Assessing Gay Rights in Trinidad and Tobago

by Kwame Weekes

The LGBT community of Trinidad and Tobago is forcing the nation to think deeply about fundamental issues of human rights, the constitutionality of certain laws and the separation of church and State. The community is presently asking for one thing – equality under the law. Unfortunately, the debate has been muddled by the media and politicians in the public sphere so much that the grassroots see a debate about same-sex marriage and are up in arms about such a drastic request. Same-sex marriage is not yet a request of the community because it requires other fundamental changes to legislation that dehumanizes the LGBT community.

The first piece of legislation that affects the community is the Immigration Act of 1969 that lists homosexuals in its nomenclature of the “prohibited class” of persons next to known criminals and “persons who are likely to become charges on public funds.”[i] Next on the list is the Domestic Violence Act of 1999 that offers protection to cohabitating adults, defining a cohabitant as “a person who has lived with or is living with a person of the opposite sex as a husband or wife although not legally married to that person.”[ii] And the one that is all over the media today is the Equal Opportunities Act of 2000 whose intention is to protect persons from being discriminated against in a variety of situations for varying reasons. Discrimination against a person for their sexual orientation, however, is not only excluded but it explicitly states that discrimination on the basis of sex “does not include sexual preference or orientation.”[iii]

This is where Trinidad and Tobago is: legislation that puts homosexuals on the same level as violent criminals and persons carrying infectious diseases, barring them entry into the country; failing to legally protect a homosexual victim of domestic violence if they are in a cohabitating relationship with a person of the same sex; granting legal permission for persons to discriminate against you if you are homosexual under the very Act that is supposed to prevent the same - a travesty of a law.

Now, it is common for legislation to lag behind changes in sociocultural attitudes. I say this because while the law is so explicitly harsh towards homosexuals, a recent study done by Caribbean Development Research Services Inc (CADRES) revealed that 56% of the population were either “accepting” or “tolerant” of gays.[iv] The study also found that women and young people were more likely to be tolerant than others. At the same time, CADRES said that there seemed to be a general misunderstanding regarding whether homosexuality was a choice or not. This general confusion, if cleared up, could make the 56% a bulkier number.

Under local pressure from representative groups like CAISO and internationally from the likes of Kaleidescope, Prime Minister Kamla Persard Bissessar promised Lance Price, Director of Kaleidescope, to give “due consideration” to these issues.[v] The LGBT community held their breaths in hope for five months that change would come only to have their hopes betrayed by the Minister of Gender, Youth and Child Development, Marlene Coudray. Coudray made herself out to seem like a puppet of the Interreligious Organisation when she said that “gay rights” were not included in the nation’s gender policy because the IRO would not have it. “It’s not up to me,” she said in an attempt to wash her hands of any responsibility.[vi]

In a letter to the Express editor I argued that the IRO should not have the political clout that they claim to have and are allowed to have by the government.[vii] The IRO uses a “majority rule” argument to justify their power but, as I highlighted in the article, this so-called majority is only a nominal one. According to the Catholic Church’s (the most vocal member of the IRO) own research, 17% of nominal Catholics attend Mass on Sundays, the bare minimum requirement of the faith whose failure is punishable by eternal hell-fire. I speculated based on studies done in Archdioceses around the world that not all Catholics agree with all Church doctrines. Within the 17% are a number of persons who not only disagree with the Church on this particular issue, but are also members of the LGBT community. For the Church – and by extension, the IRO – to use these numbers to bolster their influence is shameful and the government has to answer to the people as to why this group is given so much air-time regarding homosexuality.

Trinidad and Tobago has a history of deflecting certain concerns to the religious community because no other group has offered itself in an approachable way to give insight. In 2012, CNC3 ran a LGBT series that brought the issue to the public while they sat at home watching the news. A bold and progressive move, I thought. Then, I watched the series. The LGBT community was given a famously flambouyant representative in Saucy Pow, who spoke of a history of child molestation and a current occupation as a male prostitute who serviced many men, some of them police officers.[viii] Saucy Pow is a member of the community, but he is by no means a representative of the cross section of the community that is as rich in diversity as the nation itself. The feature only further perpetuated the notion that members of the LGBT community only had these tendencies because of past trauma – a dangerous untruth used by pseudo-psychologists who would rather the World Health Organisation re-install homosexuality on its list of mental illnesses.

