Referendum on gay sex laws a cop-out - GHRA

The Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) yesterday labeled the government’s proposed plan to hold a referendum on decriminalizing gay sex as an “odious” cop-out, and a substitute for leadership, courage and decency.

In a statement to the press yesterday, the GHRA declared that the intimate lives of homosexual people should never have been polarized or criminalized and as a result it called for legal recognition of a variety of sexual identities in Guyana to be achieved.

It stressed that any referendum would be held under inherently unfair conditions “since civil debate among the Guyanese population has been rendered virtually impossible by bigotry, myths and fear.” As a consequence, it said the results of a referendum to determine what has been evident for decades is unjustified and therefore an abuse of public funds.

While there has been no official statement from the government indicating the move to a referendum, Minister of Legal Affairs, Basil Williams SC and Minister of Foreign Affairs Carl Greenidge have publicly stated that this is the direction the administration is headed.

As a result, rights organizations— the Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination and the Guyana Equality Forum, which is a civil society network that also includes Red Thread and the Justice Institute Guyana—last week called on the APNU+AFC coalition to stick to its manifesto promise to ensure that the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community and other minority groups are not discriminated against.

Reminding that the last referendum held in 1978 saw a new constitution being foisted on the country based on a 15% turnout, the GHRA noted that while the majority deciding for the minority is central to democratic politics, there exists a hazard to applying this norm rigidly when minority rights are at stake. It said this is especially true in this case, where too many people in Guyana remain actively misled over exactly what “being gay” or “homosexual” means.

“Controversies generated around cross-dressing cases in the Magistrates’ courts, reinforce a public impression that this is what homosexuality means and that homosexuals are a handful of people. No one pays attention to the probability that policemen, lawyers and magistrates on the bench may have non-heterosexuals among their number,” the GHRA noted, while adding that homophobia prevents gay people from being able to identify openly and thereby dispel myths.

It said creating an environment where homosexuals can openly identify would lead to a revelation of the number, range, variety and station in life of people of homosexual orientation and it advised government that it would be better served by setting out a coherent proposal to bring to an end a situation demeaning both to Guyana and its citizens. This is to be achieved, it said, by working towards dismantling the “architecture of homophobia” that sustains the repression of equality of rights of persons of all sexualities.

The GHRA noted that the inflexibility of several institutions continue to make more difficult the dismantling, which would win the hearts and minds of parents, families, the media and young people.

“Legal institutions – both Bar and Bench – are disappointingly bereft of leadership on the issue of sexual identity; many fundamentalist religious bodies remain cold and uncaring, while more mainstream ones are conflicted over sexual identity versus sexual activity and political parties since the elections are back-tracking,” it pointed out, while stressing that the kind hearts, generosity of spirit, concerns for being equal or capacity to love which issues like this require are still in short supply, as confused and moralistic social attitudes are (GDF photo) being reinforced in the teaching and welfare professions, which deliver societal values to young people.

In the absence of this homophobic architecture, GHRA argued, there would be no need for a referendum, since the absence of a rational basis for the “no vote” would be exposed.

It said too that the discussion is devalued by the tendency of those who oppose the decimalization of buggery to turn it into a “same-sex marriage” debate or to use negative messages about child abuse.

Such sleight of hand often practiced by religious leaders and politicians serves only to distract from the greater problem of heterosexual child abuse, it further said, while noting that other countries took between forty and sixty years to get from decriminalizing homosexual activity to legalizing same sex marriages, “something proponents on both sides of the sexual orientation debate would do well to remember.”

According to GHRA, while abolition of the “buggery” laws is the narrowest and crudest approach to recognition of sexual identity rights, it is a place to start and, therefore, Parliament should move directly to implement this step, thereby clearing the way for constructing a comprehensive modern policy on all of the issues related to gender identity, orientation and equality.