MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Could 06 (IPS) – On 22 April, Dominica’s Excessive Court docket struck down two sections of the nation’s Sexual Offences Act that criminalised consensual same-sex relations, discovering them unconstitutional. This made Dominica the sixth nation within the Commonwealth Caribbean – and the fourth within the Japanese Caribbean – to decriminalise same-sex relations by means of the courts, and the primary in 2024.
Related selections had been made in Antigua and Barbuda, St Kitts and Nevis and Barbados in 2022 – however progress then threatened to stall. Change in Dominica revives the hopes of LGBTQI+ activists within the 5 remaining English-speaking Caribbean states – Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St Lucia and St Vincent and the Grenadines – that also criminalise same-sex relations. Ahead of later, considered one of can be subsequent. A small island has made an enormous distinction.
Winds of change
The criminalisation of consensual homosexual intercourse within the Anglophone Caribbean dates again to the British colonial period. All former British colonies within the area inherited similar legal legal guidelines towards homosexuality concentrating on both LGBTQI+ individuals normally or homosexual males specifically. They sometimes retained them after independence and thru subsequent legal regulation reforms.
That’s what occurred in Dominica, which grew to become impartial in 1978. Its 1998 Sexual Offences Act retained legal provisions courting again to the 1860s. Part 16 of that regulation made intercourse between grownup males, described as ‘buggery’, punishable with as much as 10 years’ imprisonment and potential obligatory psychiatric confinement.
The offence listed in part 14, ‘gross indecency’, was initially punishable by as much as 5 years in jail if dedicated by two same-sex adults. A 2016 modification increased the penalty to 12 years.
As in different Caribbean nations with related provisions, prosecutions for these crimes have been uncommon in latest many years, and have by no means resulted in a conviction. However they’ve been efficient in stigmatising LGBTQI+ individuals, legitimising social prejudice and hate speech, enabling violence, together with by police, obstructing entry to important social providers, notably healthcare, and denying individuals the complete safety of the regulation.
Change has begun solely previously decade, however it’s been fast. Bans on same-sex relations had been overturned by the courts in Belize in 2016 and Trinidad and Tobago in 2018. Extra quickly adopted.
The authorized case
In July 2019, an unnamed homosexual man recognized as ‘BG’ filed a authorized case difficult sections 14 and 16 of the Sexual Offences Act. The defendants named within the grievance had been the Legal professional Basic, the Bishop of Dominica’s capital Roseau, the Anglican Church and the Methodist Church. The Dominica Affiliation of Evangelical Church buildings was additionally listed as an get together.
The lawsuit was supported by Minority Rights Dominica (MiRiDom), the nation’s most important LGBTQI+ advocacy group, and three worldwide allies: the Canadian HIV/AIDS Authorized Community, the College of Toronto’s Worldwide Human Rights Program and Legal professionals With out Borders. The regulation was challenged as discriminatory and an enabler of violence towards LGBTQI+ individuals.
The Excessive Court docket heard the case in September 2022, and on 22 April 2024, Justice Kimberly Cenac-Phulgence issued a ruling setting out the the explanation why sections 14 and 16 violated the applicant’s constitutional rights to liberty, freedom of expression and privateness, and had been subsequently null and void.
The backlash
LGBTQI+ advocates world wide welcomed the court docket ruling, as did UNAIDS – the United Nations company main the worldwide effort to finish HIV/AIDS. However resistance wasn’t lengthy in coming.
Spiritual establishments, which maintain lots of affect in Dominica, had been fast to decry features in LGBTQI+ rights as losses in ethical values. The day after the ruling was introduced, Dominica’s Catholic Church revealed a statement reaffirming its place that intercourse ought to solely happen inside a heterosexual marriage and, whereas expressing compassion in direction of LGBTQI+ individuals, reiterated its perception within the centrality of conventional marriage and household. The Seventh-day Adventists expressed alarm concerning the potential of the court docket ruling to result in same-sex unions and marriages. Some religion leaders voiced outright bigoty, with one distinguished determine calling sexual acts between individuals of the identical intercourse an ‘abomination’.
The highway forward
Having decriminalised same-sex relations, Dominica is now ranked 116th out of 198 nations on Equaldex’s Equality Index, which charges nations in response to their LGBTQI+ friendliness. There’s clearly a lot work to be executed. Excellent points embody safety towards discrimination in employment and housing, marriage equality and adoption rights. LGBTQI+ activists can even proceed to push for the popularity of non-binary genders, the legalisation of gender change and the prohibition of conversion remedy.
The Equality Index makes clear that, as in all of the Caribbean nations which have lately decriminalised same-sex relations, adjustments to legal guidelines stay far forward of social attitudes, with appreciable public homophobia. As the moment conservative reactions to the court docket ruling counsel, altering legal guidelines and insurance policies isn’t almost sufficient. Shifting social attitudes should now be a high precedence.
Dominican LGBTQI+ activists know this, which is why they’ve been working to problem prejudice and foster understanding since lengthy earlier than launching their authorized problem – and why they see the court docket victory as not the tip of a journey however a stepping stone to additional change.
The problem for Dominica’s LGBTQI+ civil society is to switch the vicious circle of authorized prohibition, which has strengthened social stigma, with a virtuous one wherein authorized progress normalises the presence and social acceptance of LGBTQI+ individuals, which in flip permits efficient entry to legally enshrined rights.
However they’ll take coronary heart from being a part of a broader regional and world development. Whereas working to make sure rights are realised domestically, they’ll additionally supply a strong instance that change may end up to the circa 64 countries world wide that also criminalise homosexual intercourse, together with the 5 holdouts within the Commonwealth Caribbean. Extra progress will come.
Inés M. Pousadela CIVICUS Senior Analysis Specialist, co-director and author for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