Leela Ramdeen

The CNC3 series gave voice to the religious community. Leela Ramdeen of the Catholic Commission for Social Justice of the Archdiocese of Port of Spain gave us a lesson in Catholic theology, that homosexuality – the orientation – wasn’t a sin but that acting on the orientation was. Sat Maharaj, secretary of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha in condescendingly sympathetic tones said that homosexuals were “sexually deformed” likening them to “deformed children” who needed to be loved by the community. The good thing about these two were that they were courteous enough to acknowledge that homosexuality wasn’t a choice unlike Rev. Dr. Ethelbert Charles who said “How could God condemn them if they were born that way? Homosexuality is a choice. Men and women of their own volition, of their own will, choose to take that kind of lifestyle.” He warned that if they continued without repenting and die, they would “definitely split hell wide open.”[ix]

Trinidad and Tobago prides itself on its religious tolerance in the midst of its great ethnic diversity. The IRO is a symbol of this “religious tolerance” but this tolerance has always amused me. In the video alluded to above, we see three persons of different faiths banding together against a common enemy, all justifying their stance using differing theological arguments. What has the LGBT community done to warrant such attention by the religious?

As stated before, they had the audacity to ask to be treated as human beings. This point has been continuously overlooked and it is an outright disrespect to the LGBT community. Is it that the IRO agrees that homosexuals should not be allowed into Trinidad and Tobago? Does the IRO think that homosexuals should not be legally protected against domestic violence? Does Leela Ramdeen believe that homosexuals should be discriminated against because of their homosexuality? The force with which the IRO has responded to the debate would imply that they answer these questions in the affirmative. However, if asked directly, I doubt they would do the same. The media needs to do a better job in fine-tuning the debate to these fundamental issues.

What people are really afraid of is the phantom of gay marriage that is haunting America and spreading across Europe. Leela Ramdeen said it eloquently in a symposium in April:

            “The Catholic Church said...once you change, or enlarge gender, the consequences of        such a new definition would be monumental, as it could change the meaning of thousands       of UN documents and all our laws. Activists could then use this expanded definition in    their respective countries to strike down laws governing such things as heterosexual     marriage and anything that would seem to discriminate against them.”[x]

No argument was given to show why the definition of gender was intrinsically wrong. We were only told, like the animals in Animal Farm, that if we accept this definition, we would go down a “slippery slope.” Interestingly enough, “slippery slope” is its own logical fallacy. One cannot make a statement true by alluding to possible future demise especially when gay marriage is nothing to be feared.

Rev. Shelly Ann Tenia

The religious hold great influence on this matter but it would be unjust of me to not acknowledge those religious who are more compassionate. CNC3 came under attack at the end of their series from the LGBT community for not giving voice to these said persons. CNC3 relented and aired a follow-up segment with Anglican Rev. Shelly Ann Tenia who emphasised her duty as a minister, acknowledging the humanness of persons in the community. She said “there are faithful Christians who are [homosexual] and understand themselves in that way.” It is beautiful that she would call them “faithful Christians” and perhaps her own unconventional role as a female minister allows her to be a more progressive thinker. Catholic cleric Fr. Harvey was also aired and said something I hope the IRO and all the people of Trinidad and Tobago could take note of: “They have challenged us a lot about what does love mean.”[xi]

Father Harvey

No legislative changes have yet come about as a result of LGBT activism and if we are to prophesy the near future based on what Marlene Coudray has said, no change is just around the corner. However, there have been changes in the visibility of the community. Persons have courageously come into the open about their sexual orientations in a charged atmosphere which has brought about a change in the conversation. The more the public saw that homosexuals were real people, the more compassionate their words became; less “fire bun battyman” and more “I don’t agree with their lifestyle but people should be able to do what they want.” If this upward trajectory persists, all that would remain is for the law to reflect the same attitude. 

