An­na-Lisa Paul

Head of the In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion (IRO) Broth­er Har­ryper­sad Ma­haraj says while the is­sue of gay rights and same-sex mar­riages is a "very big sen­si­tive is­sue," re­spect must be paid to in­di­vid­u­als re­gard­less of their per­son­al choic­es.

He was re­fer­ring to state­ments by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in New York last week Thurs­day, that T&T re­mained di­vid­ed on the is­sue of re­mov­ing an­ti-gay laws; that a ref­er­en­dum may be need­ed to de­ter­mine how the pop­u­la­tion felt about such laws be­ing re­moved; and that the cit­i­zens, rather than Gov­ern­ment, should be the ones to de­cide.In a tele­phone in­ter­view, Ma­haraj point­ed to chang­ing trends in the world.

Adding that it was im­por­tant not to dis­crim­i­nate against any­one choos­ing to en­ter in­to such re­la­tion­ships, Ma­haraj said: "While I don't sup­port gay mar­riages, at the same time, these peo­ple have made a choice and al­though it is against my per­son­al choice, they should not be dis­crim­i­nat­ed against."High­light­ing the hi­jra caste in In­dia and oth­er coun­tries where trans­gen­der com­mu­ni­ties were con­tin­u­al­ly grow­ing, Ma­haraj said it might on­ly be a mat­ter of time be­fore this too was ob­served in T&T.

Ro­man Catholic Arch­bish­op Joseph Har­ris has re­ferred to Per­sad-Bisses­sar's in­sin­u­a­tions that a Ro­man Catholic group had op­posed the draft na­tion­al gen­der pol­i­cy as un­true and reck­less.In a re­lease last week, Har­ris said the state­ments sug­gest­ed the Catholic Church was lead­ing a cam­paign for con­tin­ued dis­crim­i­na­tion against mem­bers of the les­bian, gay, bi­sex­u­al and trans­gen­der (LGBT) com­mu­ni­ty.

The Arch­bish­op said the Catholic Church was on­ly one of the re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tions in the coun­try that had raised ob­jec­tions to the pol­i­cy, and to sin­gle out his de­nom­i­na­tion was re­gret­table. On the is­sue of ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty, the re­lease said the Catholic Church was clear that it was "con­trary to the nat­ur­al law."

How­ev­er, the re­lease em­pha­sised that per­sons of all sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tions must be ac­cept­ed with com­pas­sion and sen­si­tiv­i­ty.Mean­while, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Coali­tion Ad­vo­cat­ing for the In­clu­sion of Sex­u­al Ori­en­ta­tion (Caiso) Col­in Robin­son has said Gov­ern­ment should be the one to de­cide on the is­sue.