Melis­sa Doughty

An­ti-in­tel­lec­tu­al, con­de­scend­ing and disin­gen­u­ous. These were some of the words used to de­scribe Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds, af­ter he shared his views on ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty at Fi­nal Hour Chris­t­ian Min­istries' pan­el dis­cus­sion on Hu­man Rights in a Chang­ing World.

The pan­el dis­cus­sion was held on Sat­ur­day at Uni­ty Hall, Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, and was pre­sent­ed by the non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion, Smart Speak. A pan­el com­pris­ing of Coali­tion Ad­vo­ca­tion for the In­clu­sion of Sex­u­al Ori­en­ta­tion (CAISO)'s Sharon Mot­t­ley, Amil­car Sanatan, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies' guild pres­i­dent, lawyer Stan­ley Mar­cus (who rep­re­sent­ed pub­lic ser­vant Cheryl Miller) and Hinds came to­geth­er to dis­cuss the is­sue of ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty.

The pan­el was chaired by pas­tor and at­tor­ney Dave McKen­zie. When asked if a son or daugh­ter of his came home and said he was gay, Hinds said he would say some­thing is wrong with them. Al­so Hinds said he felt threat­ened as a het­ero­sex­u­al per­son. Hinds con­stant­ly stat­ed that his views were not those of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM). When asked about the PNM's po­si­tion on gay rights, Hinds said: "The PNM has not yet tak­en a po­si­tion on this mat­ter.

"I am be­gin­ning to be­come very con­fused. I am aware, with­in the PNM as with every­where else in so­ci­ety and in all or­gan­i­sa­tions, even with­in your own church, pas­tor, there are peo­ple who may be sym­pa­thet­ic to the in­tel­lec­tu­al ar­gu­ment that we have heard com­ing from our sis­ter two seats down from me, Sis­ter Sharon," he said.

"I am aware there are in­di­vid­u­als in the PNM who hold sym­pa­thet­ic views on this mat­ter, there are some par­ties which al­low peo­ple to vote ac­cord­ing to their own con­science. I don't know how this one will turn out. I can­not com­ment on that. "But I'm be­gin­ning to be­come very con­fused. I am a lawyer. The Con­sti­tu­tion speaks of non-dis­crim­i­na­tion against cer­tain cat­e­gories, in­clud­ing sex. No dis­crim­i­na­tion on the grounds of sex but my un­der­stand­ing of sex has al­ways been male or fe­male.

"And there­fore the Con­sti­tu­tion pro­tects against that but the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty is now say­ing, and I heard Sanatan now say­ing, gen­der is not as fixed male or fe­male, it is flu­id. I am now be­gin­ning to be­come con­fused...How flu­id? And where does it take us? If we fol­low this we may very well end up with ten dif­fer­ent gen­ders. My own un­der­stand­ing has al­ways been ei­ther male or fe­male."

Hinds fur­ther said he was a Rasta­far­i­an and a Chris­t­ian who holds true to his Bible, even af­ter ad­mit­ting he faced dis­crim­i­na­tion as a Rasta­far­i­an. COP's Ver­non de Li­ma, when asked what he thought of Hinds' com­ments, said al­though he was not aware of what was said, he be­lieves is­sues which per­tains to ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty should be tak­en to a ref­er­en­dum.

Hinds' state­ments caused an up­roar among the gay com­mu­ni­ty-from CA­SIO's Face­book page to Ja­son Jones' I am One, all had weighed in on the sen­a­tor's com­ments. Ja­son Jones said: "It is in­deed deeply dis­turb­ing to hear sup­pos­ed­ly learned men asP­NM sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds and MrStan­ley Mar­cus, SC,spout­ing such ig­no­rant and hate filled rhetoric on the eve of the 50th an­niver­sary of our de­mo­c­ra­t­ic In­de­pen­dence. Dis­ap­proval of ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty can­not jus­ti­fy in­vad­ing the hous­es, hearts and minds of cit­i­zens who choose to live their lives dif­fer­ent­ly.

"These gen­tle­men would do well to wor­ry less about what same sex cou­ples get up to in their bed­rooms lives and fo­cus their en­er­gy on is­sues that are tru­ly blight­ing our Re­pub­lic such as the cor­rup­tion of our politi­cians." Col­in Robin­son, CAISO's spokesman, said he be­lieves Hinds' views are not unique to him. He al­so felt Hinds' com­ments, as a lawyer, dis­played some blind spots about is­sues such as gen­der.

"When adults in lead po­si­tions say these things, they don't un­der­stand the enor­mous im­pact they have on young peo­ple deal­ing with their sex­u­al iden­ti­ty," Robin­son said. Robin­son said he hopes Hinds' door is open to ed­u­ca­tion. Mot­t­ley, who sat on the pan­el and who Hinds con­stant­ly re­ferred to, said: "I want to ap­plaud Pas­tor Mcken­zie for recog­nis­ng that as a na­tion we need to ac­knowl­edge all our cit­i­zens and strive to cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment of tol­er­ance,free from dis­crim­i­na­tion and vi­o­lence based on sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.

"In my view, many of the ar­gu­ments posed had no place in a dis­cus­sion on en­sur­ing and pre­serv­ing the rights of peo­ple to live free from fear of dis­crim­i­na­tion and vi­o­lence. "While I ac­knowl­edge Hinds' right to his own opin­ion, I find it un­for­tu­nate that with his or­a­to­ry gift, his po­lit­i­cal po­si­tion, and po­ten­tial to in­flu­ence thou­sands that he would use this op­por­tu­ni­ty to posit a fiery po­si­tion of non-tol­er­ance and re­duce a crit­i­cal dis­course on hu­man rights to one of 'sex­u­al pref­er­ence.'

"Be­fore be­ing 'per­suad­ed,' the sen­a­tor may first need a les­son on tol­er­ance and hu­man di­ver­si­ty.CAISO's ef­forts are di­rect­ed at chang­ing law, poli­cies and prac­tices in prac­ti­cal ways so LGBT Trinidad and To­ba­go achieve eq­ui­table treat­ment and pro­tec­tion un­der the law," she said.