The Bahamas Christian Council is not budging on its stance that Bahamas Junkanoo Carnival challenges the country’s moral, ethical, cultural traditions and practices, particularly those enshrined in the constitution promoting the Bahamas as a country of Christian values.
Council President, Apostle Delton Fernander referring to the Road Fever Parade, said there has been a mixture of men and women flaunting near naked bodies, engaging in sexual contact , with event participants using an open flow of alcohol. “It’s a ticking time bomb waiting to explode into a dangerous series of circumstances,” he said.
Outspoken Kingdom Life Senior Pastor Cedric Moss, who has strongly objected to Carnival from the beginning five years ago, adamantly agrees.
“If I’m out of touch, if I’m wrong and if the overwhelming majority of Bahamians believe that what takes place in carnival is standard decency and that’s okay and should be allowed, then it should be allowed.
“The government has to be right on that basis to give out those permits and put the police there to guide them as they do the stuff they do, that’s the way it should be in a democracy.
“What I’m saying to you is that does not represent a democracy, that represents the bankrupted bad idea from the Christie led PLP administration that they placed on the Bahamian people, that the current administration, doesn’t have the courage to stop,” he said.
What’s the difference between what happens during carnival and Junkanoo? Pastor Moss insists he has long stopped attending Junkanoo parades because of the same level of vulgarity.
“They call Junkanoo a family event, it’s not a family event. I checked out on Junkanoo when I saw a woman gyrating on the face of a man on Bay Street, that was more that 20 years ago.
“So the same applies to that, the thing is this; we have to come to a sensible place of determining how we live in shared space.”
“You cannot do what you want in shared space; do what you want in your private space, so it doesn’t affect others in public space,” he said.
Apostle Fernander argues that if some of the behaviour that occurs during Road Fever were to take place in any other arena, persons would be arrested.
“We’ve got to make a stand that either we enforce the laws or we do not enforce the laws.
“By next year we are going to have a real conversation about where vulgarity can happen and that if you can be arrested for it in another place, then we can’t have it on our streets and the populace gets to decide what takes place and we need to have that conversation,” Apostle Fernander said.
The Council is pushing for social stakeholders to take a serious look at the staging of Bahamas Carnival to determine if this is the kind of event Bahamians wish to allow, if Road Fever is in line with laws regarding public nudity and if it is beneficial to the health and well-being.
