were you and GLAAD when rap music started? Rap has a history of advocating killing police , whores, white boys and anyone else who gets in the way of the rapper. Yet, I don't remember GLAAD demanding no Grammies for rappers. They seem to get morally outraged only when it is one of their own rather than any human. Nice.
Black folks would not appreciate it if I performed a song on a record glorifying the KKK or lynching black people. Neither do gay folks like some Jamaican singing hate songs advocating the murder of gay people. Buju should go back to Jamaica and stay there with the gangs, drugs and criminals. There is a vast difference between free speech and fomenting hate. Buju is clearly a hate monger, and he deserves to be censured. Nobody, NOBODY, should be allowed to promote violence against a minority.
You do not seem to understand the concept of free speech . For one thing, there is a razor-thin line between free speech and fermenting hate. Not only was his speech protected, it is especially important to protect unpopular speech.
Widely accepted speech needs no protection. Only unpopular speech needs the protection. Therefore, if our constitution only protected speech which need no protection, the protection would be useless, unnecessary, and pointless.
The free speech concept assumes that as free thinking individuals, we are able to decide for ourselves what we want to agree with or disagree with. We are free to disagree with Buju, but to censure him would be more wrong than the trash he is saying.
The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.