I write to state that my main in­tent at the Na­tion­al Con­sul­ta­tion on Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 10, at UWI SPEC was to bring philo­soph­i­cal per­spec­tive to views that were be­ing ex­pressed on the floor and to strike a blow against un­fair dis­crim­i­na­tion and hate­ful ex­pres­sions of any kind.

The tone of our pub­lic di­a­logue at present on the re­form of our na­tion's con­sti­tu­tion, the fun­da­men­tal doc­u­ment that gov­erns how we live to­geth­er in this so­ci­ety, should be civ­il, re­spect­ful and ex­em­pli­fy our na­tion­al watch­word: tol­er­ance. We must all be able to live to­geth­er on these is­lands in har­mo­ny af­ter this process. The me­dia al­so have a crit­i­cal role to play in achiev­ing this ob­jec­tive and set­ting a com­pas­sion­ate tone and ac­cu­rate mea­sure.

In at­tach­ing as cap­tions such ex­pres­sions that I did not use like "gay rights" and "sex­u­al rights" served to cre­ate some con­fu­sion in the mind of read­ers and to de­tract from the main hu­man rights gist of the pre­sen­ta­tion.

Hu­man rights are en­ti­tle­ments which en­com­pass the full range of hu­man di­ver­si­ty and are based on the in­her­ent hu­man dig­ni­ty of each and every hu­man be­ing and form the ba­sis of what is called the Bill of Rights as in­te­gral to mod­ern lib­er­al con­sti­tu­tions. Con­sti­tu­tions are re­gard­ed as fun­da­men­tal law and place peo­ple at the heart of what a na­tion and its de­vel­op­ment is all about.

A Bill of Rights recog­nis­es the in­her­ent dig­ni­ty of hu­man be­ings and the rights and free­doms emerg­ing from that dig­ni­ty sim­ply by the fact of their be­ing hu­man. It con­tains en­ti­tle­ments with re­spect to peo­ple and pro­tects peo­ple from en­croach­ments from the State and from fel­low cit­i­zens. In a mod­ern democ­ra­cy and es­pe­cial­ly in a mul­ti­cul­tur­al so­ci­ety such as T&T, this pro­vi­sion helps to man­age var­i­ous and oft-time con­flict­ing in­ter­ests, set­ting fun­da­men­tal bound­aries and rules of fair play.

In the Bill of Rights as ob­tains in our Re­pub­li­can Con­sti­tu­tion of 1976 there are fun­da­men­tal in­alien­able rights set out at Sec­tion 4 of which mar­riage is not re­gard­ed as a fun­da­men­tal in­alien­able right. The term "fun­da­men­tal in­alien­able right" is de­fined as one which a per­son has or to which s/he is en­ti­tled sim­ply be­cause of their per­son­hood and hu­man­i­ty. Al­though my over­all ap­proach is non-dis­crim­i­na­tion for per­sons on the grounds of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, this does not ob­lig­ate the State to same-sex mar­riage in the fu­ture.

In the con­text of the dis­cus­sion I al­so drew on a prin­ci­ple of ju­rispru­dence which en­sures that the rights of a mi­nor­i­ty not suf­fer the will of the ma­jor­i­ty. Such a prin­ci­ple for pro­tect­ing mi­nor­i­ty rights and the moral per­spec­tives se­cured by con­sti­tu­tion­al laws make for sober and re­spon­si­ble judge­ment on mat­ters af­fect­ing those cit­i­zens who may suf­fer the in­dig­ni­ty of dis­crim­i­na­tion.

The con­text of the dis­cus­sion that took place at UWI SPEC was a pub­lic fo­rum by the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs Na­tion­al Con­sul­ta­tion on Con­sti­tu­tion­al Re­form. I was com­ment­ing on chap­ters two and three which dealt with the "Re­word­ing the Pre­am­ble" and "Fun­da­men­tal Rights and Free­doms" re­spec­tive­ly. I com­ment­ed on four dis­tinct ar­eas, all (of) which I con­sid­ered crit­i­cal­ly im­por­tant.

The first was on the word­ing un­der para­graph 37 on the "lan­guag­ing"/ word­ing of gen­der terms; sec­ond on the in­clu­sion of the en­vi­ron­ment; third on the recog­ni­tion of God, where I sup­port­ed the idea that recog­ni­tion of God should be in­di­cat­ed by men­tion of God's name but al­so where I specif­i­cal­ly de­fend­ed the rights of athe­ists who should in no way be dis­ad­van­taged or prej­u­diced by their be­lief or lack of be­lief; and fi­nal­ly on part "b" of page 13 which reads "the is­sue of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and hu­man rights should be made the sub­ject of fur­ther na­tion­al dis­cus­sion and pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion."

Since the is­sue of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and hu­man rights seems to have been the fo­cus of keen in­ter­est and sev­er­al pub­lic com­ments, I will con­cen­trate on that is­sue. The con­text of my state­ments was my ob­ser­va­tions on the part of the con­sti­tu­tion called the Bill of Rights/Fun­da­men­tal Rights and Free­doms by way of the re­port pro­duced by the re­form com­mis­sion.

