Taylor’s logic laughable

THE EDITOR, Sir:

ORVILLE TAYLOR’S article ‘From the closet to my Cabinet?’ (Sunday Gleaner, April 22, 2018) makes the argument that since buggery is a crime, then former Prime Minister Bruce Golding’s stance was a principled one and both former Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller and current Prime Minister Andrew Holness are in error by not maintaining Golding’s discriminatory position. He argues that “if [Holness] knows that any of his colleagues is a criminal, however much he disagrees with the statute that outlaws the behaviour, he is bound to keep him out of the Cabinet”.

Within the same article, he notes that sexual orientation is the mens rea for buggery. Both propositions, on purely legal terms, are fallacious. To deal with the second proposition first, buggery, as criminalised in the Offences Against the Person Act and as defined in common law, is what those of us who have been educated in law call a strict liability offence. There is no

requirement. Beyond that, sexual orientation is not mens rea for anything. Mens rea, as the first-year law students I have tutored are aware, refers to the guilty mindset required for each criminal offence. The term generally refers to whether someone’s actions were what they intended to do, what they did regardless of being aware of the risk (recklessness), or what they did without carefully thinking about all the relevant matters (negligence). Sexual orientation would be properly described as a motive, not intention, therefore, not mens rea.

There is no legal basis for saying a ‘practising gay man’ cannot be in Cabinet.

Mr Not-A-Lawyer writes his article justifying Golding’s discriminatory statement against the LGBT community without recognising that if the likelihood to bugger was a disqualifier, only lesbian women would be fit for Parliament and, by extension, Cabinet. GLENROY MURRAY Associate Director, Programmes & Advocacy Equality for All Foundation Jamaica Ltd