The Tribune

By IVOINE INGRAHAM

In The Bahamas, we are quick to condemn. We wag our fingers at those who drink, casting them as reckless and irresponsible. Yet, many of us do the very same thing. We gather at our watering holes, ordering shot after shot until our speech slurs and our steps wander.

When our behaviour slips into the unorthodox or the shameful, we laugh it off with the familiar excuse: “Blame it on the rum.” Many hide behind the bottle to mask who they are. They lack the courage to be honest, so they drown their feelings.

Teddy Pendergrass said: “You can’t hide from yourself, everywhere you go, there you are”.

The hypocrisy is striking. We cross moral lines in plain sight, and society shrugs. The indulgence is excused, even normalised. But the damage rarely ends at the bar counter. When the drunkenness follows us home, we often return not as fathers or husbands, but as shadows of ourselves, unable to fulfil the roles our families need. The wives and children left in our wake quietly shoulder the consequences of our indulgence.

What’s worse is that this cycle is not only tolerated but protected. Our judgments are skewed. A neighbour’s public misstep draws ridicule, yet a well-known “upstanding” figure’s destructive habits are covered with silence. We know. We condone. We protect by refusing to speak. And in that silence, real harm festers, mental, emotional, and generational.

The phrase “mum’s the word” may sound harmless, but in our culture, it is a tool of protection against damaging behaviour. By keeping quiet, we preserve appearances while sacrificing truth. When truth is suppressed, families break, communities weaken, and cycles of dysfunction repeat.

It is time we confront our contradictions. We cannot condemn with one hand and indulge with the other. We cannot pretend that silence is neutral. It is complicity. Until we demand honesty, accountability, and change, we will remain trapped in the very behaviours we excuse.

For too long, the language of moral certainty has been used to draw a circle and kick people out of it. “Values”, “tradition,” and “the right way” become mortar for a wall that claims to protect society while it really protects fear. It is astonishing how easily faith, supposedly a sanctuary, can be converted into a weapon of exclusion, wielded against children, neighbours, co-workers, and friends whose lives don’t match a particular image of normal. The result isn’t just awkward conversations at family gatherings; it systematically damages lives, psyches, and communities.

At the heart of this exclusion lies a dangerous claim: that God hates people who are different. That assertion is both theologically bankrupt and morally corrosive. If God is the source of love, then God’s love is, by definition, not parcelled out in neat, ideologically-approved portions. To say otherwise is to take the concept of the divine and shrink it to the size of human prejudice. It turns the sacred into mere cultural baggage.

What’s more, the people who point fingers in daylight are often the same people who practice the very behaviours they denounce when the lights go out. We know this not because we indulge in rumours but because human beings have always carried private lives that contradict their public pronouncements. Parents who publicly condemn, pastors who preach exclusion, politicians who legislate against differences, many of them, quietly and painfully, live with the same confusions, needs, and desires they publicly vilify. That hypocrisy is not a curiosity; it’s a moral crisis. It undermines trust in institutions, shatters families, and conveys that honesty will be punished.

The consequences are devastating, and they are not abstract. Ostracism is a slow-acting toxin. When someone is made to feel like an aberration, when their identity is treated as a pathology rather than a part of what makes them human, the effects go deep. Rejection from family or community can fracture a person’s sense of self. Those who are told, implicitly or explicitly, that they are sinful, shameful, or unlovable internalize those messages. Over time, shame calcifies into isolation; isolation breeds despair.

Imagine being 20, coming to terms with who you are, and finding that the people whose approval once felt essential now treat you like you’ve broken a covenant. Imagine the heartbreak of confiding in a parent and receiving an ultimatum: “Choose me or choose that life.” Now, imagine the power of empathy and understanding in these situations. The emotional toll is enormous. It chips away at confidence, dulls hope, and can lead to anxiety, depression, and, in too many cases, thoughts of self-harm.

This isn’t melodrama. It’s the realistic arc of what happens when people are told they don’t belong. Human beings are social creatures; belonging is food. When belonging is withheld, people starve emotionally. That starvation shows up as loneliness, as attempts to disappear, as risky coping behaviours, as withdrawal from opportunities, and sometimes as anger that has nowhere safe to go. The young are especially vulnerable: adolescence is when identity is being assembled, and rejection at this stage can warp the scaffolding of adulthood. Without support, many of the bright, curious, creative young people who could and should have flourished find themselves hollowed out by shame.

And it is not confined to youth. Adults who live alternative lifestyles—whether that refers to sexual orientation, relationship structure, gender expression, or other forms of selfhood- face similar patterns of rejection. Careers can be curtailed, friendships fray, and faith communities that should be a source of solace become sites of surveillance. The double life some are forced into, public quietness and private authenticity, exacts a heavy price: constant vigilance, fear of exposure, and a sense of living inauthentically. That emotional labour is unrelenting and exhausting. It robs people of the basic joy of simply being themselves.

