Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Ver­na St Rose-Greaves says all cit­i­zens of T&T must re­spect peo­ple's sex­u­al pref­er­ences. She said so dur­ing an in­ter­view at her Wa­ter­front Com­plex of­fice, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day. She said the Gov­ern­ment would be de­fend­ing the rights of peo­ple's sex­u­al pref­er­ences in T&T. "Peo­ple have a right to their choic­es and we can­not con­tin­ue the way that we are go­ing," she in­sist­ed. She said the re­cent sui­cide of an al­leged gay per­son in T&T "was a les­son for all of us be­cause we have to come to a place where we can tell our chil­dren they don't have the right to bul­ly or beat up on any­body be­cause of their sex­u­al­i­ty."

The min­is­ter added that sex­u­al­i­ty "is nor­mal and nat­ur­al and you can­not im­pose your be­liefs or your val­ues on some­body else." Ad­mit­ting that cit­i­zens had the right to not want their chil­dren to be a ho­mo­sex­u­al or a les­bian "but the re­al­i­ty is that if it is some­body's re­al­i­ty you have to re­spect that." She in­sist­ed: "I do not care what re­li­gion you be­long to, what your re­li­gious doc­trine may say." She added: "If a man comes through that door (in my min­istry) wear­ing a beau­ti­ful dress, look­ing bet­ter that you and act­ing more ef­fem­i­nate than you, you have to re­spect that per­son as a vis­i­tor and as a client of this min­istry."

She stressed she was "not go­ing to tol­er­ate any­body dis­re­spect­ing any­body who comes to this min­istry based on their sex­u­al­i­ty." She said she had no prob­lem with peo­ple who may be crit­i­cal of her po­si­tion. She in­sist­ed that cit­i­zens must be re­spect­ed re­gard­less of their sex­u­al pref­er­ences in T&T. She said it was "very dan­ger­ous" when peo­ple "go un­der­ground with their sex­u­al pref­er­ences." She said many peo­ple were get­ting mar­ried to peo­ple of the op­po­site sex on­ly to be used as a front in or­der to car­ry out their un­der­ground sex­u­al pref­er­ences.

St Rose-Greaves said she was not en­cour­ag­ing same sex re­la­tion­ships but was in­di­cat­ing that no one had the au­thor­i­ty to take away a cit­i­zen's right to choose. "Peo­ple can chal­lenge me but I have to do what I have to do," she said. "You can­not sim­ply shut peo­ple out, lock them down, beat them up be­cause they do not con­form with what your idea of re­spectabil­i­ty is, you can­not," St Rose-Greaves stressed. She said the dis­re­spect was not on­ly about sex­u­al­i­ty but re­li­gion, race and every­thing. "You have to re­spect peo­ple be­cause they are hu­man," St Rose-Greaves in­sist­ed.