Prej­u­dice and dis­crim­i­na­tion are stan­dard fea­tures of sit­u­a­tions in which the dig­ni­ty of the hu­man per­son is vi­o­lat­ed. The his­to­ry of our peo­ple is marred by the scars of dis­crim­i­na­tion and prej­u­dice. In the past and even to­day, peo­ple have been den­i­grat­ed on the ba­sis of var­i­ous as­pects of their per­son­hood such as creed, race, colour, so­cio-eco­nom­ic sta­tus, cul­ture, class, place of ori­gin, gen­der, abil­i­ty and sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.

My call has been for a de­ci­sive and res­olute end to any dis­crim­i­na­tion that den­i­grates peo­ple and an as­sur­ance that this be en­shrined in our Supreme Law. This call is quite rea­son­able since we know that peo­ple of ho­mo­sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion have his­tor­i­cal­ly been the ob­ject of per­se­cu­tion, phys­i­cal and ver­bal abuse and wide­spread dis­crim­i­na­tion and these are grounds for an­ti-dis­crim­i­na­tion mea­sures.

Fur­ther­more if peo­ple who suf­fer prej­u­dice can seek re­dress from a legal­ly-con­sti­tut­ed body like the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion, sure­ly it is on­ly just that the prin­ci­ple of eq­ui­ty be ap­plied to LGBT per­sons. Mem­bers of that com­mu­ni­ty should be en­ti­tled to ad­dress their griev­ances be­fore such a body and not be ex­clud­ed from due process and equal­i­ty be­fore the law.

What's at stake here are fun­da­men­tal con­cepts hav­ing to do with hu­man dig­ni­ty, equal­i­ty un­der the law and even the worth of gay lives. In recog­ni­tion of the com­mon hu­man­i­ty that LGBT per­sons share with the rest of the cit­i­zen­ry, it is a re­quire­ment of jus­tice that our laws pro­vide sup­port for the vul­ner­a­ble in our so­ci­ety.

This will en­sure that LGBT cit­i­zens do not per­ceive them­selves to be of less worth than their fel­low cit­i­zens, do not feel like out­casts or sec­ond-class cit­i­zens in their own coun­try, and do not see their lives as be­ing "cheap" or prefer­ably ex­pend­able as far as the rest of the so­ci­ety is con­cerned. What mes­sage are we send­ing to the na­tion when we ig­nore the as­pi­ra­tions of a mi­nor­i­ty and al­low their fun­da­men­tal rights to be "the sub­ject of fur­ther na­tion­al dis­cus­sion?"

The view for pro­tect­ing peo­ple on the ba­sis of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion or for de­fend­ing ho­mo­sex­u­als against dis­crim­i­na­tion is to­tal­ly con­sis­tent with the teach­ing of the RC Church whose teach­ings do not con­done gay sex nor does it con­flict with the rights of all re­li­gions to teach what they con­sid­er to be moral­ly right. On the is­sue of "gay sex" and "gay mar­riage" the Church teach­es that this prac­tice is un­nat­ur­al and wrong and that mar­riage is be­tween a man and a woman.

While the is­sue of hu­man rights and the ex­er­cise of sex­u­al­i­ty be­fore the law can be ad­dressed lat­er in a sub­se­quent pub­li­ca­tion, my ar­gu­ment as ex­pressed above is ful­ly con­sis­tent with the idea of gays en­gag­ing in pla­ton­ic broth­er­ly and sis­ter­ly love.

It would though be in­struc­tive at this point to con­sid­er the fol­low­ing prin­ci­ples of re­li­gion and state­ments of com­pas­sion made by Church au­thor­i­ties. The first is by an ob­serv­er of the Vat­i­can to the UN in 2008 on the De­c­la­ra­tion of Hu­man Rights, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and gen­der iden­ti­ty: "The Holy See con­tin­ues to ad­vo­cate that every sign of un­just dis­crim­i­na­tion to­wards ho­mo­sex­u­al per­sons should be avoid­ed and urges States to do away with crim­i­nal penal­ties against them."

Last week Arch­bish­op Har­ris ex­pressed the view that "the fact that some­one may have an ori­en­ta­tion dif­fer­ent to yours does not make them bad, evil or crim­i­nal in any sense."

Let me al­so reaf­firm the rule "Thou shalt not kill" in the face of the shock­ing mur­ders (some of which have been dri­ven by an­ti-gay bias) in our coun­try. As a Chris­t­ian it is my du­ty to go against as­pects in our so­ci­ety that may con­tribute to the dis­re­spect of peo­ple and any ex­pres­sion of hate or scape­goat­ing. I do de­clare that the ba­sic prin­ci­ples of the Bible and of all our re­li­gions in this blessed coun­try of ours are love, mer­cy, benef­i­cence and com­pas­sion, not hate.

Fi­nal­ly, Pope Fran­cis re­cent­ly af­firmed this view on two oc­ca­sions. On the first oc­ca­sion he said: "If some­one is gay and he search­es for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?" Then in a sub­se­quent in­ter­view pub­lished in the Je­suit Jour­nal of Amer­i­ca, he com­ment­ed: "A per­son once asked me, in a provoca­tive man­ner, if I ap­proved of ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty. I replied with an­oth­er ques­tion: 'Tell me: when God looks at a gay per­son, does he en­dorse the ex­is­tence of this per­son with love, or re­ject and con­demn this per­son?'

We must al­ways con­sid­er the per­son."

Fr Stephen Ge­ofroy, Phd

Cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go