It’s an absence of leadership, Mr Chuck

NOT FOR the first time, Delroy Chuck, the justice minister, has blamed the fear of the Church for the failure of Jamaican legislators to repeal the buggery law, which makes anal sex illegal and, by extension, has a chilling effect on gay relationships.

Speaking at a seminar in Kingston last week, Mr Chuck recalled having been once lobbied on the matter by a United States ambassador, and responding, “…If you want change, go and convince the faith leaders, because the truth of the matter is that the faith leaders in this country persuade 90-odd per cent of the people.”

In other words, politicians fear that if they support actions

that are perceived to be pro-gay, church leaders will lobby against them, resulting in their loss of election and political power.

What we see in Mr Chuck’s statement is not the power of church leaders, but a whingeing obsequiousness and abject failure of leadership.

RIGHTS TRUMP ALL ELSE

Ours is a constitutional democracy, with the right of freedoms to be enjoyed by citizens set out in the basic law, and not subject to the whims of theocratic authority.

These rights include the freedom of association and the right to privacy, which should include

the preclusion of a voyeuristic state peeping into people’s bedrooms. The buggery law, in this newspaper’s view, is contemptuous of those rights, but saved by a clause in the Constitution that maintains pre-Independence laws that were neither repealed, nor, in accordance with the interpretation up to now, explicitly amended.

In the face of the continued legislative action highlighted by Mr Chuck, Jamaicans can hopefully rely on the logic of their court that it finds persuasive the position of the Caribbean Court of Justice that saving clauses ought not to stand if they diminish fundamental rights.