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Saturday, May 3, 2025

Rights, child molesters and the Constitution

by

20140223

I watched Thu­sian SDA speak­er Nicole Pa­jotte on the news, at a con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form con­sul­ta­tion, warn­ing about pro­tect­ing boys from sex­u­al abuse. She didn't men­tion the Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist pas­tor, fa­ther of five and prin­ci­pal of one of the de­nom­i­na­tion's pri­ma­ry schools, just charged with abus­ing his stu­dents 14 times.

She warned about "sodomites." But re­view­ing the nau­se­at­ing head­lines of sex­u­al abuse of chil­dren, which I've urged in this space our lead­ers must nev­er see as un­avoid­able, two oth­er groups stand out–those in parental roles and those in re­li­gious roles, in­clud­ing re­li­gious teach­ers.

A right to one's own sex­u­al­i­ty, which would pro­tect those chil­dren, is not ex­plic­it­ly recog­nised in our Con­sti­tu­tion. Both parental and re­li­gious rights, how­ev­er, are specif­i­cal­ly ref­er­enced.

Sin­gle fa­thers' ad­vo­cate Ron­dell Fee­les and my Caribbean Male Ac­tion Net­work (Ca­ri­MAN) col­league Mar­lon Bas­combe cam­paign for pub­lic pol­i­cy to stop treat­ing fa­thers as de­fault preda­tors, not trust­ed by courts or hos­pi­tals to be equal par­ents to their own chil­dren, vis­it them, take them home. Poli­cies and pro­tec­tions recog­nis­ing fa­thers' rights and crit­i­cal roles in chil­dren's lives fos­ter the kind of parental bonds that pre­vent sex­u­al abuse.

All peo­ple have a right to hold faith be­liefs, in­clud­ing ones about sex­u­al­i­ty and what is right and wrong. The right to prac­tise faith means the right to do or not do things with your body–shout, mor­ti­fy your flesh, man­i­fest spir­its, fast, not eat beef or pork, be cir­cum­cised, not shave your beard, lock your hair, be chaste, cov­er your­self in a hi­jab, lie down be­fore God–the same rights over their bod­ies oth­ers are ask­ing for.

Deny­ing in­di­vid­u­als' re­li­gious rights won't pro­tect young men from sex­u­al abuse any more than deny­ing gay peo­ple's will. Deny­ing some rights doesn't pro­tect oth­ers. So­ci­eties that are more equal are more sta­ble, have less crime and high­er de­vel­op­ment lev­els.

But some­thing has gone ter­ri­bly out of con­trol in our cur­rent pub­lic de­bate over the Con­sti­tu­tion. We've for­got­ten that the guar­an­tee of pro­tec­tion from im­po­si­tion of oth­er peo­ple's faiths on us means we, too, don't get to im­pose ours on oth­ers, or to have the State do so on our be­half.

In a mul­ti-re­li­gious na­tion, re­li­gious free­dom means pre­cise­ly that your right to be­lieve can't in­fringe my right to not be bound by your be­lief. Just as sex­u­al rights mean my right to have sex can't in­fringe your right to not have sex with me.

As for pro­tect­ing lit­tle boys, it's this pow­er of re­li­gion to abuse oth­ers–which is no­body's right–that is at the root of sex­u­al abuse of boys and girls that hap­pens in re­li­gious set­tings, the pow­er re­li­gious lead­ers wield over oth­ers who do not con­sent.

"Our chil­dren are be­ing tar­get­ed," Nicole cau­tioned, wide-eyed on my evening news. And I tend to agree.

Ex­cept young peo­ple aren't be­ing turned gay be­cause they are sex­u­al­ly abused. They're the same boys tar­get­ed and preyed on by bul­lies be­cause of their gen­der ex­pres­sion. And sex­u­al preda­tors al­so tar­get them, know­ing in a cli­mate of shame and crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of same-sex sex­u­al­i­ty, they can be sure these young peo­ple will hide their sex­u­al abuse.

Men com­mit al­most all cas­es of sex­u­al vi­o­lence, whether the vic­tim is male or fe­male. Deeply dys­func­tion­al no­tions of mas­culin­i­ty are what we see at work in the worst in­ci­dents of sex­u­al abuse of chil­dren.

It's these fac­tors, not ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty, that fu­el men's preda­to­ry sex­u­al abuse of boys. Ho­mo­pho­bia, as this re­al­i­ty is clum­si­ly la­belled, is al­so a stub­born bar­ri­er to boys' heal­ing from sex­u­al abuse, and some car­ry a life­long bur­den of stig­ma.

I ex­pect those whose re­li­gious rights I am com­mit­ted to de­fend­ing to be as pas­sion­ate about pro­tect­ing boys from sex­u­al abuse as I am. Un­til we end their vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to ho­mo­pho­bia, we won't be do­ing enough to make the world safe for the boys Nicole and I both want to pro­tect.

Here are five con­struc­tive ways we could do this to­geth­er:

1. De­crim­i­nalise con­sen­su­al ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty be­tween adults in law

2. Sup­port pro­tec­tions for ho­mo­sex­u­als from dis­crim­i­na­tion

3. Cre­ate spaces where young peo­ple who think they may be ho­mo­sex­u­al can find sup­port and af­fir­ma­tion

4. Help peo­ple be lov­ing par­ents and fam­i­lies to young gay and les­bian peo­ple

5. Most im­por­tant, talk to young peo­ple them­selves about what will pro­tect them–like those from the Sil­ver Lin­ing Foun­da­tion, a youth group that formed af­ter a friend's sui­cide, who al­so spoke at the con­sti­tu­tion­al con­sul­ta­tions and are work­ing with the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies to cre­ate safe spaces.

Forg­ing the lib­er­ty to love: one na­tion...many bod­ies...bound­less faith.

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