"A lit­tle hos­til­i­ty."That's what gay and trans­gen­der cit­i­zens met yes­ter­day when they went about pre­sent­ing pack­ages to sev­er­al min­istries to raise aware­ness of gay rights. But it wasn't enough to damp­en their spir­its.The Coali­tion Ad­vo­cat­ing for In­clu­sion of Sex­u­al Ori­en­ta­tion (CAISO) walked to 15 min­istries to mark the coun­try's first ob­ser­vance of the In­ter­na­tion­al Day against Ho­mo­pho­bia and Trans­pho­bia (IDA­HO). The event ob­served the de­clas­si­fi­ca­tion of ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty as a men­tal ill­ness.De­spite the "lit­tle hos­til­i­ty" they re­ceived, CAISO's Col­in Robin­son said: "We weren't de­terred and peo­ple warmed up any­way."We didn't hear any name-call­ing and we haven't been treat­ed as any­thing but cit­i­zens and we al­so not­ed the (Gen­der Af­fairs) min­is­ter in the Guardian has com­ment­ed pos­i­tive­ly on our ef­fort."Robin­son said there was a lot of work to be done on the sit­u­a­tion in T&T re­gard­ing gay and trans­gen­der peo­ple.

"The glass is half full but there's a lot of op­por­tu­ni­ty. Be­cause of this par­tic­u­lar Gov­ern­ment there are open­ings to be­gin to cre­ate the T&T I would like to be able to live in. There are re­al op­por­tu­ni­ties in the cur­rent mo­ment," he added.CAISO is ad­vo­cat­ing sex ed­u­ca­tion in schools to equip youths to deal with life bet­ter, pro­tect them­selves against sex­u­al abuse and un­der­stand the me­chan­ics of sex­u­al­i­ty.Oth­er groups al­so have called for de­crim­i­nal­is­ing of ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty. Robin­son said the first step was for pro­tec­tion of gays from dis­crim­i­na­tion and vi­o­lence which CAISO want­ed Gov­ern­ment to en­sure.

He said the group met for­mer Gen­der Af­fairs Min­is­ter Mary King ear­li­er this year and raised the is­sue of the dam­age which de­bate in Par­lia­ment in Feb­ru­ary had caused. Robin­son not­ed that one Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter in the de­bate had shout­ed re­minders about a Leviti­cus verse.He added: "That sort of thing doesn't help. It on­ly po­laris­es so­ci­ety. That's not the kind of cli­mate we want to fos­ter."We want a rea­son­able en­vi­ron­ment where peo­ple can dis­agree on is­sues of prin­ci­ple and still af­ford ba­sic ci­vil­i­ties and hu­man dig­ni­ty and with the same rights for every­one." (GA)