EDITOR, The Tribune.

In the interest of fair play, the Venerable Archdeacon James Palacious needs to join Richard Lightbourn in the penalty box for his recent insensitive public outburst.

The Archdeacon is familiar with the need for nuance and diplomatic language to sell complex or sensitive issues to a wide audience. He ascends the pulpit weekly to sell the miracle of a virgin birth, resurrection, transubstantiation and other such knotty articles of faith.

It was ironic then that he used the occasion of Majority Rule Day to lecture the 85 per cent of the population who are black that their fertility rate is too high. Not content when this first land mine exploded around him, the Reverend gentleman went further, linking the high birth rate of blacks with irresponsible social behaviour, opening up a chicken-and-egg moral hazard.

His intentions may have been honourable, of course, but are hardly defensible. He came across as shaming one group of people and creating the impression that only blacks have too many babies they cannot afford. We are left to assume that he got this from a higher authority. Or that he is arrogant and judgmental.

If you whistle, I’ll point to many white Bahamian women who have large families they cannot support and yet who continue their baby making ways, in tandem with their black cousins (and sometimes even for their black paramours).

Of course, in raw numbers blacks out number whites so it stands as fact that there are more black kids running around than white ones. And the poverty numbers are greater with blacks but are no less severe or burdensome for whites.

As the old folks reminded us, catching hell ain’t reserved for one colour, only they substituted “hell” for a word better depicting the posterior of one’s anatomy.

Teenage pregnancy is nothing new, neither are large families forged without the financial security of a two-parent household. In fact the church pews have for a long time been filled with large families. Back in the day, large families translated into many hands to work the farm or the family business and then to provide security in your golden years.

What the Archdeacon did speak to was the gaming of the social safety net system by too many of our black and white neighbours. What was meant to be a last resort, courtesy of the taxpayer, has become for some an entitlement with children used as pawns to increase their haul in the Treasury rip-off game.

It the past it was the wider family, neighbours and yes, the church who carried this burden for those with too many children that they couldn’t feed, clothe, house, educate or otherwise support. Young girls who found themselves in a family way were sent to live with mama dem on the island.

No child must ever go to bed hungry in this country, of course. But we must ensure that our limited social service budget is not being exploited by the cold-hearted and, dare I say it, fraudsters, thugs, users and vagabonds disguised as parents.

The Archdeacon, glaringly, didn’t drop licks on the men who share parental responsibility for these babies. The establishment of paternity must be a prerequisite for accessing non-life-threatening or life-sustaining social services.

Here’s a novel idea that will cause great consternation among some church folk. Let’s teach real sex education in public and religious schools – R. M. Bailey and C. R. Walker as well as St. John’s College and St. Andrew’s. Let’s give out birth control pills and condoms along with prom gowns and tuxedos, if the parents agree.

Let’s get parents and grandparents, teachers and preachers to take their collective heads out of the sand and stop the backward thinking that only black, or poor, or fast, or hardheaded and disobedient girls have babies they cannot afford or even want.

Let’s have a healthy talk about sex. But let’s add in poverty and class and privilege, and all skin colours, and opportunity and education and health and welfare.

We need Richard Lightbourn to rejoin the discussion provided he leaves his tube-tying sutures at home. The Archdeacon should come too, if he can control his solecism and, like Richard, atone for his indecorous language.

THE GRADUATE

Nassau,

January 15, 2017.