Paula Lin­do

Trinidad-born, US-based Judge G He­len Whiten­er says the rights of LGBTQI (les­bian, gay, bi­sex­u­al, trans­gen­der, queer and in­ter­sex) peo­ple are hu­man rights and they are ask­ing for re­spect and the right to be them­selves with­out be­ing per­se­cut­ed.

Judge Whiten­er, who is open­ly gay, sits on the Pierce Coun­ty Su­pe­ri­or Court, the high­est tri­al court in the State of Wash­ing­ton and is the youngest woman of colour to serve in such a po­si­tion. She at­trib­uted her suc­cess to the dis­ci­pline she learned grow­ing up in Trinidad un­til the age of 16. She vis­it­ed T&T with her wife, Lynn Rainey, a re­tired US Army com­mand sergeant-ma­jor, at the in­vi­ta­tion of the US Em­bassy, to talk about over­com­ing in­tol­er­ance.

There are a num­ber of laws on the books in T&T which af­fect LGBTQI peo­ple neg­a­tive­ly, and, speak­ing at an open fo­rum at UWI on Tues­day, Judge Whiten­er had a mes­sage for leg­is­la­tors: "The time to im­ple­ment jus­tice is al­ways now, so I ask our Prime Min­is­ter to break down these laws, so that peo­ple like me, Judge G He­len Whiten­er and my cousin, Rus­sell Rhodes, who be­cause of Aids can no longer speak, so I can speak for him, that Alex Thomas 'Hevan Leigh' did not have to be stabbed and can re­ceive jus­tice, and so that an or­gan­i­sa­tion such as Sil­ver Lin­ings, where a young gay man had to be killed for this or­gan­i­sa­tion to even be cre­at­ed, would no longer need to ex­ist.

"We are in­di­vid­u­als, you can­not praise my ac­com­plish­ments and for­get my broth­ers and sis­ters. We are de­serv­ing of a seat at the ta­ble. You can­not be proud of my ac­com­plish­ments and not be proud of them. We are one. I am a Trinida­di­an, I am a To­bag­on­ian and we are one peo­ple."

Judge Whiten­er said she was ready to be ar­rest­ed when she land­ed in this coun­try, since the Im­mi­gra­tion Act stat­ed that it is il­le­gal for ho­mo­sex­u­als to en­ter T&T. She not­ed even though Gov­ern­ment has stat­ed pub­licly that this and sim­i­lar laws are not en­forced, there is no guar­an­tee that some­one will not ran­dom­ly de­cide to do so.

The Judge al­so spoke about com­ing out to her par­ents at the age of 19. She said her fa­ther ac­cept­ed her im­me­di­ate­ly, while her moth­er had what she called "a typ­i­cal Tri­ni re­ac­tion, 'Oh Lord, what peo­ple goin say?' And my re­sponse was...we don't have to speak again–and we didn't for two years."

Her moth­er, Joyce Pierre, ex­plained her re­ac­tion in terms of re­li­gion, con­cern about sta­tus and ig­no­rance as to what it meant for some­one to be LGBTQI. She called on par­ents to ac­cept their chil­dren, and in turn for chil­dren to be pa­tient with their par­ents who are hurt­ing.

Judge Whiten­er said in re­sponse to those who say so­ci­ety will end if ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty is ac­cept­ed, that no-one was ask­ing them to stop be­ing het­ero­sex­u­al, but to treat LGBTQI peo­ple as equals and ac­cept their choic­es. She said it is im­por­tant for peo­ple to see peo­ple as hu­man be­ings and stop try­ing to judge oth­ers.

She al­so re­fut­ed sug­ges­tions that she had po­lit­i­cal­ly en­dorsed the Prime Min­is­ter, stat­ing that she ad­mired her for over­com­ing var­i­ous gen­der and racial bi­as­es to get to her cur­rent po­si­tion.

A mem­ber of the me­dia, who said he was straight, said T&T is very tol­er­ant of LGBTQI peo­ple but these events sig­nal to him that we are liv­ing in the last days. Judge Whiten­er stat­ed that they were on the same page as while he had a right to his views and she was will­ing to lis­ten, and all she want­ed was the right to ex­press her views as well.

Ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of Friends For Life, Luke Sinette, spoke of his ex­pe­ri­ences with his par­ents, and Judge Whiten­er said, look­ing back, she re­alised she was al­so in­tol­er­ant, be­cause she did not try to help her moth­er ad­just to the change.

Board mem­ber of the Coali­tion Ad­vo­cat­ing for the In­clu­sion of Sex­u­al Ori­en­ta­tion, (Caiso), Bren­don O'Brien asked how the LGBTQI com­mu­ni­ty could push for leg­isla­tive re­form against strong re­li­gious op­po­si­tion, and the Judge said a good strat­e­gy would be to in­clude oth­ers who are al­so ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed by the laws.

Lec­tur­er at the In­sti­tute for Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies, Gabrielle Ho­sein, stat­ed that there were ex­tend­ed penal­ties for same-sex ex­per­i­men­ta­tion in the Chil­dren's Act.

Judge Whiten­er asked if there is no leg­isla­tive change now, when would it hap­pen? She said the coun­try seems to be ready for change.

Hevan Leigh, who was at­tacked and stabbed for be­ing gay, asked if the judge was on­ly here for pub­lic­i­ty rea­sons.

The Judge said she came to put a face to the is­sue, and to help peo­ple re­alise that they can lose peo­ple of her cal­i­bre if the laws are not amend­ed, as they are hyp­o­crit­i­cal and can be ap­plied ar­bi­trar­i­ly. In ad­di­tion, she said she hoped peo­ple would see her and re­alise that LGBTQI peo­ple are reg­u­lar hu­mans like every­one else.

Michael Fran­cis of the Thu­sian Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist Church said the cur­rent laws were al­ready enough to pro­tect the LGBTQI com­mu­ni­ty, to which Judge Whiten­er re­spond­ed by say­ing that this was not true, and re­mind­ed him that the law was a dy­nam­ic struc­ture which ad­just­ed to so­ci­ety.

The Judge called on those LGBTQI com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers who are in po­si­tions of lead­er­ship and au­thor­i­ty to sup­port their com­mu­ni­ty, al­though she did not agree with any­one be­ing 'out­ed' against their will.

Mean­while, US Em­bassy PRO, Stephen Weeks, said the Em­bassy sup­port­ed the Judge's vis­it to Trinidad as part of its con­tin­ued en­gage­ment on LGBT is­sues.

"So what we want to do is re­al­ly just con­tin­ue the con­ver­sa­tion and broad­en it to in­clude more peo­ple, so that the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty can en­gage with the larg­er com­mu­ni­ty and T&T can find their own way of mak­ing progress on LGBT rights," Weeks said.

�2 Paula Lin­do is a fem­i­nist and LGBTQI ac­tivist and writes a blog on the sub­ject.