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[i]Immigration Act 1969 http://www.oas.org/dil/Immigration_Act_Trinidad_and_Tobago.pdf

[ii] Domestic Violence Act 1999 http://rgd.legalaffairs.gov.tt/laws2/alphabetical_list/lawspdfs/45.56.pdf

[iii] Equal Opportunity Act 2000 http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/population/womenrights/trinidad.women.00.pdf

[iv] CADRES report on gay tolerance and acceptance http://www.guardian.co.tt/news/2013-05-16/gays-tolerated-tt-says-survey

[v] Prime Minister Kamla Persard Bissessar’s promise to Lance Price http://www.guardian.co.tt/news/2012-12-17/pm-promises-rights-gays-gender-policy

[vi] Marlene Coudray : Gay rights out of gender policy http://www.guardian.co.tt/news/2013-05-18/coudray-gay-rights-out-proposed-gender-policy

[vii] Letter to the Editor. A case of religious gerrymandering https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151748096714050&set=a.127924724049.130222.127101449049&type=1&theater

[viii] CNC3 InDepth report http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDB6HLCJwbQ

[ix] CNC3 InDepth report. Religious views http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDB6HLCJwbQ

[x] On definition of gender http://www.newsday.co.tt/news/0,176770.html

[xi] CNC3 InDepth report. Pro-gay religious views http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNt1zKS1A4I

Liar, Lunatic, and Lord?

by Kwame Weekes

C. S. Lewis

Considered by many to be one in the long line of heavyweights in Christian apologetics is Clive Staples Lewis. In his memoir, Surprised by Joy, he told a story of growing up sceptical of religion and becoming atheist at the age of 15. At the age of 32, after years of personal study and quiet nudging by friends like J. R. R Tolkien, he found reason to believe in the Christian God. Since then, he has become a poster child for atheist-to-Christian conversion, giving hope to Christian families with wayward sons. A young Christian looking for ammunition to fight against the onslaught of atheist friends may come across his famous Trilemma argument in favour of the godhood of Jesus Christ.

The argument (which can be found in Mere Christianity) is that we must either accept Jesus Christ as a liar, lunatic, or Lord. He argues that there is no room for us to consider Jesus to be a great moral teacher while simultaneously stripping him of his divinity because anyone who makes the kind of claims that Jesus made is either a mad man or a liar, neither of which, according to Lewis, could be considered great moral teachers. Therefore, if we are to accept Jesus as a “great moral teacher,” we must also be willing to accept him wholesale, “fall at his feet and call him Lord and God.”

The argument is made against persons who claim Jesus as a great moral teacher but not Lord. I, for one, do not consider Jesus to be a “great” moral teacher. He said some wonderful things, yes, but he also said some things in ways that make me second guess his sanity. However, for the sake of argument I will grant that Jesus Christ was indeed a great moral teacher. The question now is, why can’t he be both a great moral teacher and a lunatic or a liar or an unfortunate combination of all three?

If I understand the phrase correctly, a great moral teacher gains his greatness by what he teaches. The term does not say he is a great moral person. We’ve all heard the saying “do as I say and not as I do.” It is conceivable that a person can teach and preach the most beautiful morality and still be the devil himself. There is also room in there for madness. There are different types of madness and psychology is a science that does not yet stand on very solid ground with regard to its use of definitions. Regardless of this limitation, history has been coloured with many mad men who lived normal public lives and were considered sane by the rest of the world.

One such person is Jeffery Dahmer, serial killer extraordinaire. Anyone who watches a video of him may find it hard to believe that this man killed people, cut off their heads, stripped the skin off their faces, stored their skulls in refrigerators and had sex with their corpses. If this darkness was not enough to stop him from charming young men back to his room, most certainly with lies, what was to stop Jeffery from spouting a few words of moral wisdom if he wanted to?

