Yvonne Ba­boolal

The ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple in T&T are ei­ther tol­er­ant or ac­cept­ing of ho­mo­sex­u­als rather than ho­mo­pho­bic.Al­so, les­bian/bi­sex­u­al/gay/trans­gen­der (LBGT) is­sues are not as po­lit­i­cal­ly dan­ger­ous as politi­cians think.These were the re­sults of a sur­vey, fund­ed by the British High Com­mis­sion and con­duct­ed by the Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Re­search Ser­vices Inc (CADRES), of at­ti­tudes to­ward ho­mo­sex­u­als in T&T.The re­sults were an­nounced at a press con­fer­ence at the All Saints An­gli­can Church, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day by CADRES di­rec­tor Pe­ter Wick­ham.

The in­for­ma­tion, well re­ceived by the lo­cal LBGT com­mu­ni­ty, came on the eve of the cel­e­bra­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Day Against Ho­mo­pho­bia and Trans­pho­bia to­day. The day al­so co­in­cides with the 23rd an­niver­sary of the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion's re­moval of ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty from its list of dis­eases and men­tal ill­ness­es.A CADRES press sum­ma­ry said the sur­vey demon­strat­ed 36 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion could gen­uine­ly be de­scribed as ho­mo­pho­bic and eight per cent were un­sure about the is­sue."Con­verse­ly, this means 56 per cent of Trin­bag­o­ni­ans are ei­ther tol­er­ant or ac­cept­ing of ho­mo­sex­u­als. The ac­cep­tance of ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty is greater than the re­jec­tion. The sur­vey ba­si­cal­ly says T&T is not a ho­mo­pho­bic coun­try."Wick­ham said the ac­cep­tance of ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty could be be­cause there were a lot of peo­ple in T&T with gay friends.

Lynette See­baran-Suite of the group As­pire, which ad­vo­cates for sex­u­al and re­pro­duc­tive rights, was at the con­fer­ence in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the LBGT com­mu­ni­ty.Wick­ham said a ran­dom se­lec­tion of 1,080 men and women all over T&T from the age groups 18-30, 31-65 and 65 years and over were in­ter­viewed but a full re­port ex­plain­ing the method­ol­o­gy and lim­i­ta­tions of the sur­vey was un­avail­able to the me­dia.He said more women than men were in­ter­viewed be­cause there were more women in T&T than men and not­ed that women and younger peo­ple were more com­fort­able with ho­mo­sex­u­als.The lat­est Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice cen­sus states there are more men than women in T&T.Col­in Robin­son, of Coali­tion Ad­vo­cat­ing for In­clu­sion of Sex­u­al Ori­en­ta­tion (CAISO), said the sur­vey con­firmed a sus­pi­cion his group had that T&T was not as ho­mo­pho­bic as was be­lieved.

Wick­ham said the sur­vey found that de­spite the large­ly pos­i­tive stance of the ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens, a lot of mis­un­der­stand­ing about ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty still ex­ist­ed. The mis­un­der­stand­ing was the gen­er­al be­lief that ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty was a choice.

The CADRES sur­vey al­so showed if there were leg­isla­tive change about ho­mo­sex­u­als it would not af­fect vot­ers and would have no sig­nif­i­cant neg­a­tive im­pact for a po­lit­i­cal par­ty.Matt Not­ting­ham, po­lit­i­cal of­fi­cer at the British High Com­mis­sion, who at­tend­ed the con­fer­ence, said the com­mis­sion had fund­ed sim­i­lar stud­ies in Guyana and Bar­ba­dos be­cause the LBGT is­sue was of very high pri­or­i­ty to the British Gov­ern­ment."The is­sue of equal­i­ty and ba­sic hu­man rights is be­ing recog­nised by the British Gov­ern­ment," he said.Jeanne Roach-Bap­tiste, as­sis­tant lec­tur­er at the In­sti­tute for Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies at UWI, said even if the study showed 56 per cent of peo­ple in T&T were tol­er­ant or ac­cept­ing of ho­mo­sex­u­als, the re­main­ing per­cent­age against it and un­sure was still high.She al­so not­ed there was a big dif­fer­ence be­tween the words "tol­er­ant" and "ac­cept­ing.