Kali­fa Clyne

The path is now clear for Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to "very eas­i­ly" go back to Par­lia­ment and amend the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Act to pro­tect peo­ple from dis­crim­i­na­tion on the ba­sis of their sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.So said at­tor­ney Dou­glas Mendes, SC, as he ad­dressed the me­dia fol­low­ing the launch of the re­sults of a poll done by UN­Aids. The launch took place on Wednes­day af­ter­noon at the UN House, Chancery Lane, Port-of-Spain.

Last month, while in New York, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said T&T was nowhere near ready to es­tab­lish a ref­er­en­dum deal­ing with the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty and gay rights as it was not legal­ly pos­si­ble. She said tremen­dous op­po­si­tion was faced, es­pe­cial­ly from the Ro­man Catholic Church, but the is­sue of gay rights was not re­al­ly for the Gov­ern­ment to de­cide.Mendes said the is­sue was about the pro­tec­tion of gay peo­ple against dis­crim­i­na­tion.

Mer­le Ali, found­ing mem­ber of the Net­work of Faith-based Or­gan­i­sa­tions, said while there were con­cerns about re­li­gious bod­ies be­ing forced to mar­ry gay cit­i­zens, the or­gan­i­sa­tion stood against dis­crim­i­na­tion against all peo­ple, for any rea­son.The poll, which re­vealed pub­lic opin­ion on three spe­cif­ic is­sues, sex­u­al health ed­u­ca­tion in schools, Aids dis­crim­i­na­tion and ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty, was done in 2013.It showed the ma­jor­i­ty of T&T's cit­i­zens be­lieve dis­crim­i­na­tion against ho­mo­sex­u­als is un­ac­cept­able.When asked if peo­ple should be treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly on the ba­sis of their sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, 78 per cent of re­spon­dents said no, while 13 per cent were un­sure and nine per cent did not an­swer.Asked whether they be­lieved vi­o­lence against gays or sex­u­al mi­nori­ties could be con­sid­ered dis­crim­i­na­tion, 64 per cent of re­spon­dents said yes.

Mendes, who was part of a pan­el re­spond­ing to the poll re­sults, said the in­for­ma­tion was as close as one could get to a con­sen­sus."The path has been cleared very eas­i­ly for leg­is­la­tors to go back to Par­lia­ment to amend the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Act, where you would need a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty," Mendes said.He said amend­ing the act would send a clear mes­sage to the pop­u­la­tion, the re­gion and the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that T&T did not dis­crim­i­nate against peo­ple be­cause of their sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.The re­search was done by Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Re­search Ser­vices (Cadres). It used a strat­i­fied ran­dom sam­ple of T&T and analysed da­ta from 1,176 ques­tion­naires from in­ter­views done in Oc­to­ber 2013.