We don’t need debate on gay marriage, Mary King. We need Government action on violence and discrimination.

“No thank you!” CAISO has responded to Government’s proposal the day after Valentine’s Day for a national debate and referendum on same-sex marriage, made by Minister of Planning, Economic & Social Restructuring and Gender Affairs during Senate debate on the Statutory Authorities (Amendment) Bill. That legislation seeks to extend a death benefit available to public servants’ next of kin to the employees of statutory authorities. It goes further, to include in the potential beneficiaries common-law partners of unmarried employees and their children born out of wedlock – but restricts the benefit to only partners “of the opposite sex”. In floor debate, Government Senators defended on “religious” and “cultural” grounds their decision to recognize fornicators, but not sodomites.

Illustrating the circus such a proposed debate would be, Leader of Government Business in the Senate Subhas Panday, a Hindu, interrupted an Independent Senator, Corinne Baptiste-McKnight, as she criticized the bill for “entrenching” this discriminatory provision and bucking where the world was moving, by shouting a reference to an imaginary verse of Leviticus: 52. (Leviticus has only 27 chapters.) CAISO doesn’t trust that this debate proposal won’t simply take Trinidad & Tobago down the same path of national conflict and global embarrassment as Uganda, ironically as we too chair the Commonwealth of Nations. Holding a popular “referendum” (the word the Government used) on whether citizens who are a minority group have equal rights would also make the nation a laughingstock in the international community.

The proposal is a distraction, Government clearly isn’t listening, and has its priorities on GLBT issues wrong. CAISO has consistently given the Government six politically feasible national priorities for action; and same-sex unions or debate on them was never one. We’ve written the Prime Minister, and we met with Minister King early in the new administration to share these six items.

Three of them address responses to areas where social vulnerability is highest for members of the GLBT community, none requiring legislation or referenda:

• supportive transitional housing to address the homelessness, undereducation and employability issues created by discrimination
• training to reduce police bias and abuse
• making schools safe from bullying and violence for young people, including heterosexual young men who are also harmed by homophobia

We also advocated that Min. King build her own Ministry’s capacity to support the Government with planning, policy and programme development related to sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI), through staffing, and government-to-government technical assistance; and we submitted an FY2011 citizen’s budget proposal for a SOGI desk in the Ministry.

Most important, we asked the Government to take action to protect us from the discrimination and violence we face on a daily basis because of who we are, discrimination that is fuelled when national leaders speak of us on television and radio from the chambers of Parliament, not as citizens who have sex in our bedrooms with other adults and party and form organizations and love each other and voted for them, but as people who are controversial and sensitive and connected to illegality and whose rights and relationships require debate.

The Equal Opportunity Act, a brainchild of the UNC Government, which has just entered its second decade, is an ideal vehicle to enact those discrimination protections. (The Catholic Commission on Social Justice, which opposed the 2004 Gender Policy, agrees that we ought to be so protected.) There is furthermore measurable national consensus in Trinidad & Tobago on protecting people from discrimination in basic walks of life, regardless to their sexuality. The Equal Opportunity Commission the Act established is also an ideal vehicle to take the national look at equality, sexual orientation and discrimination, and needed responses, that Min. King is concerned with – in a sober, deliberate and apolitical fashion. In the functions the Act assigns the Commission, it provides for it to review emerging questions of discrimination, conduct research and make recommendations.

In explaining why the Government had specifically excluded unmarried same-sex partners from the bill, Minister of Public Administration Sen. Rudrawatee Nan Gosine-Ramgoolam admitted she was not a legal expert but went ahead to conclude same-sex relations were illegal. As a result, she argued (before correcting herself), Government “can’t put the horse before the cart”. This seems sadly true. Protecting GLBT citizens from discrimination and violence is the political horse our Government should be riding, not flogging gay marriage.

