Col­in Robin­son

Can­dace, a young woman I know, just came out na­tion­al­ly as les­bian. It's one of the most pow­er­ful things that's hap­pened in the work I do on sex­u­al di­ver­si­ty, more im­por­tant than any­thing I've ac­com­plished. Her moth­er Suzette came out to the na­tion too–as hav­ing HIV.When I con­grat­u­lat­ed Suzette, who now di­rects a glob­al NGO of peo­ple liv­ing with HIV, she de­scribed her daugh­ter as "the rea­son I do what I do," say­ing:

"When I want to just give up, thoughts of her keep me go­ing."In a na­tion where I tell my in­ter­na­tion­al col­leagues the pri­ma­ry form of vi­o­lence against les­bian, gay, bi­sex­u­al, trans­gen­der and in­ter­sex (LGBTI) peo­ple hap­pens not in the streets (like we see in Ja­maica), but in our fam­i­lies, Suzette is a "throat-lump­ing" pro­file in moth­er­hood.

Since our his­toric elec­tion of a woman as the na­tion's prime min­is­ter, we've heard a lot of po­lit­i­cal talk about moth­er­hood and grand­moth­er­hood. I don't be­long to any po­lit­i­cal par­ty, but I and a group of LGBTI lead­ers walked the clogged road from Cou­va junc­tion to Rien­zi Com­plex on elec­tion night in 2010.

It wasn't for the open bar Jack Warn­er promised, nor on­ly to cel­e­brate the end of the hubris and ho­mo­pho­bia of the Man­ning regime. I gen­uine­ly thought ovar­i­an for­ti­tude in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter was go­ing to be good for the na­tion.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers