While there, I met with the safe house residents as well as other Queer Jamaicans. Hearing their stories and seeing the physical scars of what they survived really put my struggles in America into perspective.

Rape, torture, rape, hangings, stabbings, rape, stonings, shootings — did I mention rape?

After my first visit, the journalist in me came back to the US resolved to share the work that Nevin was doing and help find more support. I decided to produce a special podcast entitled "Ring the Alarm," featuring the stories and voices of the men and women I met in Jamaica.

On each subsequent trip, I was introduced to more and more people. Eventually, I had men and women there reaching out to me to tell me their stories. Many of those I interviewed have been able to escape Jamaica to seek asylum elsewhere, but most have not. Those waiting on emergency relocation or for their country to change its laws and views on LGBTQ people are subjected to being taunted, threatened, fired from their jobs, thrown out of their homes, beaten, stoned, raped, and even killed.

So much trouble in the world
I have watched this modern-day underground railroad up close and personal for the past year. It isn't easy to relocate Queer Jamaicans to countries accepting of Black people, let alone Black LGBTQ people. And while America has rolled out the red carpet to welcome those from other countries, Jamaica hasn't been one of them.

Fact: If Jamaica treated the US the way we treat Jamaicans who want to visit here, we'd never be able to vacation in Jamaica.

Given there's a Wikipedia page dedicated to discussing LGBT rights in Jamaica, one could argue that Queer Jamaicans seeking asylum in the US could easily prove both credible and reasonable fear for their lives.

Let's be clear. WNBA player Brittney Griner was not detained in Russia for being a Black Lesbian. She was detained for being an American and is being used as a pawn. Griner, unlike Queer Jamaicans, at least has the attention of the American government and media, and there are people actively fighting to bring her back home to America.

You may be wondering why I am so focused on Jamaica. Of course, there are human rights abuses against Queer people taking place in other countries around the world, but not where over four million Americans come to vacay each year. That's only happening in Jamaica.

Sadly, celebrity vacation photos in Jamaica are more likely to trend on social media than the murders of LGBTQ people there. And it's hypocritical of people from "the land of the free and the home of the brave" to turn a blind eye to what's happening to LGBTQ people in Jamaica and have the audacity to call out other countries for similar atrocities.

Calling attention
As one of the founders of the National Black Justice Coalition, America's first Black LGBTQ civil rights organization, and more recently, someone who helped escort Democratic donor Ed Buck into a prison cell for his role in the deaths of two Black Gay men, I have put in work locally and nationally on behalf of Black Queer folks.

Last October, I committed myself to spend one year working with LGBTQ people in Jamaica and using my platform to help call attention in the US to what is happening to Queer folks there. From my podcast to my support of the safe house, I'm proud to say that I made good on that promise.

It was very important to me that, as an American, I didn't come to Jamaica with the sense of entitlement that Americans are known to bring with them wherever they go. I came, I listened, and followed the lead of Queer Jamaicans.

When I post on social media about my trips to Jamaica, I get a lot of comments decrying my visits. My favorite comments are the ones from people telling me all about Jamaica's LGBTQ rights abuses — because clearly, I don't know about them. And even though I don't usually respond to comments, the ones where someone is telling me about how they're never visiting Jamaica are my favorite. I expect that attitude from white LGBTQ men and women. But when it's my own people, members of the Black LGBTQ community, I push back on them and challenge them to come to Jamaica and step outside of the tourist zone and meet with their Jamaican counterparts instead of writing the country off as a whole.

Welcome to Jamrock
It is very easy to look at the situation and blame Jamaicans for the discrimination faced by LGBTQ people.

Fact: Jamaica holds the record for the most churches per square mile than any other place in the world. It is a former British colony and, like most of Black Africa, was heavily influenced by established, white, conservative Christian churches, particularly the Pentecostalists and Seventh-Day Adventists. Where their anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and policies have failed in America, these same churches have succeeded in underdeveloped Black countries. Jamaica still punishes the "abominable crime of buggery" and acts of "gross indecency" between males with up to ten years in prison with hard labor.

Similarly, Rastafarism, a religion as homophobic as fundamentalist Christianity, which is followed by a large number of Jamaicans, including many reggae artists, believes in a strict interpretation of the Old Testament when it comes to anything Queer.

None of this pardons Jamaica today for its egregious human rights abuses and state-enabled murders of LGBTQ people. What it does, though, is put things into perspective and provide context, a context that many white-led Queer civil rights groups failed to comprehend when blanketly villainizing Black countries' treatment of LGBTQ people. (Which, by the way, usually causes more harm to the Queer people living in those countries than actually helps them.)

I look at it as the Jamaican version of "post-traumatic slave syndrome," and the continuation of the mental slavery of Christianity brought to Jamaica by the British colonizers and continued by white American Christian evangelicals.

Weaponizing religion is not a new concept. So knowing and understanding this, the answer for me was not to boycott or villainize Jamaica but the opposite. I chose to visit as much as I could, and in doing so, this past year has been one of the most fulfilling of my life. The friendships I've made, the stories I've shared, the people who have been helped, and the support I've been able to give to my friend Nevin have made it worth it.

Get up, stand up
My trips to Jamaica are by no means all play. It's never easy for me to listen to stories of rape, abuse, discrimination, and physical violence. I have developed my own self-care routine to help me cope with the triggering effects these interviews have on me.

That said, I look forward to continuing my work in Jamaica and supporting Nevin. Thanks to my podcast, I've even heard from Queer people in several African countries interested in having me come and amplify their struggle.

So for now, it's work, save, travel, repeat. My passport will have to be pried from my cold dead hands to get this Black Lesbian to stop visiting homophobic Black countries.