Finally, CAISO has repeatedly asked the Government to exercise leadership and speak out boldly against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender expression, and we congratulated the Prime Minister because she did so at the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha just days after the election. She has also done so on HIV. We have also acknowledged the Government for its bipartisan work on strengthening the right to privacy.

Furthermore, we have persistently asked Government to listen and to consult, and offered our help and partnership with building a nation for everyone. But our Ministry of Foreign Affairs told CAISO the reason they abstained on two UN votes late last year was because Government does not have a position on whether gay people have a right to life. Young people are still being beaten by their families and bullied in school. Crime victims of anti-gay violence are taunted as bullers by police officers. A dozen 20-something-year-olds, many of whom have nowhere to go because of who they are and who are unsafe in the shelter, were recently charged for loitering. And our humanity is seen by the Government as in need of debate.

CAISO:

• is seeking a meeting with Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar;
• has renewed our call for Government to partner with us in convening a public forum so citizens of this country, especially brave young gay, lesbian, bi and trans young people who live day to day in a nation that fails to protect them from prejudice and violence, can tell Government their stories and what are their priority concerns for GLBT people in Trinidad & Tobago; and
• we are urging Minister King to commission 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.

We salute Independent Senators James Armstrong, Corinne Baptiste-McKnight, and notably Helen Drayton who hammered away at the Government. They all assailed the restrictive common-law provision in the bill as antiquated and inconsistent with state obligations of equal treatment. And PNM Senators Pennelope Beckles-Robinson and Terrence Deyalsingh showed welcome compassion on the issue. Sen. Beckles-Robinson, the Opposition Leader in the Senate, proposed to Government a modest amendment, which Sen. Panday rejected, that would have avoided enshrining in law new discriminatory language and simply have the bill reference the Cohabitational Relationships Act. What these Senators displayed was that many good people in Trinidad & Tobago 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. They also displayed that those who do so are in the highest office, and that they are unafraid to speak out publicly. 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 personal prejudice behind.

16 February, 2011 

Sen. Hon. Mary King
Minister of Planning, Economic & Social Restructuring & Gender Affairs
Level 14, Eric Williams Financial Complex
Independence Square, Port of Spain

Dear Minister King:

I am writing, in the wake of yesterday’s Senate debate on the Statutory Authorities (Amendment) bill, to ask you to meet again with me and other representatives of our Coalition at the earliest opportunity. We would like to discuss:

• Government Senators’ conduct and remarks during the debate, including your own, and the damage we believe they risk doing to the cause of equality

• the status of the community listening forum proposed in our July 8, 2010 meeting and discussions with you, MP Ramdial and other Government officials;

• an alternative or complementary approach to the political referendum you proposed yesterday for achieving national engagement with human rights questions of sexual orientation, gender identity and discrimination, involving the Equal Opportunity Commission

CAISO has been seeing doors open up that used to be just little keyholes. But for us to walk through those doors – we have to walk together…

The 2010 Trinidad & Tobago Pride Memorial took place on Sunday 25 July
The Feature Address was given by 25-year-old CAISOnian Kareem Griffith

Photos courtesy Bohemia

My name is Kareem Griffith and I’m a member of CAISO: the Coalition Advocating for Inclusion of Sexual Orientation. I was speaking with Cyrus Sylvester and Hayden Browne and they were telling me that in 1994, people were dropping like flies. They would just disappear and then you would hear months later that they had passed. ‘Why? Because the fear and the shame were so much, that people would rather have died alone than face their friends or families with the truth. There was so much misinformation and stigma around AIDS that when you died from “that”, it seemed that people would rather forget you than have to remember how you died.

And so in 1994, a few of our community’s many heroes including: Godfrey Sealy, Andre Froget and Larry Christopher got together and organized the first Pride AIDS Memorial. It was also a bold statement. I think the statement they made was this: “We refuse to forget the members of our community who have died from AIDS-related complications. They were our brothers, our sisters, our lovers and our friends. And love them or hate them, they were one of us, and if nobody else wants to remember them, WE MUST!”