I tried pointing this out to a friend of mine who had cited Lewis’ Trilemma argument and he agreed with my general argument. Still, he said that we would never call someone like Jeffery a “great moral teacher” no matter how many good things he may have said. That may be true, but that does not refute the argument that a person can be both at the same time and that the Trilemma is no real trilemma at all. I thought about what my friend said, however, and wondered why that was so.

Historian Jad Adams did extensive primary research on the voluminous writings of Mahatma Gandhi, a man second only to Jesus in popular perception of holiness. Adams revealed in Gandhi: Naked Ambition a Gandhi who believed sex tarnished the soul and so practiced celibacy. The shocking information, however, is that the saint tested his fortitude by surrounding himself with women – sleeping naked with them and bathing with them. To add madness to the peculiar, he refused to give his wife suffering with pneumonia medication, a decision that resulted in her death. When he was struck by malaria, though, he reversed his aversion to modern medicine and accepted it. This type of inconsistency was known to him, it seems, because he wrote of himself elsewhere:

I am not at all concerned with appearing to be consistent. In my search after Truth I have discarded many ideas and learnt many new things…What I am concerned with is my readiness to obey the call of Truth, my God, from moment to moment, and therefore, when anybody finds any inconsistency between any two writings of mine, if he has still faith in my sanity, he would do well to choose the later of the two on the same subject. (http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/elephant-traps-in-the-hunt-for-gandhi/).

Was Gandhi a liar, lunatic, or great moral teacher (unlike Jesus, he never claimed divinity)? I’d argue that he was a mixture of all because there is nothing that says he cannot be. The real problem of the Trilemma is not a problem inherent in the persons in question but in the persons looking on. Some persons find it difficult to see people complexly. It is either you are a sinner or a saint, a hero or a villain, a Madonna or a whore. When it comes to public figures like Gandhi and Jesus, Aristotle can give insight to this propensity. Ethos, he says, is one of the three components of persuasive arguing. Your case is greatly improved if you are seen as an ethical person. This is why politicians go through great lengths to cover up their dirty pasts.

Men like Jesus and Gandhi preached philosophies and had devoted followers. After their deaths, in order for these philosophies to grow and remain influential, followers needed to ensure that the saintly images of their leaders were preserved. The unpopularity of the dark sides of Gandhi is better understood when put in the context of India’s independence and the role he played there. If everyone knew about his secret practices it may have adversely affected his influence while alive and also after death. For human beings, you cease being a hero the moment your sin becomes public and this must be avoided at all costs. Seeing that the earliest gospel written about Jesus was done 40 years after his death, I suspect that similar things were done with Jesus as were done with Gandhi.

What I think is necessary as we move forward is less hagiography and more objective historical inquiry. Jesus Christ should not be exempt from this scrutiny. Christians should ask themselves why they believe the things they believe about Jesus. What evidence do we have that he was free from sin? Why should we believe that Jesus Christ was the perfect human being apart from books written about him by devoted followers? Jesus Christ never told a white lie? Really, now. There is evidence of him being a bit rude to his mother when they couldn’t find him because he was “about his father’s business,” but that is always interpreted in Jesus’ favour. More is needed for us to uncover the true face of Jesus and we may all be surprised by what we find. We should want to know the truth no matter how unbearably beautiful or terrifying because reality equips us for real life better than any fantasy ever can. 

Letting Go of God

by Kwame Weekes

Trust in Yahweh and do what is good,

make your home in the land and live in peace;

make Yahweh your only joy

and he will give you what your heart desires. Psalm 37:3

I am, perhaps, the weakest of all of my friends. Six years of my life was spent completely devoted to Jesus Christ. Like any love, I wanted to know everything there was to know about Jesus. I spent time with him and took him almost everywhere with me; almost because there were times I needed to take the crucifix off from around my neck to lessen the anticipated guilt of something I was about to do, similar to a man who takes off his wedding ring before he invites the woman at the bar back to his apartment when he's out on business. And because my love was real, every time I fell short of my commitment, I was sure to fall on my knees begging for mercy. Seven times seventy times I would, and still the love persisted. People have different reasons for doing what they do, but for me, if my memory is reliable and my honesty is true, my love was resting on a promise; a promise of love returned in abundance, of happiness, of purpose and passion, of meaning. My friends are still in love waiting on this promise, but I, in my weakness, have let go.

