Sascha Wil­son

De­spite be­ing jeered, mocked, alien­at­ed and ha­rassed by the pub­lic and even law en­force­ment of­fi­cers, open­ly gay Ken­nty Mitchell walks the streets with his head high. He ad­mits that he has of­ten thought about seek­ing asy­lum abroad, but 33-year-old Mitchell re­fus­es to hide from the glare of pub­lic scruti­ny, or live his life in shame. An out­spo­ken Mitchell com­ment­ed on an ex­clu­sive sto­ry in T&T Guardian on Thurs­day where a Trinida­di­an was grant­ed asy­lum in the Unit­ed States last year, based on a claim that he faced con­tin­ued per­se­cu­tion in this coun­try be­cause he is gay.

"I don't blame him be­cause things are not get­ting bet­ter for us here at all," he said. Mitchell, who ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of not car­ing about gays, said they must be af­ford­ed same rights and pro­tec­tion giv­en to oth­er cit­i­zens. He said he would love to get mar­ried to his sig­nif­i­cant oth­er with whom he had been liv­ing with for the past 13 years. Mitchell, who has al­ways been open about his sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, said life in T&T for a gay per­son is very dif­fi­cult. He said as a ho­mo­sex­u­al, he faces dis­crim­i­na­tion and vic­tim­i­sa­tion dai­ly. As a re­sult, he said, lo­cal gays and les­bians usu­al­ly meet and hang out in se­cret lo­ca­tions.

He es­ti­mates that there are about 100,000 gay peo­ple in the coun­try and be­lieves there are sev­er­al ho­mo­sex­u­als mas­querad­ing as straight men be­cause they are afraid. "I be­lieve there are about one to two gay peo­ple in every fam­i­ly," he said. De­spite the odds, the su­per­mar­ket em­ploy­ee says he tries to lead a "nor­mal" life. Mitchell says what most peo­ple de­test about him is that he fights back. "I am a fight­er...I do not al­low peo­ple to walk all over me and do what they want," he said. So far, Mitchell has won two law­suits against the po­lice for wrong­ful ar­rest and false im­pris­on­ment and he now has two sim­i­lar law­suits pend­ing.

"Imag­ine when I was dri­ving maxi I get 40 tick­ets in three years for do­ing noth­ing wrong...It's just be­cause I'm gay," he said. "Busi­ness peo­ple refuse to give me a job be­cause of my dif­fer­ent sex­u­al­i­ty.

"Pas­sen­gers nev­er used to want to trav­el in my maxi and some­times cus­tomers don't want to cash by me (in the su­per­mar­ket) be­cause I gay." Al­though he loves his coun­try, Mitchell says if he gets asy­lum else­where he will be "gone in a heart­beat."

Beat­en for be­ing gay

Nine­teen-year-old Tim (not his re­al name) spent four days at Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal af­ter be­ing bru­talised by his rel­a­tives for be­ing gay. The in­ci­dent has left him scarred phys­i­cal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly to the ex­tent that he is now afraid to ad­mit his sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. Re­count­ing his or­deal, Tim said three months ago a rel­a­tive took him to his home where he was slapped, then planassed and his head banged on a wall. He said his shoul­der-length hair was cut off. He es­caped but was caught soon af­ter.

"Oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers join in and they beat me with a piece of wood, with a shov­el and a belt," Tim re­called.

He said he was threat­ened with death and called deroga­to­ry names. He was or­dered to take a bath, af­ter which they rolled him down a hill and al­lowed a group of men to beat him. It was at that point he was res­cued by of­fi­cers pass­ing in a po­lice ve­hi­cle. Tim said the po­lice took him to the sta­tion but did not ar­rest any­one. He suf­fered a long lac­er­a­tion to his hand, as well as cuts and bruis­es, and his body was swollen. He had to wear a neck brace and had dif­fi­cul­ty walk­ing. Tim, who re­alised he was gay in pri­ma­ry school, said: "I would just like to be safe...I think peo­ple should be al­lowed to live their life as they want."

Afraid of be­ing alien­at­ed

He is con­sid­ered the star in his fam­i­ly. He is a UWI stu­dent and is heav­i­ly in­volved in a church, but he has a deep dark se­cret. Derek, 28, (not his re­al name) is gay. "I am afraid to come out of the clos­et be­cause of the stig­ma­ti­sa­tion and peo­ple frown­ing up­on you," he said. He says his fam­i­ly and neigh­bours are sus­pi­cious, but he will not ad­mit to them that he is gay. "It is not just about two men liv­ing to­geth­er hav­ing sex," Derek said. "It's about two per­sons hav­ing sim­i­lar in­ter­ests, but it just hap­pen to be two men or two women...We don't have a choice, we can't help it."

He said his se­cret ho­mo­sex­u­al life was a heavy bur­den to car­ry. "Some­times when I hang­ing out with my friends and they mak­ing fun of gay peo­ple, I do the same be­cause I don't want to be stig­ma­tised, alien­at­ed or treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly," he said. Derek said there should be sup­port groups for gay peo­ple and their fam­i­lies. In ad­di­tion, he said, there should be ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­grammes to sen­si­tise peo­ple about ho­mo­sex­u­als and les­bians, as well as laws to pro­tect them.