Daniel Guerra RIP

Caption this one for us…

Photo Credit: National Advocates for a Youth Parliament of Trinidad and Tobago

 

…and win a free jersey

Resisting the war on love: Day 4

Terrence Higgins Trust www.tht.org.uk

• Strange cyberting a gwa’an: one of  CAISO’s Facebook groups keeps generating errors that its messages have been reported for abusive or spammy content. And a CAISOnian reports that www.hiswayout.com can’t be accessed from UWI computers. Weird!
• A couple CAISOnians, two of them parents, were chatting not too long ago about teenagers: how horribly selfish they are. But the work young people have been doing around the His Way Out visit makes you want to have kids! Choked up yesterday talking about how the His Way Out visit has straight young people organizing to protect gay young people from the adults who are supposed to be protecting them.

• Atillah Springer on Gayelle, Vernon Ramesar on IETV and Larry Lumsden on Power 102 stepped up to the plate and are putting this story of young people organizing on the air. If you missed WeNews last night and this morning, listen to the amazing interview on “One on One” on IETV Wednesday night at 7 (re-airing 7am Thursday). Or call in to Power 102 during the 9-10 pm broadcast Thursday: 222-TALK or 900-TALK.

• Don’t forget: youth are again creating an alternative presence at Thursday’s IVCF-hosted His Way Out event on UWI’s campus. Meet at JFK underpass 1:15.
• Stay tuned for information on television appearances.

• More “homosexual agenda” jerseys coming soon. Order yours!

• Folks on Tumblr are reblogging a post by Joachim
  

  http://www.newsday.co.tt/letters/0,129805.html

After saturating my brain with the culture of politics in the Caribbean for the past six hours, I’ll make this as brief as possible.

1. Phillip Lee: Self-hating hypocrite who needs to realise he’s a flaming homo.
2. Dr Judith Henry: Out-of-touch, bigoted sow whose medical licence should be revoked.
3. The esteemed Mayor of Port-of-Spain: I just lost respect for you.
4. Justice Yorke Soo-Hon: Don’t know who you are, and definitely not interested in knowing now.
5. The person who wrote this: Go to school; clearly you don’t know the basic rules of journalism.
6. The editor(s) who cleared this story: You should be shot reprimanded.
7. The Trinidad Express: FAIL. Irresponsible, one-sided, embarrassing. Think about Uganda earlier this year, and the recent teen suicides in the US.

I’m ashamed to call myself a Trini right now.

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.

Leaving a mark: CAISO’s new brand for 2010. We vote, we volunteer, we visible.

Here are some of the ideas and associations that our new logo has generated. Tell us what it means to you.

The logo was designed by Liam Rezende, who came to CAISO, volunteered to help us
develop a brand, and donated his creative services. CAISO 2010: putting you at the centre.

A more just vision of sexual orientation

Marvin Marcano: chopped Christopher Lynch 42 times, freed by CJ Sharma

Just a few years ago, the courts in Trinidad & Tobago were not a  place GLBT people looked to with much hope of justice on matters of sexual orientation. Some of you can remember the feeling in your stomach the day your heard or read about then Chief Justice Satnarine Sharma’s 2002 verdict releasing back onto the street a man who’d been previously charged with murder and who had taken a Chinese chopper over 40 times to a gay man, splitting his skull and chopping his face open—and had been sentenced to hang for it. Marvin Marcano and a friend, both teenagers at the time, had shared drinks and watched TV with 58-year-old Christopher Lynch before something sexual triggered the violence. Margot Warner who retired recently and Wendell Kangaloo, still on the Appeals Court bench, joined CJ Sharma’s judgement. Whatever the issues of procedural fairness in the trial, there was no forgiving what Sharma read from the bench about a homosexual advance providing justification for such a crime: “The acts themselves were so unnatural that they would have caused a certain reaction,” he said.

But the Court may be changing. Three new justices are about to join the Appeals bench, Humphrey Stollmeyer, Gregory Smith and Rajendra Narine. Sat Sharma left the CJ role under a cloud, and Trinidad & Tobago now has its youngest Chief Justice in history, Ivor Archie, a man who from all appearances has a living, 20/20 vision and understanding of sexual orientation.

gspottt shared with you that across the Commonwealth a network of human rights experts, lawyers and activists has been strategizing and working together to bring an end to the remaining colonial-era buggery laws that we inherited from the mother country, one by one. Most recently Section 377 of India’s penal code was overturned in the courts.