As I mature in my non-belief, I am beginning to see that there is very little difference - if any at all - among human beings. The same dynamics that are present in a relationship with a human lover are present in a relationship with a god. If you are not this person, you surely know someone who is madly in love with another human being. Their love is so bright it makes them blind to their own worth and the fact that their lover is blind to it as well. They would take the insults, the beating, the nights of loneliness and all the other niceties that come with unhealthy relationships while you look on in pity, disgust, or absolute horror. Tyler Perry is one of my least favourite directors of all time, but I like that he always makes room for this type of character in his work. This is probably why so many people like his movies - it gives us a "Good Friday bobolie" to beat on, ridicule and offer advice to. "How she schupid so! She takin all da licks. Girl, leave he ass and go by the next man eh!" How wise we become when we stand outside looking in. 

People in relationships like this tend to downplay the negatives and emphasise the positives, however few and far between. It's like the Stockholm syndrome where you think your kidnapper is a praiseworthy person because he offered you a slice of bread and some water when you were hungry, even though you had to eat it with your hands tied with ropes. In our darkest times we hold on to any glimmer of light because there is nothing else to do. I cannot laugh at persons like this. I weep for them. They are holding on to a hope that doesn't exist and I weep for them.

Many of my old friends are believers and many of them have experienced the darkest of times. Even though we don't speak anymore, my love for them sometimes pushes me, the non-believer, to my knees, begging the god that I don't believe in to be merciful to those that love him. He never listens. Still their love persists and I look on - like you look on in a Tyler Perry movie - and I say, "Hoss, why you wasting your time with this god thing?" Tomorrow, tomorrow, it would get better tomorrow. Tomorrow is always coming. Sometimes tomorrow arrives, but only lasts for a day. Then the darkness comes returns. Is there ever a right time to let go of a god?

I cannot answer this question for anyone but myself. For me, the right time was November of 2011. I could no longer live with the belief that if I made Yahweh my only joy he would give me my heart's desires, especially since my heart was not that wanting. My requests were simple - joy, peace, meaning, purpose. There were days when these did come and I made sure my praises on those days were loud enough for my atheist friends to hear. "Yuh see! My God is great! I could never have done so well in exams if it weren't for him." Yes, I did do “well” in exams but some of my atheist friends received scholarships while I didn’t. If it wasn’t me being happy about good grades it was me happy about meeting a new person who shared the same unpopular interests as me. For everything I was happy about, I could find a number of non-believers who enjoyed the same to greater degrees. It was like I was overwhelmingly happy about the bread and water I was eating with bounded hands thinking it was better than those who were eating golden crusted bread, with melted butter and cheese, washing it down with hot Milo. 

What is different between the relationship with God and the relationship with another human being, however, is inherent in the natures of the two objects. God is supposed to be eternal and all-powerful while human beings are temporal and weak. For this reason, it is incredibly easier for a person to let go of a human relationship than it is to let go of a divine one. God's promises go into the after-life, while human promises must be fulfilled in this lifetime. After a while, a person may cut their losses and recognise that the promises their deadbeat husband were making are never going to be fulfilled. A woman knows that after a certain age, the promise of having children is null because it is biologically impossible. But with God, anything is possible, and we hold on to the hope that He would work a miracle just for us, if not in this lifetime, in the next. We are so desperate for a miracle that perfectly ordinary things like passing a difficult examination are aggrandised beyond what they really are. And when the statistically improbable happens to someone else - a 56 year old woman has a perfectly healthy baby - we adopt that story and believe it would happen for us as well. We’re only hurting ourselves.