That was a call to action. And our community responded and here we are today, 16 years later. Every one of their faces is on that wall. And we’re still here too. A little bruised, a little broken, but standing strong, stilettos and all. Always remembering, always surviving. You talk about Pride… That makes me feel so proud

Now I have a question for all of you. By a show of hands, how many of us here today, have at least once in our lives felt rejected by someone we loved just because of our sexual orientation or gender identity? By those who we most wanted to be proud of us? Our family, our friends, our church, our co-workers?

How many of us have lied to those who we so want to trust just because we’re scared to death of letting them know our true identity?

I came out to my family and friends in 2003. And before that, I was a closeted gay teenager living in a heterosexual household, with heterosexual friends and a member of a church that preached heterosexuality from the pulpit.

After coming out I found the parties, I got the sex, and it was great. But I drifted in and out of the party scene, and eventually I felt like I wasn’t getting what I needed. And so I stopped coming to events, I put one foot back in the closet and said, “You know what, I don’t need the gay community. I could live life on my own as a gay man, you know. It’s no secret, nobody’s going to bother me. I could make a good life for myself. I don’t really need the gay community.” But that delusion didn’t last for long because it came down on me like a ton of bricks that I live in a in a country where we have a law that says it’s OK for my employer to discriminate against me because I’m gay.

I live in a society that thinks heterosexuality is better than all other sexualities. If we search ourselves, even some of us here today think that.

I refuse to accept that and I call on you to refuse to accept that as well. Our sexualities, our gender identities are just as beautiful and natural and acceptable and respectable as any heterosexual’s.

And that’s why I’m here. Because this right here, this is my community. This is the place in society where I’ve always belonged. It’s always been my community. It was my community 16 years ago when I was in Standard 3 with a major crush on Jason, the boy who sat next to me. During the times in my life when I embraced my sexuality, and the times when I was denying it. And you know why? Because when we walk through those gates over there, it does not matter where we come from, what we believe, or who we love. When we step into this yard, we are a family. We have a history. We have a culture. We have traditions. We have heroes. We have leaders. You talk about Pride? That makes me feel so proud!!

Throughout history, our community has been taking small steps that have all added up to result in drastic changes to society. Hayden was telling me it used to be scary to go to a gay party. You used to have to hide and go. Now we partying all on the road on Ariapita Avenue.

We have to stop and appreciate how amazing that is.

And it shows that we can assert our presence and our place in Trinbago. As a community, we could change the society. We have changed the society! And we have to keep pushing. We have to leave a better society for those coming after us. We should never be satisfied with the false sense of security we all now have. I know that I’m not satisfied. And I’ll tell you why.

As long as homophobia fuels the AIDS epidemic that is stealing away our best, brightest and most loved, l am not satisfied.

As long as there is a single piece of legislation that says “sex does not include sexual orientation”…

As long as a politician can stand up and say proudly that our gender policy will not deal with issues of same sex unions and sexual orientation, I am not satisfied.

As long as there’s a law on the books says that, if police wanted to, they could arrest me for having sex with my boyfriend, and I can be imprisoned for twenty-five years. I don’t care if they use it or not. I will never be satisfied. And neither should you.

Following in the community tradition, CAISO has been taking small steps, and seeing some doors open up that used to be just little keyholes that we could look through. But for us to walk through those doors and claim our equal place – we have to walk together. Out there, we hear it all the time. “Why doesn’t the community speak out? How many of y’all are there? Where’s the community?”

I want to share some exciting news. Recently, the Minister of Economic and Social Restructuring and Gender Affairs invited some members of CAISO to her office, met with us herself and told us that the Government wants to begin the process of understanding our community. And she has committed to participating in a discussion forum in September or October that is specifically for the Government to hear and understand what your concerns are as a gay, lesbian, trans or bi citizen of Trinidad and Tobago.

That means there’s hope. This community has always had hope. And to all of those people who say that society is never going to change and that government is never going to do anything for us: This is your chance to try. The biggest changes in society happen when people dare to believe in the impossible.

So now, it’s our turn to keep the movement going. It’s your turn to take the next step. And I know that our circumstances are different and that some of us can take bigger steps than others, but one step we can all take is committing to build a strong and united community. We have so much to learn from one another. We’ve had so many common experiences. And just like a family, we don’t always get along. But you ever had a bad day at work, but you couldn’t take it out on them so you come home and take it out on your loved ones? You snap at them or even worse?? I believe that it’s just like that for a community. As we saw at the beginning, out there, we’ve all been rejected, we’ve all been hurt, and sometimes we take it out on each other. But the reason you can do that is because we know that no matter what, our family will always be there.

When we come together, we do amazing things. And the time is right now! If we come together, we can heal our wounds, and we can change the world we live in…so it doesn’t matter if you’re gay, lesbian, trans, bisexual, pan-sexual, all-sexual, whatever sexual. We are many, but we’re all a part of this one community. My community. Your community. And I don’t have to like you, I don’t have to sleep with you, I don’t have to agree with you, but I do need to understand you. Because when it comes to fighting heterosexism and homophobia, we are all on the same side.

And we will win the fight if we are united!
Thank you.

CAISO calls on the new Government

On Thursday July 8, six representatives of CAISO met at the Eric Williams Financial Complex with Sen. Mary King, Minister of Planning, Economic & Social Restructuring and Gender Affairs; Parliamentary Secretary Ramona Ramdial, UNC Member of Parliament for Couva North; staff leaders in the Ministry; in its Gender Affairs Division; and in the Youth Affairs Division of the Ministry of Sport and Youth Affairs. CAISO’s representatives included women and men, GBLT people and allies. The Minister’s goal was for the new Government and our communities to begin to understand each other. It is likely the first time in the history of Trinidad & Tobago that an official meeting has taken place between a GLBT group and high-level political officials.

Our hope is that the meeting has initiated a sense of partnership between Government and our communities. On our part, we introduced ourselves as the leading national advocacy voice for GLBT issues; described the levels and history of organising activity taking place in our community; educated our Government about policy, legislation and programmes that affect GLBT citizens; and discussed the action plan for a new Government that CAISO had promoted during the election campaign. These points include:

• leadership in speaking out against discrimination and bias violence
• building greater respect for minority rights, and expanding the protection of the Equal Opportunity Act to more groups who are targeted for discrimination
• training and sensitising key government personnel with contact with the GLBT community (e.g. the protective services, social workers, health care workers) and the staff of the Gender Affairs Division
• building a culture of tolerance in our nation’s schools, and protecting all young people, regardless of their sexual orientation, from bullying, and from homophobia and its clear impact on male underachievement and healthy youth development
• addressing the homelessness and joblessness young GLBT people experience as a consequence of discrimination, and often of family and institutional abuse
• training the protective services to ensure equality under the law, instead of ridicule, for GLBT crime victims, and to improve responsiveness to hate crimes
• including sexual orientation in the Gender Policy, and facilitating public discussion about sexuality, gender identity and citizenship
• building the government’s capacity to understand and respond to the needs of thousands of its GLBT citizens.

We shared leadership actions that other Caribbean politicians have taken on sexual orientation and gender identity; and we pointed out changes in attitudes to sexual orientation and gender identity that have taken place locally over time. We raised concerns about an election campaign proposal that seemed to suggest that the Government’s commitment to protect some citizens’ human rights might be determined by other citizens, through a referendum.

We agreed to work together with the Government to create further opportunities for Government to listen to the concerns and experiences of GLBT citizens with regard to violence, exploitation, inequality, discrimination and ill-treatment, in daily life and in our attempts to access basic services and benefits, including employment, education and housing, or to exercise our fundamental rights.

And that is where you come in. Stay tuned for details about our town hall meeting, planned for late September or early October. And please turn out, with your friends and family, and tell your stories to the Government.