In this final item in our Emancipation Day human rights series, we share excerpts from the 2006 judgment (Suratt v AG, CA 64/2004) penned by Ivor Archie on the constitutionality of the Equal Opporunity Act (EOA), and its deliberate attempt to exclude sexual orientation from the protections it offers against discrimination. Human rights lawyer Anand Ramlogan calls it “one of the best judgments written by a local judge”:

“The EOA is an unusual and contradictory statute since it appears to regard ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ as having an identical meaning that is different from ‘sexual orientation’ or ‘sexual preference’. That is the only explanation for the fact that by the definition of ‘sex’ in section 3 it specifically excludes from its protection persons who claim discrimination on the basis of sexual preference or orientation, while at the same time purporting, in section 7, to proscribe certain acts motivated on the basis of ‘gender’. The current usage of those expressions, as may be revealed from an examination of any reputable dictionary, is that while the word ‘sex’ is generally understood to refer to the biological division of species between male and female in respect of reproductive roles, the concept of ‘gender’ is broader and is more of a social, cultural and even psychological construct. In other words, ‘gender’, although it is nowhere defined in the EOA, can include ‘sexual orientation’.

This may not be a fact that is palatable to most persons in Trinidad and Tobago where homosexual acts are generally disapproved and are still subject to criminal sanction, but orientation or preference is not the same as behaviour. I say this with the greatest of deference to the learned trial judge who undertook a very detailed and sensitive analysis of this point. It is not a crime to have a homosexual or lesbian orientation. In fact there is no evidence, at least in this case, that one can choose an orientation although there are those who argue that the sex towards which one’s romantic or sexual desires are focused is more a matter of ‘choice’ or ‘preference’.

It is not for this court to resolve that debate, but it is axiomatic that all legislation has to be construed and applied so as to remain in conformity with the Constitution and in particular the guaranteed rights to equality of treatment and equality before the law under section 4 of the Constitution. To the extent that the EOA is inconsistent with the Constitution it is void. In respect of the exercise of statutory powers, the authorities are clear that, in the absence of some compelling justification, it is unreasonable for a decision-maker to reach a decision that contravenes  or might contravene fundamental rights. Similarly, any law that is on its face discriminatory has to be justified on the basis of some reasonable distinction between those who are differently treated, otherwise it offends against section 5 of the Constitution. Sexual ‘preference’ or ‘orientation’ cannot, by itself, afford such a distinction. In any event, how does one determine such a thing unless it is self-confessed? It is a subjective distinction based on prejudice and stereotyping with no countervailing factors to justify it.

Dating site crimes against MSM in T&T raised with international human rights body

As we approach Emancipation Day, the international celebration of one of the biggest and longest human rights struggles ever, gspottt turns our attention, in a series of pieces over the next several days, to  questions of human rights.

Since late last year, GLBT groups in Trinidad & Tobago have deepened our participation in a coalition of 17 Latin American and Caribbean organizations and networks that since 2007 has been working on gender expression, gender identity and sexual orientation issues in the Inter-American Human Rights system, in partnership with Global Rights, a human rights advocacy group in Washington DC. Next weekend we will update you on our participation in the OAS (Organization of American States) 39th General Assembly meeting in Honduras last month, and what the T&T Government promised to do there.

Through this Latin American coalition and another, Commonwealth-focused one, Trinidad & Tobago citizens and our organizations are part of ongoing collaborative efforts to advance human rights for GLBT people and address the ways in which the criminalization of same-sex intimacy in our laws violates those rights.

On October 24 of last year, the Latin American and Caribbean coalition was granted a hearing by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the first time in its history that the Commission (which has been in the news here of late) held a thematic hearing on human rights violations related to gender expression, gender identity and sexual orientation. The specific focus of the hearing was on the intersections between discrimination and violence based on gender expression, gender identity and sexual orientation, and other forms of intolerance, namely those based on gender, age, socio-economic status and race/ethnicity.

The presentation to the Commission on the Anglophone Caribbean by human rights lawyer (and former T&T resident) Joel Simpson focused on the region’s sodomy laws and their impact on human rights. The violence many in the gay community here are aware  has happened, largely unchecked, to many local users of a well-known website was raised before this international forum in order to illustrate how in Trinidad & Tobago these laws prevent victims from seeking justice. The presentation also drew attention to the intersection between our sodomy laws and access to health.

T&T Police and Ministry of National Security officials had no response when the pattern of attacks was brought to their attention in January 2008.