In Paris, a deranged Muslim man knifes the Mayor, because he hates homosexuals and politicians. The Mayor, Bertrand Delanoe, came to office last year on a “glad to be grey” campaign. He was seen as low-key, dull, a man who “happened” to be gay, rather than someone whose sexuality defined him. He lost a lot of blood in the attack, and received injuries to a number of internal organs. A neighbour of the attacker was quoted in Le Monde as saying: “Here, we are all homophobic, because it’s not natural. It’s against Islam. There are no Muslim gays.”

In Cardiff, a few weeks ago, a man was jailed for five and a half years for beating and kicking a 17-year-old gay man outside a Chinese takeaway.

At the MOBO (Music of Black Origin) awards in London recently, gay rights protesters were cornered, beaten, kicked and spat at, for peacefully protesting against the nominations (by the public) of Jamaican dancehall artists Elephant Man, TOK and Capleton. Their lyrics include unashamed incitements to attack and kill “batty boys” and “chi chi” men.

In London, the same week, two gay Jamaican men were granted asylum in the UK, due to the Home Office accepting evidence of severe institutionalised homophobia in Jamaica, including stories of gay men being lynched and attacked with machetes, while police looked on and did nothing.

In all the above stories, I find it is easy for me to stand, with outrage and passion, on the side of the gay victims. I can be eloquent in my denunciation, appeal to the part in you that feels victimised, and hope that pleas for justice and reason can prevail, and the world will be a saner, safer place. Simple. Righteous. Just.

And yet, and yet. I am sensitised to these stories because of my own recent experience of being attacked on the street – so my desire for my experience, my suffering, to fit in to a bigger picture, so that it doesn’t disappear into insignificance, has to be confessed. Seeking meaning, I look for similar experiences elsewhere in the world, and make-believe that I am not alone. Far better that I am a footsoldier in the noble war against hate, than to see myself as just another drunken fool who walked into trouble late at night – and not for the first time. Far easier to fly the flag for liberal Western democratic values, and take a stand against fundamentalist Islamic homophobic and misogynist theocracy, (which of course is easy to hate after 9/11 and Bali), than to acknowledge the sheer perversity of the West’s dealings with Islamic nations, the double standards, the profiteering and exploitation, the greed and the platitudinous pious supremacist bullying.

If I am not careful, I can easily step into a messy bog of ideological slime. Go far enough in one direction, and I end up becoming the exact mirror-image of that which I hate. I can say that I am wary of the machismo of Caribbean culture – which is, undoubtedly, true.

There is but a short step from that truth to then say that I am afraid of black men, that they carry a dangerous force, which has to be curbed by my – white – reason. Take that one step further, and I could sound like a colonial racist – I want to tame and civilize the phallic savage, for I fear and hate him. In other words, I want to enslave him, control him, “educate” him. Possess him. Desire him. The black man’s (large?) dick has always been a potent source of anxiety and prurient curiosity to white men, to which every black man I’ve discussed this with can attest. (Need I mention that some of the sweetest, tenderest men I have ever kissed have been black?)

Perhaps white men were originally responsible for distorting the demographic/genetic picture in the West, leading to the (mythic?) phenomenon of the large black penis, by selecting and removing slaves from Africa on physical criteria such as fitness, height, and penis size. The well hung were enslaved, the unencumbered remained free, a multi-layered allegorical truth. If that were my history, then I would want no man to judge me on my body.

My hesitation in writing this is considerable – there is a vast difference between naming psychological connections, (revealing how the images are linked in my psyche), and making political statements.

For me, as an Irishman, to accuse another island nation (with a similar reputation for easy living, emotional warmth and music) of having a savage underbelly of violence and thuggery, is indeed the pot calling the kettle black. For, of course, my Jamaican brothers would be assured of a life free from fear of attack were they to walk the streets of an Irish city at night. Wouldn’t they? And, of course, we Irish are so familiar as seeing ourselves as victims of the perfidious British that we can’t see our own shadow, hidden behind the smiling face of Republicanism, that appears reasonable and yet bombs its way to the negotiating table. We, the Irish, have more in common with the fundamentalists that bombed Bali than most other cultures. We created the world’s most experienced terrorist bombing organisation, blazing the trail for Al Qaida to follow.

I work towards understanding hate in my own being/society/race/culture/ religion, rather than pointing fingers at others. For everywhere we point has a finger pointing back at us.