Yvonne Ba­boolal

Artist Leroy Clarke has re­ceived a threat­en­ing phone call, warn­ing him his pub­lic de­nun­ci­a­tion of ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty could dam­age his ca­reer."It was a se­mi-threat. It was not a threat against my life but my liveli­hood," Clarke told the T&T Guardian in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day."Some­body called me on my tele­phone. I did not recog­nise the voice. He said I have a ca­reer and to watch it. I could dam­age it," he said.Clarke said the in­di­rect mes­sage was that the gay com­mu­ni­ty would no longer be pa­tro­n­is­ing him.

"I am not tak­ing on those things. I be­lieve in what I said," he added.Clarke ig­nit­ed the anger of the gay com­mu­ni­ty when he said ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty was threat­en­ing the arts.In a sub­se­quent T&T Guardian ar­ti­cle, he elab­o­rat­ed on the state­ment, say­ing it came from his be­lief in a God he did not know, the Scrip­tures which con­demned ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty and his up­bring­ing."I grew up un­der­stand­ing it was so and I am con­vinced it is so. I grew up with the Bible, God's Word, but it looks like God's Word is not im­por­tant any­more."

He added: "My view is not pop­u­lar with a cer­tain sec­tor. It is un­for­tu­nate that sec­tor moves moun­tains in cer­tain ar­eas of busi­ness."There is a com­mu­ni­ty and it's strong enough, big enough and in­flu­en­tial enough. Cer­tain pow­er bases are lob­by­ing for con­sti­tu­tion­al recog­ni­tion and it's very pos­si­ble such a move will be­come in­evitable."Now peo­ple want to harm you. They told me to watch my ca­reer but I don't have a ca­reer. I have a life. They can't stop me from paint­ing."

Clarke said he was to­tal­ly against vi­o­lence against any­one be­cause of his per­sua­sion. "I don't hate any­body, pe­ri­od. But one needs to be as­sertive about his be­liefs," he said.His main con­cern was that ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty was in­ter­fer­ing with African iden­ti­ty, he added.He said his tele­phone had been ring­ing al­most non-stop since his de­c­la­ra­tions and there was a good bal­ance in the calls.About half of the callers did not like his state­ments on ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty and half was very sup­port­ive, he said.

A lot of sup­port came from hap­py Chris­t­ian pas­tors who thanked him for speak­ing out like that, he said.Con­cern­ing his com­ments about ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty and gangs, Clarke said: "Peo­ple ac­tu­al­ly said those things to me."He said de­spite what peo­ple feel in­clined to do, there was an in-built sense of right and wrong in­side them.He said hu­man­i­ty was go­ing through a ter­ri­ble time when dis­tinc­tions were no longer made, in­clud­ing in the area of gen­der.

Clarke said there was a need for T&T to re­view its stand on a num­ber of po­si­tions, in­clud­ing that which he ab­hored."We have to de­fine our ap­proach to set­tling the ques­tion. We should not pre­tend it does not ex­ist," he said.