EDITOR, The Tribune

During his contribution to the recent budget debate, Prime Minister Dr. Hubert Minnis announced that the government will no longer be cleaning up garbage left over from carnival. That is the right decision, and I commend the Prime Minister and his government for making it.

However, in light of that decision, I pose these questions for consideration to Prime Minister Minnis and his government: What about the moral garbage of carnival? Who will clean that up?

The reality is that the moral garbage of carnival cannot be cleaned up, not by the government, not by the church, and certainly not by the participants in carnival.

The Prime Minister is reported as saying, “If private citizens want to have a carnival, that is their right.” But I wonder if the Prime Minister believes that private citizens have a right to have their carnival on public streets and in public spaces, engaging debauchery and sexually immoral conduct, in breach of our public decency laws and assaulting the sensibilities of other users of our streets and public spaces? Certainly, they do not have that right.

I read recently that a local group is planning to have a so-called pride parade for homosexuals and their allied groups in 2020. Essentially, such parades are the homosexual equivalent of carnival. Is the government now going to facilitate homosexual immorality on our streets and in our public spaces just as it facilitates the heterosexual immorality of carnival?

In a democratic society, I cannot see how one kind of sexual immorality and debauchery can be facilitated in public and not another. Therefore, Prime Minister Minnis and Minister of National Security Marvin Dames, I urge you and your colleagues to think long and hard about facilitating any immoral conduct in public, and I further urge you to make the right decision to stop facilitating carnival in public and to deny the application of the promoters of the proposed parade for homosexuals and their allied groups. Refusing to provide permits and permission for all groups engaged in flaunting their immorality and debase conduct on our streets and public spaces is the right decision and is in the public’s best interests.

Please be assured of the support of right thinking Bahamians as you do your part in ceasing to facilitate public immorality by refusing to allow our streets and shared spaces to be used by those who disregard the young and disrespect the elderly as they sexually debase themselves in public.

PASTOR CEDRIC MOSS

Nassau

July 9, 2019