As condescending as this may sound, I wish some of my old friends would let go of God. What I have written thus far assumes the existence of a god with whom people are able to have relationships. The relationship becomes much harder for me to watch considering this god may not exist beyond the imagination. Suppose I am wrong and he does exist. Aren't you worth more than how you are being treated? To me, holding on to the hope that joy cometh in the morning is beautiful only up to a point. When the promise-giver holds the promise before you like a carrot on a stick and extends the reward’s fruition to beyond the grave, I cannot find love or recognition of your worth in that gesture. It’s as if you’re willingly putting yourself out there to be mocked.

Perhaps I am wrong and my giving up was too soon; I should have asked for strength and the intercession of Mother Teresa. I don't think so, though. I think I just found my worth and had no room for a love that tests. You may consider me weak, but I consider the decision to let go of God the greatest show of strength I have ever displayed.   

To Believe or Not to Believe

Whether you are a believer, non-believer, spiritualist, or just confused about your own existence, you have entered strange and unfamiliar territory by clicking on this blog. To have a blog that represents a group dedicated to religious scepticism in a Caribbean context is out of the ordinary. A small number of us have personal blogs that do this, but the uniqueness in this venture is that it is the concerted effort of persons from across the Caribbean with a relatively substantial amount of support. It is the experience of non-believers everywhere to feel isolated and alone in their position and we are always happily surprised when we are able to say truthfully, “ahh! You too?” make a new friend, and as you can see, form societies.

I woke up one morning in October of 2011 to the realisation that I no longer believed what I had believed all my life. Jesus Christ was no longer Lord and his Father was not worthy of glory. The journey began with me having a religious experience when I was 15 years old that set me on a deeply religious path, progressed to me being a preacher and potential Catholic priest, to eventually losing faith in the intrinsic goodness of humanity, the divinity of the Catholic Church and seeing no good reason to believe in gods. We’ve trained ourselves to interpret our lives as narratives. This, along with the fact that I have developed a love for literature, led me to write a blog series that went into detail about my journey In and Out of God.

It was some time before I adjusted my life to this realisation. I continued to go to Mass on Sundays, pray the rosary, and give retreats. All while I was the editor of the Vision¸ the youth supplement in the Catholic News in Trinidad and Tobago and working as the Social Media coordinator of their communications arm. For some 5 months I kept up the façade of faith and no one - save my mother - noticed any changes in me. It was she who first asked what was going on with me and, unable to bear the burden of cognitive dissonance any more, I told her and my father everything. Over the weekend the news spread like the bubonic plague and by Monday, almost everyone knew about my first decisive step on the road to hell.

If you are above a certain age, I think it is safe for me to assume you have experienced being misunderstood and misrepresented and some of you on larger scales than others. While I tend to steer clear of generalisations, it is fair to say that sceptics (not necessarily atheists, but anyone willing to be critical of religious belief) experience the same to a greater degree. A study done in the UK to gauge the levels of trust the population gave to certain demographic groups in society revealed that atheists were the least trusted group, less trustworthy than rapists. Another similar study done in the USA to find out which groups in the population were believed to embody the ideals of the American dream the most, atheists, expectedly, came out last.

Now, if these were the results of studies done in places where secularism has had a public face for some time, one can only imagine what we would find if similar studies were done in the Caribbean. The reactions to atheism vary anywhere between the extremes of outright rejection and the less popular alternative of acceptance. Conversations around secularism and scepticism hardly ever occur in the settings necessary for it to have significant influence on the larger population. It is not a topic of discussion nor do we consider it when constructing policies. This needs to change.

The Caribbean is rich with potential in every area of life I can think of. But when I read about archaic laws being summoned to charge homosexual tourists for expressing their love; when I hear political demagogues quote Bible passages to rally a less-than-knowledgeable crowd to their unjust cause; when Haiti is vilified and blame for their economic status and tragic devastation by earth and wind is placed on the “curse” of Voodoo; I get irritated. It is my hope that this blog will “stand in the gap” on behalf of the Caribbean to bring it to the feet of Reason.

          Welcome to the Caribbean Freethinkers’ Society. Enjoy your stay and please do not refrain from entering into dialogue with us as time progresses.

Kwame Weekes, Assistant Editor