Our love on fire: Gay men’s stories of violence and hope in Haiti

Abstract

Our Love on Fire: Gay Men’s Stories of Violence and Hope in Haiti is a performance script devised from an oral history project to offer insights into populations where machismo and homophobia are cultivated as regulatory and repressive mechanisms instead of sodomy laws. The script recounts events that took place on the evening of August 10, 2013, during which an engagement ceremony between a Haitian man and a gay British Red Cross officer attracted the wrath of their Port-au-Prince neighborhood residents. Those outside the compound where the engagement ceremony took place rioted, torched the upscale residence of ex-patriates, lit cars on fire, and terrorized guests. Despite or because of the fiery clash, queer islanders celebrated their love more creatively and fervently afterwards. Set against the background of mass anti-homosexuality marches nationwide, the ring exchange ceremony looms large in queer Haitians’ memory as an act of activism that retaliates against the general population’s incessant physical and psychological abuses, calls for legislation respectful of broad gender and sexual expressions, and redefines normative identity performances and queer sub-cultural codes. The performance of queer resistance in Haiti is the larger project’s core focus: the author documents the significance of festive gatherings for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) human rights activism in Haiti, in contrast to public responses to the community’s creation of liberatory spaces. Specifically, Our Love on Fire attests to queer Haitian subjects’ activist struggles and their denouncement of punitive measures by the general population who view non-normative expressions of gender and sexual identities as imported and/or elite behaviors to be uprooted.

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