Gail Alexan­der

A lead­ing lo­cal gay ad­vo­ca­cy group has crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment's po­si­tion on same-sex mar­riage which emerged in Tues­day's Sen­ate de­bate. The Coali­tion Ad­vo­cat­ing for In­clu­sion of Sex­u­al Ori­en­ta­tion (CAISO) yes­ter­day al­so turned down Gov­ern­ment's call for de­bate on the is­sue and crit­i­cised com­ments by Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Sub­has Pan­day on the sit­u­a­tion in the Sen­ate. Dur­ing Tues­day's Sen­ate de­bate, Gen­der Af­fairs Min­is­ter Mary King said de­bate on same-sex mar­riage must be­gin and be tak­en through­out T&T.

How­ev­er, Gov­ern­ment Sen­ate Leader Pan­day not­ed the teach­ings of Chap­ter 52 of the book of Leviti­cus. This drew a re­buke from In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Corinne Bap­tiste-McK­night CAISO's Col­in Robin­son said: "If the Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness, a Hin­du, was scream­ing a non-ex­is­tent verse from Leviti­cus dur­ing an­oth­er sen­a­tor's con­tri­bu­tion yes­ter­day, I don't see why we should trust that Mrs King's pro­pos­al won't sim­ply take T&T down the same path of na­tion­al con­flict and in­ter­na­tion­al em­bar­rass­ment as Ugan­da.

"Hold­ing a pop­u­lar 'ref­er­en­dum' on whether a mi­nor­i­ty group has equal rights makes us a pub­lic laugh­ing­stock. "When the UNC cre­at­ed the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion they in­clud­ed in its func­tions re­view­ing emerg­ing ques­tions of dis­crim­i­na­tion, con­duct­ing re­search and mak­ing rec­om­men­da­tions." Say­ing CAISO was seek­ing a meet­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on the sit­u­a­tion, Robin­son added: "What was dis­played in the Sen­ate was that many good peo­ple in T&T of dif­fer­ent po­lit­i­cal per­sua­sions are more than ready to end the ways in which our laws and pub­lic pol­i­cy dis­crim­i­nate un­nec­es­sar­i­ly against gay and les­bian peo­ple. "It al­so dis­played that those who do so are in the high­est of­fice, and that they are un­afraid to speak out pub­licly.

"But we al­so saw the sad dis­play of how politi­cians who de­fend in­tol­er­ance on re­li­gious grounds of­ten can't even cite the scrip­tures they are hid­ing their prej­u­dice be­hind." Robin­son said a de­bate on the is­sue was not among rec­om­men­da­tions CAISO has made to Gov­ern­ment (see box). He said CAISO had met with Min­is­ters Roodal Mooni­lal, Rodger Samuel and King and had writ­ten the PM but the Gov­ern­ment was not lis­ten­ing and had its pri­or­i­ties wrong. "This is an­oth­er dis­trac­tion from gov­ern­ing. While they have said they are for in­clu­sion and equal­i­ty, their ac­tion is in­con­sis­tent with this."

Robin­son added: "Re­cent­ly, our For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry told CAISO it ab­stained on two UN votes last year be­cause Gov­ern­ment does not have a po­si­tion on whether gay peo­ple have a right to life. CAISO al­so re­newed a call for Gov­ern­ment to part­ner in con­ven­ing a pub­lic fo­rum for cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing gay, les­bian and trans­gen­der peo­ple who can tell Gov­ern­ment their sto­ries and the pri­or­i­ty con­cerns for gays. CAISO sug­gest­ed a study by the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion on dis­crim­i­na­tion in em­ploy­ment, ed­u­ca­tion and pro­vi­sion of goods, ser­vices or ac­com­mo­da­tion, based on sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and gen­der iden­ti­ty.

CAISO's pro­pos­als for Govt:

• Lead­er­ship: The Prime Min­is­ter and the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al should speak out force­ful­ly ear­ly in the life of the new Gov­ern­ment to em­brace the full cit­i­zen­ship and hu­man­i­ty of Trin­bag­o­ni­ans who are gay, les­bian, bi­sex­u­al or trans­gen­der (GLBT). Send a clear mes­sage to the GLBT com­mu­ni­ty it en­joys the full pro­tec­tion of the Gov­ern­ment and it de­serves and has equal ac­cess to Gov­ern­ment ser­vices and sup­port, ac­cord­ing to its needs. Al­so send a strong lead­er­ship mes­sage to pub­lic ser­vants, unions, cor­po­ra­tions and in­di­vid­u­als that dis­crim­i­na­tion on the ba­sis of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion or gen­der iden­ti­ty is in­hu­mane and wrong: Gov­ern­ment may fur­ther ev­i­dence lead­er­ship on these is­sues through vis­i­ble con­sul­ta­tion with ac­count­able rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the GLBT com­mu­ni­ty; the hire of qual­i­fied per­sons knowl­edge­able about GLBT com­mu­ni­ty in­ter­ests to pol­i­cy roles in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and oth­er rel­e­vant Gov­ern­ment units;

• Equal op­por­tu­ni­ty: Leg­is­la­tion to re­flect the ad­di­tion of pro­tec­tions from dis­crim­i­na­tion, based on sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and gen­der/gen­der iden­ti­ty;

• Crime: Train­ing across the pro­tec­tive ser­vices to en­sure of­fi­cers un­der­stand sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and gen­der iden­ti­ty and re­spect and pro­tect the right to equal ac­cess to jus­tice, safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of per­son for GLBT peo­ple. Po­lice must pro­vide stig­ma-free re­spon­sive­ness to GLBT peo­ple equal to the qual­i­ty of pro­tec­tion pro­vid­ed to the gen­er­al pub­lic;

• Home­less­ness: A bridge to self-suf­fi­cien­cy and a mean­ing­ful al­ter­na­tive to sex work for youths made home­less and un­em­ployed by stig­ma and dis­crim­i­na­tion re­lat­ed to their sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion or gen­der iden­ti­ty, in­clud­ing ef­forts to strength­en pro­tec­tion of chil­dren from abuse and end­ing the cul­ture of sex­u­al abuse of boys at chil­dren's homes;

• Gen­der pol­i­cy: A Sex­u­al Ori­en­ta­tion/Gen­der Iden­ti­ty (SO­GI) Desk to build Gov­ern­ment ca­pac­i­ty to de­vel­op pol­i­cy/pro­gram­ming on SO­GI is­sues; and,

• Safe schools: De­vel­op­ment of the com­pe­tence of teach­ers in youth sex­u­al de­vel­op­ment, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and gen­der iden­ti­ty and ef­fec­tive in­ter­ven­tions that tar­get SO­GI is­sues and recog­nise ho­mo­pho­bia's con­tri­bu­tion to male un­der-per­for­mance.