Worse, the stigma is calibrated across strata. Wealth, race, and religious badge-wearing do not immunise anyone from this pattern; they only change its choreography. A wealthy donor who funds exclusionary causes may pay to keep their private life orderly and hidden; an esteemed cleric who preaches separation may visit the same shadows where their desires are indulged. Institutional power can amplify the damage: when schools, workplaces, and governments tacitly support exclusion, they legitimise personal prejudice and complicate recovery.

Conversely, those on the margins, people of colour, people from conservative religious backgrounds, people without resources, often face harsher consequences for the same behaviours, experiencing economic hardship, familial estrangement, and social isolation with fewer safety nets.

This hypocrisy and harm painfully intersect with religion. Many faith traditions have teachings that ask us to love our neighbours, to welcome the stranger, and to care for the least among us. Yet some religious adherents have allowed selective readings of scripture to justify exclusion. They have weaponised texts, often out of context, sometimes out of sheer fear, to erect moral barricades. It is one thing to wrestle with theological questions in good faith; it is another to use scripture as a nightstick while ignoring its broader ethical arcs toward compassion and mercy.

Theologically speaking, love that excludes is a contradiction. If the divine is indeed compassionate, then any faith that teaches hatred in God’s name is a distortion. You cannot claim the mantle of the sacred and then disavow the command to love. And love is not a vague, sentimental word; it requires concrete actions: listening, bearing witness, offering support, and, yes, sometimes saying “I was wrong” when our assumptions hurt another person. To insist that God’s love is conditional on conformity reduces an infinite mystery to a narrow human preference. Let’s remember that love is not just a feeling, but a powerful force that can heal, unite, and transform our communities.

So what would widening the tent look like in practice? First, it requires honesty. Parents, religious leaders, and communities who have relied on public shaming to enforce conformity must reckon with the damage they’ve done. That means acknowledging hypocrisy, apologising where necessary, and ceasing the use of moral panic as governance. Instead, it means creating spaces where questions can be asked and people can be loved without relinquishing their integrity. This is not just a suggestion, but a call to action. It’s time to be honest, accountable, and create a more inclusive and compassionate community. Agree to disagree.

Second, it requires empathy. The impulse to judge often comes from fear of difference, change, and losing status. The remedy is to exchange fear for curiosity. Ask the hard questions, not to trap someone, but to understand them. Sit with stories of real people, not abstractions. When our neighbours’ lives stop being caricatures and become narratives, it becomes harder to condemn them.

Third, communities must take responsibility for mental health. Churches, mosques, synagogues, schools, and civic groups should partner with mental health professionals and be ready to offer nonjudgmental support. Saying “we love you” is not enough if that love disappears when someone’s identity is revealed. Practical care, counselling resources, peer support networks, and safe-haven policies can save lives.

Finally, faith needs a course correction back to its centre: love.

If religion is to be a force for good, it must prioritise compassion over purity tests. That does not mean all questions are settled or that doctrine is abandoned. It means that the temperament of faith shifts from condemnation to accompaniment. A community that accompanies does not abandon doctrine; it refuses to let doctrine become a tool of cruelty.

The stakes are not theoretical. Every time a parent refuses to speak to a child, a congregation votes to exclude, or a politician uses difference as a wedge, real human beings pay the price. These are not anonymous casualties of culture wars; they are our sons, daughters, siblings, colleagues whose inner lives and future possibilities are narrowed by our unwillingness to understand.

We could choose another path. We could model what it means to hold convictions without denying people their dignity. We could teach young people that faith, at its best, calls us to love even when it’s difficult. We could be brave enough to admit our imperfections and stop projecting them onto others. We could recognize that authenticity breeds health—not just individual mental health but the mental health of families and communities.

The argument that God hates people who are different is a convenient fiction for those who want to avoid discomfort. But it is a dangerous fiction: it sanctions cruelty, excuses hypocrisy, and inflicts wounds that last a lifetime. The better truth, and the more actual practice of faith, is to widen the tent. To welcome does not mean to agree on everything; it means to refuse to make someone’s identity the justification for their exclusion.

So let the tent be broad. Let our houses of worship, homes, and communities be places where people can come as they are and be met with honest conversation, steady support, and love. If God is love, loving others, especially those who differ from us, is not an optional add-on to faith; it is its clearest test. The measure of our spirituality is not the volume of our proclamations but the breadth of our compassion. Widen the tent, and we might save each other.

Facing reality, since all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, none of us, absolutely none of us, is qualified to judge anyone, period.